What Comes Next in Gaza and Israel?

Our writers think through the possible futures that await the region.

Nearly three months into the Israel-Hamas war, our writers think through the possible futures that await the region.

HOW THIS ENDS

Weeks after Hamas’s attacks on Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza, my colleague Franklin Foer published an article titled

“TELL ME HOW THIS ENDS.”

“The Israeli operation faces the same question that ultimately vexed the American project in Iraq,” he wrote: “What comes next?”

Two months later, the questions that Frank raised about the future of the region are no easier to answer, and the civilian death toll in Gaza continues to rise.

I’ve come back to the guiding inquiry of Frank’s article many times in recent months: How does this end? The reading list below offers a range of perspectives from our writers about what could, or ought to, come next.

Israel’s impossible dilemma: “Israel’s larger stated aim—of utterly eradicating Hamas—is impossible,” the scholar Hussein Ibish argued earlier this month. “If the Israelis stay in Gaza out of determination to deny Hamas a hollow win, they will instead ensure that Hamas gets a political victory that is actually worth something—one that will play out over months and years of further warfare.”

The one-state delusion: “Neither Israelis nor Palestinians are going anywhere, and neither will give up their national identity,” the political scientist Arash Azizi argued last month. “Those who truly want peace and justice in the Holy Land should start by recognizing this reality.”

A phased diplomatic strategy: Joe Biden “has exercised bold diplomacy in other parts of the world, and it can work here too—advancing the prospects of peace, ensuring Israeli security, and addressing Palestinian grievances,” Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt, wrote this month.

The day after Netanyahu: “Israel has long succeeded in spite of its leaders, not because of them,” Atlantic staff writer Yair Rosenberg wrote last month. “As Israel’s population steps up where its prime minister and his hard-right allies have failed, the real source of the state’s strength has never been more obvious.”

“All my life, I’ve watched violence fail the Palestinian cause”: “In spite of the horrors of recent weeks—or perhaps because of them—many Jews and Palestinians want peace more than ever,” the British Palestinian writer John Aziz wrote last month. “But Palestinians need more than peace.

They need leaders who will serve their interests instead of persecuting those—including the LGBTQ and non-Muslim communities—who exist on the margins of society.”

A message of peace: “There never has been, nor will there be, a military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian situation,” Ziad Asali, founder of the American Task Force on Palestine, wrote last month. “Israel obviously can, in its campaign against Hamas, flatten Gaza.

It has the machines and bombs to do so. But it can’t destroy the Palestinian desire to be free.”