The vexing question looming over the Israel-Gaza conflict, which has already left more than 20,000 Palestinians dead, is intensifying: What happens the day after?
It is at the heart of what appears to be conflicting U.S. and Israeli visions of the future now playing out in the region.
The optimistic vision — call it the hope narrative — has been sketched by commentators like New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.
In this scenario, when the war ends, an interim transition authority comprised of Saudi, Egyptian and other Arab forces would administer Gaza. The Saudis and other Gulf petro-states would finance the reconstruction of Gaza and facilitate a reformed, reinvented Palestinian Authority, which would govern Gaza and the West Bank based on an Israeli commitment to accept a negotiated two-state solution. Saudi-Israeli normalization efforts would resume, integrating Israel into the region economically and politically.
President Biden has embraced such a vision, repeatedly saying he wants to see the longstanding, yet long-elusive goal of a two-state solution, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza alongside Israel, as the endgame.
Yet the current situation is a paradox. On the one hand, Hamas’s savage and sadistic Oct. 7 attack underscored the reality that Israel is unlikely to find peace and stability while ignoring the Palestinian question and dominating more than 5 million Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank.
At the same time, however, polls reflect the residual anger, grief and rage on both sides, strongly suggesting that Israel accepting a Palestinian state in the foreseeable future seems hard to imagine.
Events on the ground suggest the risk of escalation into a wider regional war may be more likely for the foreseeable future than a peace accord. Yemen’s Houthis have disrupted Red Sea shipping with dozens of drone and missile attacks. Exchanges of rocket and missile fire between Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and the Israel Defense Forces persist.
Attacks from these and other Iran-backed proxy forces intensified after Israel killed a top Iran Revolutionary Guard General and the U.S. retaliated against Shia militias in Iraq for attacking U.S. troops there. Iran vowed revenge and the uptick in attacks may be one sign of it.
Avoiding a spiral of tit-for-tat escalation will require foresight and tough, decisive U.S. diplomacy using leverage with both sides to de-escalate and then catalyze steps to move beyond the trauma of the present and toward a path of reconciliation. Implausible as it may seem now, absent steps toward some variation of the hope scenario, Israelis and Palestinians both face a harrowing and turbulent 2024.
However, history and political reality stand between a happy ending and continued turmoil in the region. As former House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s (D-Mass.) axiom says, “All politics is local.” Not least, Israeli politics. Israel is likely to move further to the right as a result of the war — with or without Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — when the dust settles.
Netanyahu has adamantly rejected the idea of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, extending its rule to Gaza in a transition period — an idea that is endorsed by Biden.
Netanyahu recently boasted that he is “proud” to have prevented a Palestinian state, and has opposed Palestinians governing Gaza after the war, despite U.S. urging. Post-Oct. 7 polls also point to declining Israeli support — under 35 percent — for a two-state solution. Polls suggest Palestinians are similarly skeptical of a two-state solution.
The Israeli prime minister has indicated that he will fully prosecute the war until three goals are achieved: “destroy Hamas, demilitarize Gaza and deradicalize Palestinians.” Doing more than severely degrading Hamas as a political and military force is a tall order. How do you kill an ideology and a network? How many future Hamas offshoots or its successors will be created for each Palestinian the Israel Defense Forces kills?
If the proclaimed U.S. endgame of a two-state solution is to be realized, it will take time and require sustained, strong and focused diplomacy and much heavy lifting by the Biden administration.
The odds are that the war will not so much end as that the region will face a post-Oct. 7 status quo that devolves into percolating turmoil and unrest.
To avoid this outcome and realize the hope narrative will require the U.S. and its partners in and outside the region to exercise maximum leverage on both the Israelis and the Palestinians to shape a trajectory that could lead to a negotiated two-state solution.
The fear is that for another generation, the world will endure a version of the oft-cited tale of the Scorpion and the Frog created for Gaza.
In that fatalistic parable, the scorpion asks the frog if he will carry it across the river. But the frog hesitates, saying,” If I give you a ride, you’ll sting me. The scorpion replies, “I won’t because then we’d both die.” The frog then agrees, but halfway across the river, it stings the frog.
Dying, the frog asks, “Why did you do that,” to which the scorpion replies: “Because this is the Middle East.”
The real hope is that the appalling horrors of the current predicament will prove transformative, finally retiring that aphorism.
Robert A. Manning is a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center. He previously served as senior counselor to the undersecretary of State for global affairs, as a member of the U.S. secretary of state’s policy planning staff and on the National Intelligence Council Strategic Futures Group. Follow him on Twitter @Rmanning4.