{"id":53130,"date":"2023-12-01T16:47:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-01T17:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=53130"},"modified":"2023-12-01T18:19:37","modified_gmt":"2023-12-01T18:19:37","slug":"what-happens-after-the-israel-hamas-war-ends-two-state-solution-faces-strong-head-winds-los-angeles-times-bc-israel-hamas-twostatela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=53130","title":{"rendered":"What happens after the Israel-Hamas war ends? Two-state solution faces strong head winds [Los Angeles Times :: BC-ISRAEL-HAMAS-TWOSTATE:LA]"},"content":{"rendered":"

TEL AVIV, Israel\u00a0\u2014 When the Israel-Hamas war<\/a> ends, the larger, decades-old issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will remain festering, and, in the opinion of many, essential to resolve unless the cycle of death and destruction is to be repeated eternally.<\/p>\n

Within the Biden administration<\/a>, and among European allies and throughout the Arab world, the answer is straightforward. They view the two-state solution \u2014 the creation of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state existing alongside Israel, ending Israel\u2019s occupation of Palestinian lands \u2014 as the only way to stop generations of violence that have stalked the region and killed tens of thousands of people to this day.<\/p>\n

But straightforward it\u2019s not. The number of Palestinians who have lost hope in achieving statehood is growing, according to opinion polls, especially as right-wing Jewish settlers have taken over swaths of Palestinian land.<\/p>\n

And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his country\u2019s longest serving leader, adamantly opposes establishment of a Palestinian state.<\/p>\n

President Joe Biden said the militant organization Hamas, whose massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7 triggered the current conflict, essentially shares Netanyahu\u2019s goal \u2014 preventing the two-state solution.<\/p>\n

\u201cHamas unleashed a terrorist attack because they fear nothing more than Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace,\u201d Biden said. \u201cTo continue down the path of terror, violence, killing and war is to give Hamas what they seek. We can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those are mighty headwinds.<\/p>\n

Shunning entreaties from the U.S., Netanyahu has announced that Israel will continue to press its military barrage on the Gaza Strip until Hamas is destroyed, whatever the cost, including the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians. At that point, Netanyahu says, Israel will take over the coastal enclave that\u2019s home to more than 2 million Palestinians for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government has rejected that plan. On Thursday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, in Israel to meet with Netanyahu and others, urged the Israelis to take more precautions to protect civilian life. Israel is expected to launch an offensive on the southern half of Gaza Strip after laying waste to most of the north. But Israel also told Palestinians to flee to the south for safety, so their plight would be exceedingly precarious.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe made clear the imperative that before any operations go forward in southern Gaza, that there be a clear plan in place that puts a premium on protecting civilians, as well as sustaining and building on the humanitarian assistance that\u2019s getting into Gaza,\u201d Blinken said, speaking to reporters after his day of meetings Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo this is an imperative,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s an imperative because it\u2019s the right thing to do; it\u2019s an imperative because it\u2019s the necessary thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The toughest question about Gaza after the war is who would govern, assuming Hamas is gone, apart from an Israeli reoccupation. One possibility, the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, is reluctant to be seen as having been brought into Gaza by Israel. In addition, it is seen as weak and corrupt, and has been largely discredited among the Palestinian population.<\/p>\n

The United Nations or other Arab nations might be persuaded to oversee a temporary transition, but few candidates seem keen.<\/p>\n

A real solution, several analysts said, will require a substantial change in leadership on both the Israeli side \u2014 Netanyahu and his far-right government \u2014 and the Palestinian faction \u2014 Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is 87 years old and has long overstayed his term in office.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe current leadership is not a leadership that will produce a resolution,\u201d said Gerald Feierstein, a former U.S. diplomat who served throughout the Middle East and is now a fellow at the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington.<\/p>\n

Biden recently spoke of a \u201crevitalized\u201d Palestinian Authority, but other U.S. officials have declined to elaborate on what putting it in charge of Gaza would look like.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s obviously delicate,\u201d Blinken nsaid.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s dilemma is largely a product of Netanyahu\u2019s own actions. For years, his government boosted Hamas as a way to weaken the Palestinian Authority, the entity that was eager to make peace with Israel and establish an independent state. Israeli governments allowed Hamas to receive aid from Qatar and other countries, while it denied tax revenue owed to the Palestinian Authority.<\/p>\n

Now, Netanyahu has something of a Frankenstein\u2019s monster on his hands, Israeli analysts say.<\/p>\n

\u201cNetanyahu\u2019s theory was that the result that had to be avoided the most was a political process with the Palestinians that might lead to a two-state outcome,\u201d said Michael Koplow, policy officer for the Israel Policy Forum, an advocacy organization in Washington. \u201cAside from the fact that nobody could reasonably expect Israel to negotiate with a terrorist organization openly dedicated to its destruction [Hamas], Israel could avoid any real negotiations with the Palestinians if the West Bank and Gaza were divided and controlled by separate entities.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his conversations with Israeli officials, Blinken took a tough line, according to Israeli media.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot operate in southern Gaza the way you did in the north,\u201d Blinken was quoted as saying by Israel\u2019s Channel 12 news. He was referring to vast destruction of apartment blocks and other civilian infrastructure that Israel claims Hamas uses as hideouts but that also house huge numbers of civilian families.<\/p>\n

From Hamas\u2019 point of view, there\u2019s little desire to return to the status quo ante, even if that were possible, said Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. In that respect, Oct. 7 represented an irretrievable break with the past, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it wants to go back to governing Gaza on Israel\u2019s behalf,\u201d Lovatt said. \u201cThe hardliners in the military wing do not want a governmental role under any circumstances, though it\u2019s almost irrelevant at this time given the extreme scope of destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli major general and ex-national security advisor, said an Israeli attempt to corral Gaza\u2019s population into a fast-shrinking zone of relative safety would exacerbate the existing humanitarian catastrophe inside the tiny enclave, increasing international pressure on Israel to desist.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no infrastructure there to accommodate 2 million people \u2014 is it reasonable to expect the entire civilian population can go there?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In the longer term, the war\u2019s profound upheaval could open the way to new Israeli leadership to, in effect, stand against the rest of the world \u2014 or cause a still-shaken public to rally around a leader who has shown his willingness to shrug off international calls for restraint.<\/p>\n

Despite Netanyahu\u2019s historic unpopularity, some longtime observers point to what in the past has been something of a political superpower: presenting himself as a savior figure when people are feeling frightened and anxious.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu \u201cwill try to change the perception of the Israeli public vis-\u00e0-vis the war,\u201d said political analyst Attila Somfalvi. \u201cHe will try to convince Israelis that he is the right leader to continue to hold power and rehabilitate the state after this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly two months into the war, there is growing acknowledgment inside Israel that a long-term strategy for Gaza must be developed soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael must engage with day-after strategic thinking,\u201d said Eyal Hulata, a former Israeli national security advisor who is now an analyst with the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.<\/p>\n

He said he did not see a role for the Palestinian Authority, but insisted there were Palestinians unaffiliated with either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority who could form the backbone of a new administration, with the assistance of Arab countries including Egypt.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere could emerge civilian leadership in Gaza,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

Wilkinson reported from Tel Aviv and King from Berlin.<\/em><\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

\u00a92023 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com<\/a>. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. <\/p>\n

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TEL AVIV, Israel\u00a0\u2014 When the Israel-Hamas war ends, the larger, decades-old issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will remain festering, and, in the opinion of many, essential to resolve unless the cycle of death and destruction is to be repeated eternally. Within the Biden administration, and among European allies and throughout the Arab world, the answer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53131,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53130\/revisions\/53131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}