President Biden has announced a serious peace plan to end the horrific conflict in Gaza. The Israeli war cabinet, Egypt, Qatar and the G-7 all endorse it. It includes a detailed plan for recovery, starting immediately. As Biden said last Friday, “It’s time for this war to end.”
So here’s a blunt question: Why aren’t Palestinians demanding that Hamas’s leaders, who are hiding in tunnels under the ravaged enclave, accept this agreement so that reconstruction can begin? Hamas’s existence has been predicated on saying no to peace with Israel. But surely, it’s in the interest of Palestinians civilians who have suffered so much in this conflict to say yes.
Like so many observers of this terrible war, I’ve been urging Israel for months to finish its campaign and move to “the day after.” Israeli military leadership has backed a plan to do that, thanks to prodding from Biden. The world should now make a similar demand of Hamas: Take the deal.
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The agreement is still fuzzy on some details. Although Israel’s war cabinet endorses it, some members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition don’t. The transition from Phase 1’s initial cease-fire to a permanent one in Phase 2 will require negotiations, though the truce will continue as long as those negotiations do. The process is fragile and imperfect, but it’s backed by an implicit guarantee by the United States and its Group of Seven allies.
The “deliverables” for Palestinians are spelled out in an unpublished document prepared by negotiators. A person who’s familiar with the talks summarized the fine points for me this week. It provides a well-marked path to immediately begin repairing the devastation of the conflict. Here are some details about how it would start:
- From the first day of the cease-fire, Israel would facilitate a surge of humanitarian aid. Specifically, the agreement calls for 600 trucks moving daily into Gaza, including 50 fuel trucks. Northern Gaza would get 300 of those trucks, including fuel needed to eventually resume operation of the power plant in central Gaza.
- To start sheltering Palestinians who were forced to flee their homes, the agreement calls for provision of at least 60,000 temporary mobile homes and 200,000 tents. The rubble of war strewn across every kilometer of Gaza would be cleared, starting immediately, using civilian bulldozers and other heavy equipment.
- Hospitals, medical centers and bakeries would be rehabilitated throughout the strip, and these essential services would be maintained through the subsequent stages of the agreement.
- Gaza’s infrastructure — the roads and the electrical, water, sewage and communications systems destroyed by war — would gradually be rebuilt across the enclave, with Israel agreeing to allow entry of necessary equipment.
- The United Nations, Egypt and Qatar would lead an international effort for comprehensive reconstruction of homes, schools and the other essentials of life that have been destroyed.
If the deal works, a new Gaza would eventually emerge. Months of desperation and near-starvation would gradually give way to recovery. With so much international assistance flowing into the enclave, Gaza could actually experience something of a postwar boom.
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What does Israel get from this agreement? First and most important, over the three phases, all Israeli hostages and bodies would be returned. It might not look like the “total victory” that Netanyahu’s coalition wants. But as a senior Biden administration official put it last Friday: “Hamas is no longer capable of carrying out another Oct. 7. Its military capacity has been significantly eroded. And its leaders are dead or in deep hiding.”
Governance in Gaza is still to be determined, but dictatorial rule by Hamas is finished. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and other members of the Israeli war cabinet share Biden’s view that Palestinian governance is essential and that the framework for it will be built by supporters of the Palestinian Authority.
Active Hamas fighters will remain targets for Israel even after the truce. As the senior official put it, “Israel always retains the right, as does any sovereign country, to act against threats against its security.”
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Lebanon looms as the next battleground, but this problem, too, would be eased by the Gaza truce. As soon as a cease-fire is agreed to, U.S. officials say they will push to implement a tentative agreement with Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters up to 10 kilometers from the Israel-Lebanon border. The aim is to make northern Israeli towns safe again so that families who fled after Oct. 7 can return home before school starts in September. The crossfire between Israel and Hezbollah will also be limited by specific measures, U.S. officials expect.
There’s the promise, too, of a much wider truce: the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which for generations has refused to recognize the Jewish state. As Biden said, with the Gaza pact, “Israel could become more deeply integrated into the region” and “part of a regional security network to counter the threat posed by Iran.”
There’s a cynical trope about past peace efforts that “the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” That’s a harsh and one-sided judgment about a history of failure on both sides. But right now, Hamas’s leaders have a chance to do the right thing for the Palestinian people they claim to be fighting for. I hope the Palestinian people can prod them to do it.
