On the Day of Atonement, the ghosts of history, never far from the collective Jewish consciousness, loom especially large. 52 years ago, in October 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack as the Jewish state prayed. Two years ago, in October 2023, Hamas butchers stormed out of Gaza, slaughtering, burning and abducting civilians. Repentance, memory, tragedy: all are intertwined now, and the silence over the city feels pregnant with foreboding.

But then, out of nowhere, bicycles appear: children racing fast and free down a city hollowed out, the echo of wheels on asphalt bouncing off tower blocks and Bauhaus apartments. Adolescent squawks of delight peel through the calm. For the young, at least, the streets have become a playground.

On 30 September, deep into the 10 “Days of Awe” between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, tawdry reality intruded on Israeli life yet again, as Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled their 20-point peace plan. Whatever you think of Trump, it must be welcomed. Two years on from October 7, two things are painfully obvious. The first is that Gaza cannot remain an open-air prison or battlefield forever. Something, anything, is needed to sketch out a future beyond reprisal and rubble. The second is that, like him or not, Trump remains the only leader with the power to corral Netanyahu, raise the necessary funds, and, if needed, impose the international consensus to bring peace about.

Here in Israel, meanwhile, government and opposition figures alike are trying to understand what exactly is being proposed and whether or not it can work. What is clear is that the plan is pitched both as an ending and a beginning. It proposes the eradication of Hamas rule, the installation of a new technocratic authority in Gaza, an international stabilization force to hold the ground, and an influx of foreign reconstruction money. Israel is to gradually withdraw its forces, albeit with security guarantees. Gaza will be demilitarized, its reconstruction contingent on continuing calm.

More from this author

Netanyahu’s deadly gamble

By David Patrikarakos

The promise, then, is stark. No more October 7ths, no more dawn massacres, no more rockets into southern Israel. But what the plan includes is only half the story: what it omits matters too. Nowhere, for instance, does it define Palestinian sovereignty, nor does it explain the future of the West Bank or Jerusalem. It offers no timetable, no firm enforcement, no clarity on who pays for or implements what. And who, exactly, will make up the international force envisaged to keep the peace? Israel’s Arab neighbors will do pretty much anything to avoid sending soldiers into Gaza. Egypt cannot forget its bloody entanglement in Gaza in the Fifties and Sixties; Jordan’s king fears domestic blowback from his mostly Palestinian population.

As for the Europeans, they may provide training or money, but are hardly likely to send young men to police Gaza’s winding alleyways, not to mention its maze of tunnels. And even if a force is cobbled together, can Israel really afford to relinquish meaningful control? Last time it did, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it was rewarded with barrage after barrage of Hamas rockets.

Despite these uncertainties, every Israeli knows Netanyahu had little choice but to stand with Trump, smiling tautly, as the plan was unveiled. After two years of killing, and with his own corruption trial grinding through the courts, he needs America more than ever: to provide him with weapons shipments and financial guarantees, to say nothing of diplomatic protection at the United Nations. Accepting Trump’s plan also offers him a shot at redemption at home, a chance to recast himself not as the politician who let October 7 happen, but as the statesman who delivered Israel from endless war. It is a gamble, but then Netanyahu has always been a gambler.

Netanyahu, of course, is only one player among many. First there are Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, his far-Right coalition partners, who both view the plan as a betrayal. International forces, a reformed Palestinian Authority, the mere suggestion of a Palestinian political entity — all are anathema to their messianic worldview. As one senior opposition source tells me, “they thought this war could lead to annexation, even resettling parts of Gaza. This plan destroys that dream.”

But politics is politics, even for religious fanatics. Both men, once politically ascendant, are now in trouble. Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party is polling beneath the threshold for re-entry to parliament, while Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power has seen its popularity collapse after two years of death. For both men, then, continuing to prop up Netanyahu is the only way they can stay in power. “They will rail against the plan,” my source says, “but they are unlikely to collapse the government of their dreams.”

