top of page

Israel-Gaza: The status quo is smashed. The future is messy and dangerous


At the end of the war that started on 7 October lies a big, unknown place called the future. The old status quo was dangerous and painful, especially for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. But it was familiar. Then after 7 October it was smashed by the Hamas attacks, and Israel's response.


The shock of war can speed up change, when it sweeps away old thinking, forcing difficult choices for a better future. Or it drives leaders and their citizens deeper into their bunkers, as they prepare for the next round.


For more than a century, Jews and Arabs have been confronting each other, and sometimes going to war, over control of the small, highly coveted piece of land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. Perhaps the safest, saddest bet is to assume that the conflict, reshaped, will go on. After all, that is what has happened after every other Middle East war since 1948, when Israel won its independence.


But there are other options. Here are some of the arguments made by individuals at the centre of events.


Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel's prime minister has not spelt out his plan for the day after, if he has one. His opponents in Israel, who blame him for security and intelligence failures that made the Hamas attacks on 7 October possible, say Netanyahu's only real plan is to stay in power and avoid conviction on the serious corruption charges he faces.


Netanyahu built his career on the message he was Mr Security, the only man who could keep Israel safe. Hamas shattered his brand, which was already badly damaged by political strife inside Israel.


Netanyahu has not spelt out his plans for Gaza after the war ends [Getty Images]

The prime minister's broad statements about what happens after the war, assuming Israel can declare victory, all point to continued occupation of Gaza. Israeli officials have reportedly talked about setting up buffer zones along the border, without offering any details.


Netanyahu has rejected a role for foreign peacekeepers, assuming they can be found. Jordan's foreign minister Ayman Safadi has already said that Arab states would not "clean the mess" left by Israel.

"There will be no Arab troops going to Gaza. None. We are not going to be seen as the enemy."


Netanyahu has also dismissed US President Joe Biden's plan to replace Hamas with the Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu claims the PA cannot be trusted and supports terrorism, even though it recognises Israel and cooperates with it on security.


Joe Biden

President Biden's vision of the future is very different to Benjamin Netanyahu's. Biden continues to give considerable military, diplomatic and emotional support to Israelis. He visited, embraced the families of hostages and has ordered his diplomats at the United Nations Security Council to use the US veto to block ceasefire resolutions. Biden ordered two aircraft carrier strike groups to the region and has sent Israel vast amounts of weaponry.


In return, the US president wants Israel to return to some kind of revitalised peace process. He wants the Palestinian Authority (PA) eventually to run Gaza while Israel agrees arrangements for an independent Palestine alongside Israel.


The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas agrees. He has largely been a bystander since 7 October. In a rare interview this week, with Reuters, he said there should be a peace conference after the war to work out a political solution that would lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state.


Biden wants a revitalised peace process in the region [AFP via Getty Images]

The "two state solution" has been the official objective of America and its western allies since the early 1990s. Years of negotiations to make it happen failed. For almost a quarter of a century, since the peace process collapsed, the phrase has been an empty slogan. Biden wants to revive it, arguing correctly that only a political solution will end the conflict.


Biden sent his vice president, Kamala Harris, to Dubai last week to make a speech laying out America's red lines for Gaza on the day after.


She laid out five principles.


"No forcible displacement, no re-occupation, no siege or blockade, no reduction in territory, and no use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism."


"We want to see a unified Gaza and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian voices and aspirations must be at the centre of this work."


In and out of office, Benjamin Netanyahu has worked consistently hard to thwart Palestinian independence. It is safe to say he is not about to change his mind. If the two-state solution can be revived, it won't happen while he is prime minister.


Simcha Rotman

I went to see Simcha Rotman at the Knesset, Israel's parliament, where he is a prominent MP for the far-right Religious Zionist Party. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu depends on the support of Rotman's party and other hard-line Jewish nationalists. Their power comes from the dynamism of the movement to settle Jews on the land captured in 1967. From that moment of victory, some Israelis were set on extending the Zionist enterprise into the newly occupied Palestinian territories: the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.


Since 1967 they have been highly successful, despite being forced to leave Gaza when Israel pulled out in 2005. Around 700,000 Israeli Jews now live in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Settler leaders are in the cabinet, and their enterprise is at the centre of Israeli politics.


Simcha Rotman is a prominent MP for the far-right Religious Zionist Party [AFP via Getty Images]

Now that Israel is fighting Hamas, vowing to smash the organisation once and for all, Jewish nationalists see the biggest opportunity they have had since 1967, when Israel beat all its Arab neighbours in a war that lasted for six days.


Since 7 October, armed settlers in the West Bank, backed by soldiers and police, have prevented Palestinian farmers from harvesting their olives or tending their fields. Settlers have paved illegal roads and sought to entrench themselves even deeper by consolidating outposts that are illegal under Israeli as well as international law. Posters are everywhere demanding the return of Jewish settlers to Gaza.


Settlers have also killed Palestinians and invaded their homes. Men with bulldozers came at night to destroy the tiny village of Khirbet Zanuta, near Hebron. Its population of 200 Palestinians had already left, forced out by armed and aggressive settlers.