'The by-product of this approach has been, and will surely continue to be, an endless cycle of bloodletting.' (Jehad Alshrafi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

In assessing Israelās post-October 7 military campaign in Gaza, it helps to recall Clausewitzās dictum that war, though horrific, isnāt ultimately about killing and destruction for the sake of it but a means for states to achieve their political goals. Seen in this light, Israelās war has already failed. Never has the Jewish state been so isolated internationally. Never has this nation, founded following the Holocaust, had to face formal allegations of genocide at the International Court of Justice.
Worse, Israelās standing in the United States, its most stalwart supporter, has suffered, its popular support fallen and falling. More broadly, the war has led to an unprecedented erosion in support for Israel above all among Democrats and young people, including American Jews. For the first time, an American president seeking re-election worries that his support for Israel, typically an asset in any political campaign in the United States, could contribute to his defeat. His campaign rallies have been interrupted by hecklers yelling āGenocide Joeā and berating him for abetting war crimes. According to recent survey, nearly a third of American adults believe the Gaza war amounts to genocide. And now, American university campuses are roiled by anti-war protests, which some Jewish students have joined.
More pertinently for the immediate situation in Gaza, Israelās government appears to lack any post-war plan. And that matters. Even in the unlikely event that Netanyahu achieves all his started objectives in Gaza ā freeing the hostages while also destroying Hamas seems impossible ā more than nine million Israelis and more than five million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are fated to live cheek-by-jowl. Neither community plans to depart, nor can they be expelled. The dreams of the most radical Palestinian movements of destroying the Jewish state and the calls from some within Israelās hard-Right to expel Gazans en masse are equally fantastical. So, what can we expect after the war ends?
The most likely scenario is that Israelās leaders will continue the policy that, despite intermittent negotiations with the Palestinians, has been in place since 1967, when Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza following the Six-Day War. Often called āmowing the grassā, it boils down to the open-ended occupation and suppression of Palestinians, using massive force when deemed necessary. One example of the latter is Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), which followed peaceful Palestinian protests that gave way to rocket and mortar attacks by Hamas. Over 22 days, the IDF killed some 1,400 Palestinians, including 300 children, its deadliest war in Gaza before the current one. Another, Operation Protective Edge (2014), left nearly 1,400 Palestinians civilians dead, including 500 children. On a smaller scale, mowing the grass features intermittent clampdowns on Palestinian resistance to occupation and dispossession. The by-product of this approach has been, and will surely continue to be, an endless cycle of bloodletting. The sole uncertainty: how much time will elapse between one phase of violence and the next and how long each lasts.
Yet mowing the grass doesnāt rely on naked force alone. To avoid directly ruling the West Bank Israel has relied on the Palestinian Authority (PA) for day-to-day governance. To replicate this arrangement in post-war Gaza, Israel will have to persuade people who enjoy legitimacy and respect in the community to serve as administrators in place of Hamas. The alternative, military rule, is a recipe for rebellions and violence that will entrap the IDF indefinitely. And the problem here is that, after the carnage and destruction in Gaza, few if any non-Hamas notables will rush to volunteer. Some eventually may, but risk being viewed as quislings and discredited as the PA has been. Aside from its corruption and ineptitude, the PA has come to be seen as Israelās subcontractor. Ā In a November-December 2023 survey by the Palestinian Center for Survey Research, 60% of West Bank residents said they wanted the PA dissolved.
Despite the pitfalls, perhaps local notables will agree to govern their territory, either because the IDF succeeds in destroying Hamas or because Hamas has forfeited Gazansā support by perpetrating the October 7 that led to the pitiless Israeli bombardment in the first place. Then again, the many thousands of young men who have seen their parents and siblings killed, their homes and neighbourhoods demolished, and their own lives upended, may equally become a deep recruitment reservoir for follow-on armed resistance movements. Israel may end up creating more extremists than it has killed. Though Hamas may die, its animating ideology could live on.
Though far from homogenous, the anti-war Left that has organised around this war shares a simple ambition: Israel should jettison this āmowing the grassā model and resume negotiations aimed at a two-state solution, which has only been pursued in fits and starts since the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995. Those summits did have some concrete accomplishments: Israelās recognition of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as the representative of the Palestinian people; the PLOās renouncing of terrorism and accepting the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state; and the creation of the Palestinian Authority. All this was a pathway to a Palestinian state, albeit with undefined contours, encompassing the West Bank and Gaza.
That ultimate goal seemed achievable on at least two occasions: the first was the 2000 Camp David talks between PA Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, with President Bill Clinton mediating, exerting pressure, and presenting a far-reaching proposal. Then, in 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put forward his own two-state proposal. Both initiatives envisioned Israel living in peace alongside a Palestinian state encompassing most of the West Bank and Gaza, with a corridor between the two places, the incorporation of the largest West Bank Jewish settlement blocks (such as Ariel and Maāale Adumim) into Israel, and the Palestinians compensated through āland swapsā. The negotiations failed for many reasons, including the status of East Jerusalem (who would control what and how) and the right of return for Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 (how many and where).
These structural obstacles remain. But the two-state solution also becomes progressively harder to achieve so long as Israel, while mowing the grass, keeps building Jewish settlements on the West Bank and ignores the āoutpostsā proliferating there ā along with roads reserved for Jews ā despite the lack of the governmentās consent. A record 23 outposts were built in 2023, and there are now 160 West Bank settlements inhabited by 520,000 people, not counting another 250,000 in East Jerusalem; add to that the outposts in which as many as 30,000 people live. Not only are additional settlements (with 3,500 homes) planned, the hard-line Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently urged the legalisation of 68 outposts. Following the Gaza War, the government also announced the appropriation of 800 hectares in the Jordan Valley to build more settlements ā the biggest confiscation of Palestinian land in 30 years. In a move that further fragments the West Bank, the government recently earmarked $940 million for renovating and constructing roads for the exclusive use of settlers. Steps like these demonstrate its rejection of the two-state solution and its determination to create āfacts on the groundā that will make it even harder for future Israeli leaders to achieve that goal.
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