There’s another political dimension here too. The centrists Netanyahu spent years demonizing now offer his best chance of survival. Opposition leader Yair Lapid has already promised a parliamentary safety net, pledging to support the peace plan if Netanyahu’s coalition partners bolt. “We will not let this government be held hostage by extremists,” Lapid has said. It is a rare flash of consensus in a country so divided.

You can spot this consensus elsewhere too. The afternoon before Yom Kippur, in the polished anonymity of a Tel Aviv office block, I met with Yossi Cohen, the former director of Mossad. Famous for his perfect Lebanese Arabic, Cohen is the man who oversaw the theft of Iran’s nuclear archive and the assassination of the chief of its nuclear program. He also negotiated the Abraham Accords, which saw Israel strike normalization agreements with four Arab states.

“Trump, Netanyahu, Jared Kushner and his team, Middle Eastern leaders like Sheikh Zayed and states like Egypt are all in support of the plan,” Cohen explains. “I think this is the right thing to do. The war should only end once all the hostages are home, and what we’ll then see is not the end of conflict, but the end of this war. But I’m very much in favor of the plan.”

Suggested article

The terror of the anti-Israel machine

By Jacob Howland

Beyond security elites and the rough and tumble of the Knesset, what of regular Israelis? There is clearly huge appetite for a resolution to the Gaza horrorshow, both for the sake of the hostages, and, in some quarters anyway, for that of the Palestinians. But though polls show a majority of people here support a peace plan in principle, few believe it can be carried out. For years, after all, the two-state solution had majority support in Israel. But when people were asked if they thought it was not only desirable, but actually possible, that majority vanished.

For Trump himself, the calculation is less complicated. He wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and believes that he alone can bring seemingly unsolvable wars to an end. It’s central to his self-image as the dealmaker who can tame chaos and conjure peace where others only managed stalemate.

In the end, though, the Israelis and their American friends are only one side of this. And if the plan is awkward for Netanyahu’s coalition, it threatens to be suicidal for Hamas. It strips away their power, negates their ideology, and installs rival Arab actors in their place. How can its leadership possibly accept it?

When I met Cohen I asked him why Hamas would voluntarily agree to extinguish itself as the power in Gaza. Few, if any, in modern times have more experience of battling Israel’s enemies than him; and no one has greater experience of negotiating with those who once implacably, ideologically, opposed the Jewish state. “Pressure,” he replied. “When international bodies come in and Hamas realizes it cannot survive, and when its citizens in the streets turn against them, saying, ‘We can’t live properly under Hamas control,’ they may have no choice.”

Hamas isn’t the only Arab entity to have problems with the plan. For if Egypt and Jordan are reluctant to get embroiled in ruling the ruins of Gaza, other Middle Eastern governments will also hesitate to bankroll the Strip’s reconstruction without progress toward Palestinian sovereignty: which the plan deftly avoids. In this political climate, Saudi Arabia, courted by Washington for a grand normalization deal with Israel, will be unwilling to attach its prestige to a scheme that sidesteps Palestinian political rights. The Emirates and Qatar might contribute, but on their own terms.

Meanwhile Israel’s Doha strike earlier in the year – an operation that Cohen defended as a necessary signal – alarmed the Gulf. “We struck Doha not to interfere with Qatar’s role in the hostage deal,” Cohen tells me, “but to send a clear message: there is nowhere in the world terrorists can be immune.” The Prime Minister later apologized to Qatar’s emir for the civilian victims of the strike, but the episode underscored just how fragile regional consensus remains.

Suggested Reading

The shattering of the Jewish world

By Ben Judah

All the same, Cohen remains bullish on expanding the Abraham Accords to Saudi Arabia. “Peace is always more important than war,” he says. “As a veteran of wars, I know this. I fought all my life — as a teenager in Lebanon, later against our enemies across the world. But it is worthwhile to build peace treaties. The Saudi track should continue.” His words echo Trump’s ambition to frame the Gaza plan as part of something larger, a step toward tying Israel and Sunni Arab powers into a common bloc.

