Gazans are discovering that their lives are to be spared and that they may remain in whatever makeshift shelter they can find. But all other efforts are sputtering out, even as high-level diplomacy generates talks and resolutions are drafted—a situation that might feel intolerable to Gazans but in fact is quite tolerable to other key actors. But worse, there are clear efforts to promote this dismal purgatory as not merely tolerable, but ideal for an indefinite period.
From the beginning of the Gaza war over two years ago, diplomats and analysts looked past the horrors on the ground to the prospects for a different and better future. This understandable desire to be constructive led to a blindness not only to what was occurring but also to what was likely to occur, and indeed to what one key actor—the Israeli government—said it was doing. From the beginning, such positive “day after” plans (or prayers) obscured the fearful reality that “there might be no day after.” Global blindness still operates today as a stalemate is taking firm hold, hidden behind a diplomatic flurry occasioned by President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan.
But the unspeakable reality robbing that plan of meaning is that nobody has agreed to it. Three points—a ceasefire, an Israeli redeployment, and a mutual Palestinian-Israeli exchange of hostages and bodies—do show serious signs of implementation. But most of the remaining conditions consist of vague goals devoid of guidelines for implementation. And that is for a reason. Critical elements needed to secure one party’s willingness to feign acceptance are openly rejected by others. Some Arab actors required that some provision be made for the Palestinian Authority and mention of Palestinian statehood; Israel utterly rejects both.
Why pretend? There is certainly relief because of the end of most (but not all) of the fighting and the release of so many people. Others allow themselves to be fooled because most actors coupled their peremptory rejection of elements of the Trump plan with flattery of the U.S. president. But even Trump himself has backed away from the airy provision that after reconstruction and reform “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.” Instead of a path, he is still making up his mind: “A lot of people like the one-state solution. Some people like the two-state solutions. We’ll have to see. I haven’t commented on that.”
So, is there any hope of moving forward? There are two options now on the table, and neither one works. One is to pursue relief, reconstruction, and governance measures that paper over the differences, achieving some kind of compliance with the Trump plan but to little long-term effect. For instance, if an “International Stabilization Force” does materialize, it will likely achieve little in terms of security, policing, disarmament, or withdrawal. Or if some kind of assemblage of experts, answering to international actors, can be parachuted in to administer parts of Gaza, its members might take up jobs. But the idea they will be accepted because some are Muslim or Arab, or that they can build a new governing system hostile to Hamas, seems unpromising at best.
The first path achieves progress on paper only. But there is a second path that makes progress only in the imagination. Some commentators find they can make the plan workable by claiming (or praying) that key actors will do things not in their interests and that they have explicitly and consistently said they will not do. So yes, forward movement would certainly be possible if Israel accepted a strong role in Gaza for the Palestinian Authority and committed to a two-state solution. It will not. Progress might also be made on the plan if only Arab states would agree to act under U.S. direction to complete the destruction of Hamas that Israeli forces were unable to achieve. They will not either.
So, where does that leave Gaza? The territory is now divided into two areas. On one side of the new “yellow line,” Gaza is occupied by Israeli forces that do not allow Hamas to operate. Israel does permit supplies in and even reconstruction, but shows no interest in establishing anything resembling functional governance or administration. Clans that work with Israel can operate, but as militias and patronage network not as governing bodies.
And on the other side are most of Gaza’s people. Hamas has reemerged, making its presence felt ruthlessly at times but not establishing anything like a functioning governance system in the sense of administration of basic services. Serious reconstruction is out of the question. Education is resuming slowly, for instance, but with most schools damaged or destroyed and many surviving ones used as makeshift shelters, only rudimentary efforts based on online lessons (since educational material cannot be brought in) seem to be limping back to life.
Reconstruction in such a situation is virtually impossible. Even the provision of basic supplies is unreliable. Israel allows episodic relief efforts to supply the zone outside of its control, but has excluded the most experienced actors. While the Trump plan is uncharacteristically specific here, its promise simply remains a dead letter: “Entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference from the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner with either party.” Israel does not simply bar most such actors but also endlessly repeats ill-supported, vitriolic charges against the most capable body, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, utterly unpersuasively equating it with Hamas. Most nongovernmental actors have been spared that calumny but almost none are allowed to operate freely.
But here we come to the most worrying development, namely clear indications that the current situation in Gaza is not merely an unfortunate product of diplomatic logjam but an outcome that some wish to embrace as a solution. Able to decimate Hamas but not defeat it, Israel is being urged by some to turn the current stalemate into a strategy. In this bold vision, Israeli-occupied Gaza will be a zone in which reconstruction will flourish and basic goods will be in rich supply; inhabitants will be engaged in “building a better society.” And next door, in areas outside Israeli control, Hamas will operate and the inhabitants will wallow in deprivation and destruction.
Why condemn so many people to living in tents and depending on uncertain humanitarian flows? Most of those advocating this path simply avoid mentioning the amount of devastation in Gaza and the way that most inhabitants have been reduced to bare survival. But if such people do not speak of the misery, the path they recommend completely depends on an arrangement in which Palestinians must suffer in rubble anywhere that Hamas still exists.
Gazan despair is supposed to make Hamas melt away. The flourishing Gaza behind the Israeli “yellow line” is supposed to show to the festering Gaza outside Israeli control the price of Hamas rule, ultimately swaying Palestinians. This is how Shia and Sunni Iraqis are held to have been wooed away from Sadrists and jihadis two decades ago. Even those acknowledging, but unable to address, the danger that “the yellow line becomes the new border of Gaza” have embraced the idea.
The arguments are implausible and they may not be coherent enough yet to be called a policy, but Jared Kushner recently articulated a weak version when he stated, “No reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas still controls.” And J. D. Vance has endorsed what appears to be a version of the approach: “There are two basic areas of Gaza. One area is—maybe you’ve got, I don’t know, a hundred, two hundred thousand Gazans living in that area. It is largely Hamas-free—not perfectly Hamas-free, but it’s largely secure. And then you have what we’re calling the ‘red zone,’ which is where you still have significant Hamas presence and it’s still quite dangerous. We think that we can start reconstruction of the areas that are free of Hamas very quickly. We think that we can potentially get hundreds of thousands of Gazans living in that area very quickly... That’s the basic idea: take the areas where Hamas is not operating, start to rebuild very quickly, start to bring in the Gazans so that they can live there, so they can have good jobs, and hopefully some security and comfort too.”
The main question analysts should be asking is not whether the road to a two-state solution has suddenly been mapped out but whether the devastation of the past two years will become a standing element of the regional order. What looked like a forever war may be metamorphizing into forever misery.
