U.S. President Joe Biden has vowed that there's no going back to the status quo of October 6, 2023.
If he's serious, the president has undertaken a galactic sized lift that not only encompasses creating a new post-conflict reality in Gaza, but one that addresses the underlying factors that have sustained a conflict whose solution has eluded all his predecessors.
Biden has provided extraordinary support to the Israeli people and to the Netanyahu government, but has lost credibility among both Palestinians and the Arab states for having tethered the United States to Israel's war aims.
To make matters even more complex, Biden has sustained support for Israel on the cusp of a presidential election that may well be among the most consequential in American history. Winning reelection is a greater priority than perhaps any foreign policy challenge, certainly outranking any effort to resolve an Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which Israeli and Palestinian leaders show so little interest in engaging. Wise policy choices on that issue will almost certainly conflict with his reelection politics.
As if the road ahead wasn't tough enough on substance, the absence of leadership will make this a difficult mountain to climb. Biden will have the Europeans and perhaps the UN to assist him, and under the right circumstances, key Arab states. But what he will almost certainly lack are strong Israeli and Palestinian leaders to make his task easier. He will be dealing with two traumatized communities whose trust and confidence in one another is non-existent and who will confront internal political reckonings each in their own way.
Both Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be fighting desperately to stay in power. Neither has much confidence in the Biden Administration. Indeed pushing back against a US initiative and imposing conditions that may make Biden's job impossible may well be a part of their strategy to hold on. Biden thus lacks what he needs most – credible partners willing to make decisions. And he will not have them, certainly not before the November 2024 presidential elections.
Leadership changes may come; and Biden could play a role in helping them along. Indeed, should Biden get a second term, he may well be able to broker and facilitate a process that would put both Israelis and Palestinians on a better pathway.
The Palestinian dilemma
Hamas's October 7 terror attack and Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza have left the Palestinian national movement weaker and more decentralized and divided than ever. Neither the PLO nor Palestinian Authority is able to formulate a coherent strategy for effective governance let alone negotiations with Israel. Even before October 7, the PA -- undermined by its own corruption and authoritarian policies and Israel's settlement activities and counter-terror operations in the West Bank -- had near zero credibility with the vast majority of Palestinians. Recent polls reflect the vast majority of Palestinians – nearly 88 percent reject Abbas, want him to resign, and want new leadership.
It's easy to see why. Abbas is widely seen as a security sub-contractor for Israel. Hamas's popularity has surged, and Abbas' has tanked. Hamas' ability to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners, and the PA's failure to do so, have further boosted Hamas' popularity. IDF counter-terror raids in the West Bank and actions by extremist settlers have further demonstrated the PA's weakness and hardened the population against Israel. An estimated 280 West Bank Palestinians have died at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers since October 7.
Should Hamas survive Israel's assault – as it almost certainly will in some form – it will leave Palestinian politics even more fraught and disorganized. Indeed, Abbas may come to believe he has little choice but to seek Hamas's support in order to survive, let alone return to governing Gaza.
The Biden Administration has serious plans to help fashion what it describes as a revitalized PA. Talk of reenergizing Palestinian leadership is all well and good. But many obstacles stand in the way.
First there's Abbas himself and the cadre of those around him. He will not step aside willingly. Clearly there needs to be a catalyst for legitimizing a new leadership and reforming PLO and PA institutions. Elections which Abbas cancelled in 2021 are key. But it's hard to believe they can be organized for the foreseeable future – not in the West Bank and certainly not in Gaza.
Based on our experience, we know the best way to undermine any new leadership is for the US to be seen as playing Palestinian politics. Indeed, the Biden Administration needs to steer clear of that and work on its own approach toward Palestinians. That will require tethering any effort on Gaza to a broader initiative on Palestinian statehood and the steps each side should take to get there.
This means addressing the issues of Palestinian political rights and territorial claims, Israeli settlements, and Israeli security requirements. Indeed it's hard to see any credible Palestinian leadership willing to take risks with an Israeli partner that's committed to annexing the West Bank.
Then there's the problem of Hamas whose popularity on the West Bank has tripled. Some PA officials are openly talking about the need for Hamas support – even a unity government -- as the key to a PA return to Gaza.
Clearly, any Hamas participation in Gaza's future would be anathema to Israel and most likely to the US. The notion that somehow its external leadership based in Doha, Beirut or Turkey might join a new government seems surreal in the wake of October 7 and has already sparked dissension with the military leadership in Gaza. In short, neither Hamas nor Abbas is a leader for the Palestinians' future.
Rumors abound about the return of leaders such as Muhammed Dahlan, the PA's former security chief in Gaza, the release of Fatah activist Marwan Barghouti, now serving five life sentences in Israeli prison, or the return of technocrats such as former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. But they remain just that. The politically inconvenient reality is that Palestinian leadership will remain chaotic and uncertain for the foreseeable future.
That chaos is in no small part a result of the Palestinians' dysfunction and the disastrous policies pursued by Benjamin Netanyahu over the last decade. But, whatever the cause, its leadership conundrum poses a major challenge to any successful US initiative.
The Israeli dilemma
Israel is due for a reckoning after the war ends. But it's not all clear how or when it will occur. Current polls reflect the fact that Netanyahu's popularity is sagging. If elections were held today, the Netanyahu bloc would secure 41 seats and the opposition a whopping 79 seats. The military and intelligence chiefs have already assumed responsibility for the extraordinary intelligence and operational failures that allowed Hamas to succeed on October 7. Netanyahu has shirked responsibility, initially trying to blame only the intel and military commands.
Since coming under fire for that, Netanyahu has ignored the question of responsibility and accountability altogether, saying only that these are issues to be dealt with after the war. While prosecuting the war, however, Netanyahu has been engaged in the politics of avoidance and deflection, including repeating old tropes that only he can stop the PA from taking control of Gaza, a two-state solution from coming into being, and resisting U.S. pressure. A credible prime minister would take responsibility for the bloodiest day in Israeli history and laser focus on the national interest. Not Netanyahu, acting true to form and thinking first and foremost about his political survival.
There is no smoking gun yet linking Netanyahu to the intelligence and operational failures that led to October 7. It will take a State Commission of Inquiry to determine what he knew about the possibility of a massive cross border incursion and when he knew it. But there's no doubt that Netanyahu's policies and misjudgments about Hamas stand at the center of Israel's underestimation of Hamas's intentions and capabilities.
For years, Netanyahu saw Hamas as a key to preempting pressure for a two-state solution. By preferring Hamas over the PA, Netanyahu bought time and space to consolidate Israel's control over the West Bank. As long as Hamas ruled Gaza, the Palestinian national movement would remain divided and incapable of partnering for peace. Netanyahu was played the fool by Hamas who signaled they were content to govern Gaza albeit with periodic outbursts of violence. Netanyahu, deceived, aided and abetted Hamas' strategy.
Netanyahu agreed to Qatar's providing hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas, in the form of suitcases full of cash via Ben Gurion airport. Netanyahu oversaw the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in 2011 to gain the release of Gilad Shalit whom Hamas had kidnapped; and yet he repeatedly refused to release prisoners to the PA.
The only exception happened under U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's diplomacy, when Israel released 84 prisoners over nine months. Indeed, Netanyahu strengthened Hamas while weakening an already feeble Palestinian Authority, depriving it of funds and diminishing its credibility through non-stop settlement activity.
In an extraordinary video from 2017, Netanyahu described in detail his understanding of the operation Hamas wanted to carry out – an operation that bears an uncanny resemblance to what happened on October 7.
In May 2022, Israel's military intelligence prepared a 40-page report, dubbed "Jericho Wall," that laid out in detail what Hamas planned. It defies logic to believe that Netanyahu was not briefed on this report. And three months before the actual attack, a veteran intelligence analyst from Israel's vaunted Unit 8200 observed a day-long Hamas exercise that confirmed tactics laid out in the report.
Israel knew – and presumably Netanyahu knew – the extent of Hamas' finances, allowing Hamas to purchase what it wanted. Israel was well aware that Hamas was purchasing weapons but failed to act on the intelligence. And Israel knew – and Netanyahu surely knew – that Hamas was building tunnels throughout Gaza and using those tunnels to smuggle arms and to enrich themselves by collecting fees for goods that came through them. According to an Israeli defense ministry official, the tunnels were a frequent subject in the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Security Committee.
A former senior PA official also told us years ago that Israel knew how much money Hamas was earning from its control of trade through the tunnels, but did nothing about it.