Inevitably, Iran looms in the background. Cohen describes the recent conflict with Tehran as “one very important chapter in a long saga.” He recalls Israel’s strikes on enrichment facilities and air defense systems, delivered over the course of just a few hours: “We disrupted, destroyed, dismantled,” he says. Whether that deters Tehran permanently is another matter, but his point is clear: Israel sees Gaza not in isolation but as part of a continuum of threats, and any peace plan is measured against that strategic horizon.

Amid all this geopolitics and the realpolitik and the violence, the yearning for peace endures. In the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Jaffa, I see Arab men sitting on plastic chairs by the road, smoking and laughing. I see Israeli couples along the beach front doing the same. A political solution, however faint, must exist to bring these two sides together.

On Friday evening, Hamas’s response to the peace proposal came. The terror group has agreed in principle to release all remaining Israeli hostages — both living and dead — in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. It has also accepted the idea of transferring Gaza’s governance to technocrats. But it has not agreed to disarm; and its statement suggests it still wants a role in Gaza’s future.

While Trump responded positively, Netanyahu has not; he understandably insists he cannot accept any proposal that leaves Hamas armed. Added to which, over the weekend, several senior Hamas leaders stated that the group  would not be pushed out of Gaza and rejected absolutely any idea of an international force in the strip and a transitional administration

For now, then, a deal remains out of reach, and all sides remain stuck. The Israelis want to believe peace is possible but have been let down  too often before. Palestinians, for their part, want liberation, not endless foreign rule. Arab states want stability, but not at the cost of their legitimacy. America wants closure, but cannot guarantee it. For the moment, then, all sides remain stuck. Netanyahu’s promise of “no more October 7ths” is resonant; the reality of Hamas’s endurance, far-Right intransigence, and Arab skepticism all seem inescapable. Netanyahu clings to both power and Trump; Trump clings to his self-image of the peacemaker. Hamas clings to its guns and its desire for power. And ordinary Israelis and Palestinians cling to the hope that this time things might be different.

A similar anxiety struck me with the recent borrowing of the term “apartheid” to describe Israel. “There is an undercurrent of disrespect directed to African people coming from the pro-Palestinian groupings, through the appropriation of our culture and lived experiences” claims South African, Vuyolwethu Mkhuseli Xulu. “The term ‘Apartheid’ has been taken from us with its true meaning being lost in translation.” He concludes: “Each people’s struggles should be addressed in their specificity and not blended with the experiences of others.” Well said.

On Tuesday, the broadly well-respected human rights organisation B’Tselem declared Israel to be an “apartheid regime”. “B’Tselem has come to this conclusion with a heavy heart and the utmost seriousness. After 32 years, it is not easy to make a paradigm shift. We live and work within Israeli society, we are an integral part of it, and we are well aware of the recoiling and revulsion that this word evokes in the public discourse,” writes B’Tselem board member, Orly Noy.

More from this author

Why chaos is good for Boris — and Brexit

By Giles Fraser

“Apartheid” used to be a taboo word that was only employed on the extreme Left, by those whose intention was to de-legitimise the very existence of Israel. And there will be those who will see the same aim at work within B’Tselem. But whether or not this is the case, it is also worth asking what is so different now, such that a body like B’Tselem has felt moved to change its language so dramatically and after over three decades of involvement in the region?

There is no doubt that the situation within the occupied territories continues to be desperate for Palestinians. “Israel may not have Jews-only benches, but it does have Jews-only roads in places like Hebron,” writes Noy. Within the occupied territories, very different laws apply to Jews and Palestinians, different rules about travel, different rules about where you can live. The occupation is a tragedy.

But the situation can be explained thus: Israel is a flourishing, fully functioning democracy for all its citizens within the Green Line, the historic internationally accepted borders of the state, plus an unfortunate occupation of the Palestinian territories — sadly needed for security reasons. Israel has a right to protect itself from external, existential threat, and occupation is a short-term — albeit overly long — pending situation waiting for a two-state peace settlement where both Israel and Palestine can exist secure within their own borders. In other words: Israel good, occupation bad. This is the story that many Israelis, especially progressive ones, have told themselves about their home. I subscribe to it myself.

