The New U.S. Peace Plan Won’t Result in a Signing Ceremony on the White House Lawn. But That Doesn’t Mean It Will Fail

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.)

 

Read more at Hudson Institute

More about: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Peace Process, Trump Peace Plan, U.S. Foreign policy

 

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