Since the White House released its proposal for resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict, numerous critics have stepped forward to argue that it will never work. While Michael Doran agrees with them “completely,” he also believes their position is “nonsensical, because it assumes they know that there is a solution out there” that will work. He discusses his concerns in depth with Jon Lerner, who, during his tenure in the Trump administration in 2017 and 2018, was involved in discussions leading up to the proposal. In Lerner’s understanding, its crafters didn’t intend to dictate terms to the parties; nor did they expect the outcome to be a “signing ceremony on the White House lawn.” Rather they wished to reshape the conflict to the benefit of both Israeli and Palestinians, and to create a more realistic framework for future negotiations. (Video, 67 minutes.)

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.