But the so-called “paradigm shift” described by B’Tselem is that this explanation is now increasingly regarded as a cover story for what is, in effect, a one-state “solution” in which Israel is now the de facto government of all the land between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan, and a government that does not allow equal rights to all those who live within this extended territory. B’Tselem argues that the rules under which Palestinians live are not a temporary measure driven by the needs of security, but a permanent situation and becoming more obviously permanent every day. In effect, B’Tselem is formally calling time on the two-state solution.

More from this author

How my drinking lost its virtue

By Giles Fraser

I remember, several years ago, the American Palestinian political activist and businessman, Sam Bahour, explaining a conversation he had with his daughter. She admonished him for the failure of his life’s work to achieve a separate Palestinian homeland. “Never going to happen, Dad,” was the guts of her response. And she didn’t much care about what name was given to the place in which she lived or the flag that flew over her government buildings. Not interested in Palestinian nationalism, she just wanted the same access to medical care and freedom of movement as her Jewish Israeli neighbours. In other words, she wanted to transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a nationalist one — the two sides seeking to become self-determining national governments — into a human rights struggle within a single state. And it is in this context that a word like “apartheid” begins to have increasing purchase.

An example of the daughter’s healthcare point is now being made with respect to Covid.

Israel is leading the world at vaccinating its citizens. But “Palestinians excluded from Israeli Covid vaccine rollout as jabs go to settlers” was the Guardian’s take. And yes, the Israelis are indeed vaccinating Israeli citizens — all of them: Jews and Arabs — and not others, not those in a separate political dispensation. And this latter point really matters. If the Palestinian Territories are indeed a part of Israel, then the fact that Palestinians in places such as Nablus are not being vaccinated by the Israelis is a terrible business. But if the Palestinian territories are their own authority, then it is a rather different thing.

Yes, an occupying force does have responsibilities to those under its control. And Israel has indeed offered to help the Palestinian Authorities, whose legal responsibility it is. As one Palestinian official put it: “We are not dependent on the Israeli Defence Ministry. We have our own government and Ministry of Health, and they are making huge efforts to get the vaccine.”

Again, it all turns on the question of whether Israel is the government of all the territory or not. And most Israelis do not want a single state from the river to the sea, not least because such a state would contain an inbuilt Palestinian majority. The problem has often been put like this. An extended, greater Israel can be only two of these three things: 1, Jewish; 2, Democratic; or 3, Safe. If it chooses to be wholly multi-cultural, it can be democratic and safe. But given the demographics, this inevitably means that Israel will end up no longer being a distinctive homeland for the Jewish people. But if it wants to maintain the dominance of the Jewish population, it can only be safe if it becomes some version of an apartheid regime, imposed by force. Or it can give up on the idea of a greater Israel.

“I have a single word argument against the one-state solution”, Ari Shavit, the Israeli writer for Haaretz, explained to the Guardian editorial board, back when I was a member: “Iraq”. By which he meant that no state with such massive internal tensions between rival ethnic or religious groups could possibly survive. A one state solution would be a recipe for civil war. It would rip itself apart.

More from this author

The Moroccan deal with Israel fills me with joy

By Giles Fraser

The two-state solution may not be going anywhere fast. But it is not dead because the alternative is far worse. And whatever one thinks of Benjamin Netanyahu — and I am not a fan myself — it has to be acknowledged that the recent peace deals with the UEA, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco have changed the situation in ways that would have seemed inconceivable until very recently.

“There is no solution for Israel other than a two-state solution. It does not exist,” says the incoming US President, Joe Biden. He is right. And those of us who love the place will continue to hold out the hope that others are listening — or can be made to do so. Because the real lesson of Kristallnacht is that Jews have a need, and every right, to a place of safety — the man who invaded the Capitol building wearing a shirt proclaiming “Camp Auschwitz” is a chilling reminder of that. And the place of safety is called Israel.