The bottom line: Netanyahu had ample warning and evidence that Hamas was preparing a major attack. He either ignored the evidence, downplayed it, or dismissed it entirely because to actually address the problem would have interfered with his broader strategy of letting Hamas live as a counterpoint to the PA.
Even this is not the whole story. Using the Islamists as a counterweight to the secular PLO had a long history before Netanyahu. During the early 1980s, when one of us was stationed in Israel as a political officer, it was clear that the Islamists were thriving in Gaza – building mosques and a university with money that came in openly, likely from private Saudi sources, while the nationalists, the PLO, were being squeezed for funds.
After raising this issue several times with the military government and civil administration, they finally conceded that the Islamists were a better bet for Israel than the nationalists, in that the Islamists wanted to be left alone to practice their religion. It was these same Islamists who became Hamas in 1987.
Hamas had made crystal clear in its charter that all of Palestine is an Islamic waqf or endowment that could never be allowed to be governed by non-Muslims, and that Israel needed to be destroyed. Far from October 7 being a failure of imagination, it was a straightforward case of denial: Netanyahu and his colleagues pretended Hamas could be a good neighbor because it weakened Abbas, relieved pressure on Netanyahu to enter into a peace process, and gave Israel time and space to pursue annexationist policies in the West Bank. Netanyahu was not alone in his thinking: Bezalel Smotrich, one of Netanyahu's annexationist-minded coalition partners, described Hamas as an asset and the PA as a deficit.
It is more than likely that once the most active phase of the war ends, the military and security chiefs will formally submit their resignations. And at some point in 2024 Benny Gantz, whose participation in the war cabinet padded Netanyahu's coalition, will resign. That would still leave Netanyahu's coalition a slim majority. It's conceivable that public pressure which forced Golda Meir, the prime minister who presided over the October 1973 War's intelligence failure, to resign will force Netanyahu out.
But he will fight hard to remain in an effort to ensure that the inevitable state investigation into the debacle of investigate October 7 will be on his terms to avoid its consequences.
But it defies imagination to believe he will succeed. Having presided over the worst terror attack in Israel's history and the single bloodiest day for Jews since the Holocaust, Netanyahu won't be able to escape judgment as the worst prime minister in the history of the State of Israel.
Gantz, Netanyahu's likely successor, has earned more of the public's trust because of his willingness to put politics aside and join the war cabinet during a time of national emergency. But Gantz represents no magic fix. He is a risk-averse center right politician who is tough on security and may be tougher and more cautious when it comes to Palestinians especially in the wake of October 7.
Israel is a center right country, and if the past is prologue in the wake of Middle East wars, the future will be claimed more by the right than by the center or left. Gantz will likely try to move matters to the center – eschewing annexation and surging settlement activity and not allowing the hard right into his coalition. Just a year ago Gantz said he saw no agreement with the Palestinians for the "foreseeable future." One hopes he sees things differently now.
Biden's dilemma
Aside from the leadership failures of Abbas and Netanyahu and the consequences they carry, neither society has demonstrated the kind of leadership necessary to look beyond the current turmoil and trauma to search for a path forward.
The two traumatized societies are likely to emerge from the wreckage hardened by terror and violence. Palestinians displaced from their homes have become refugees again. And as many as 200,000 Israelis too have been displaced from their homes, both near Gaza and along the Lebanon border.
Biden faces a somber reality: he can encourage and participate in the necessary reconstruction of Gaza and the Gaza periphery in Israel, and he can try to mobilize international support for the hard work that needs to be done from day one: basic law and order, restoring temporary civil authority, preventing Hamas from returning to terrorize their own society as well as Israel, and encouraging the PA to reform itself and be ready to govern and make peace.
But, for this to have a chance of success, Biden will also have to define a political horizon that holds out the hope for Israeli security, Palestinian independence, and a two-state outcome.
Because the leadership dilemmas in both societies will take time to sort out, he will try to draw on the reservoir of good will among Israelis grateful for his leadership in this time of crisis, the strategic interests of Arabs and Europeans, and his own diplomatic experience.
The months immediately after the fighting winds down will be particularly difficult, as neither Israel nor the PA will be in a mood to think positively or creatively. But we have just seen in the deadliest of ways what happens without a vision. Biden will need to stand alone and firmly bring the full weight of American diplomatic power to advance the prospects of peace in the most challenging of environments.