Israel and Gaza Need an All-for-All Strategy
By Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer and Aaron David Miller - August 7, 2025
Israeli
political-security officials have endorsed Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s recommendation that Israel should fully occupy the Gaza
Strip, including areas where Israel believes the hostages are being
held. Other than that the army prefers to avoid the burden of occupying
and controlling the entire area, details are sparse. With U.S. President
Donald Trump’s apparent acquiescence to Israel’s reoccupation of Gaza—
“That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel”—the question is whether
this is a pressure tactic to compel Hamas to agree to another interim
exchange (demonstrating Israeli resolve in the face of international
pressure) or a major shift in policy.
Either way, it’s more than
a march of folly and is likely to spell more pain and suffering for the
hostages, their families, and the civilian population of Gaza. Indeed,
military pressure hasn’t succeeded in destroying Hamas or pressuring it
to free the hostages. The reoccupation of Gaza is a trap in which Israel
is likely committing itself to facing an extended insurgency.
Netanyahu’s
plan comes on the heels of other reporting suggesting that the Trump
administration has been considering abandoning its incremental approach
to freeing hostages in Gaza in favor of an all-for-all approach. This
presumably would mean a cessation of military activities, swapping all
the hostages for a large number of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, a
significant increase in humanitarian inflow to Gaza, and a timetable for
Israeli withdrawal from Gaza that is tied to the introduction of an
Arab force on an interim basis to ensure security and governance.
An
all-for-all strategy is an idea whose time has come—though it’s unclear
how committed the Trump administration is to the plan, which has
decided to let Netanyahu have his way in Gaza. The framework would also
involve something that the administration so far has been unwilling to
embrace: a strategy for postwar Gaza involving the Palestinian
Authority, key Arab states, the Europeans, the United Nations, and above
all Israel. This strategy should have been explored more than a year
ago, when Israel’s military assessed that it had severely set back
Hamas’s capabilities on the ground.
But even this strategy, which
will be extremely hard to negotiate, risks eventually returning Gaza to
the situation that existed before Hamas’s attack in October 2023. None
of these outcomes will address, let alone move toward, the resolution of
the conflict between Israel and Hamas, let alone the underlying
conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Any sustainable
end to the war will depend on finding answers to at least four critical
questions: Who will govern Gaza both in the immediate future and over
the long term? Who will provide security and maintain law and order? Who
will fund and oversee the monumental task of reconstruction in Gaza?
And what sort of political pathway might be constructed to put Israelis
and Palestinians on road to a better, peaceful future?
Pursuing
these aims will be exponentially more challenging than the current
effort to secure an interim ceasefire and hostages deal. But the interim
approach has run its course. It has become an extended zero-sum
exercise in which Hamas plays for time and its own survival while the
Netanyahu government drags out the negotiations in hopes that a total
victory over Hamas becomes possible. In the meantime, the hostages
languish in terrible conditions, and the Palestinian civilian population
suffers unending trauma, including starvation.
Soon after
October 7, one of us proposed a process for postwar Gaza. Gaza would
need interim governance, security, and law and order; reconstruction of
housing and infrastructure; and rebuilding the governing capacity of the
Palestinian Authority. In parallel, the United States—at that time, led
by president Joe Biden—would take a series of steps to re-engage Israel
and the Palestinians in a political process of peacemaking. The theory
was that an end of the war and the reconstruction of Gaza were
critically important, but not sufficient: In the wake of October 7,
neither Israel nor Palestinian leaders are willing or able to sit and
negotiate an end to their conflict. At the same time, any plan can’t
focus solely on Gaza, with no bridge to the future. If the Israelis and
Palestinians do not deal with the underlying conflict, they are doomed
to an endless wash, rinse, and repeat cycle of war and suffering.
What
might have been possible a year ago is much more challenging today. The
situation is far more fraught in three important respects. First, Gaza
is now destroyed, and the Palestinian population in Gaza is facing
widespread malnutrition and starvation. Second, the Israeli government’s
appetite for occupation has grown substantially, to the point where
Netanyahu wants to occupy the entire area, possibly as a prelude to
annexation. Third, Trump is now president, and while he talks of wanting
to be a peacemaker, he has yet to demonstrate that he has a strategy to
do so, let alone the patience and strategic knowhow to see it through.
Given
the close relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, it is time for the
U.S. president to push the Israeli prime minister to end the war,
withdraw under safe conditions, and rebuild. Israel has proven
militarily strong enough to defend itself from external threats. It now
must show its own people that it is strong enough and wise enough to
overcome deep differences and build a healthy, pluralistic, democratic
society.
Moving expeditiously to end the war, bring the hostages
home, and relieve Palestinian suffering is critically important in and
of itself. But it also opens the path to changes in the region that
could benefit American, Israeli, and Arab interests in the long term.
This includes consolidating the ceasefire in Lebanon and strengthening
the Lebanese government; encouraging positive change in Syria, as its
interim government seeks to extend its authority throughout the country;
enhancing U.S. alliances with key Arab allies such as Egypt, Jordan,
Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states, while also exploring the
possibility of Israeli-Arab normalization; and, in an oft-neglected
imperative in the region, dealing with endemic social and economic
problems that have created a welcoming atmosphere for extremism.
Is
all of this achievable? Perhaps. But it surely will not emerge from
Israel’s occupation of Gaza. It could, however, grow from a smart and
sustained all-for-all approach. The necessary ingredients are leadership
and will from all parties, especially the United States and Israel.
Without them—including the Trump administration’s willingness to exert
pressure on all parties—the day after in Gaza is more likely to look
like so many of the horrible days before.