A Left-Wing Israeli’s Case for the U.S. Peace Plan

As an active member of Israel’s moderate left, Einat Wilf would have preferred the new U.S. peace proposal to make additional concessions to the Palestinians on various issues. She argues, however, that quibbles over details make little difference. Palestinian leaders will not make peace under any circumstances:

Much of the genuine criticism of Donald Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan for the Middle East emerges from the assumption that there is another plan to be found; a better, more just, and fairer one, to which the Palestinians would say yes, and which would then truly bring about peace. I wish it were so, but sadly there is no evidence for such an assumption.

[D]ecades of determined words and actions have made it very clear that the Palestinian leadership will say yes only to plans that bring about the end of Israel as the sovereign state of the Jewish people. [In their view], if the price of an Arab state of Palestine is that the Jewish people will be allowed to retain a sovereign state and self-rule in another part of the land, whichever part that is, then that is too high a price to pay.

This is a painful realization which for many left-wing Israelis, like myself, was purchased in decades of dashed hopes watching Palestinian leaders walk away from opportunity after opportunity, and in the blood of families blown to bits by suicide bombers days after Palestinians could have had a state. Yet it is the reason the Trump plan has been embraced by the vast majority of Israel’s Jews, left and right.

The plan of the current administration will bring neither peace nor prosperity for the Palestinians, as they will continue consistently and predictably to say no—but it could just bring greater peace between Israel and the Arab world, who hopefully will come one day to recognize Israel and the sovereign Jews as a legitimate presence in the region.

Read more at Telegraph

More about: Israeli left, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Trump Peace Plan

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF