Palestinians

With Iran looming ever larger as Israel’s top security priority, the window for breaking the dangerous cycle of ceasefire and conflagration with the Palestinians may be closing—unless all of the actors are willing to throw their weight behind a fresh “4x4” strategy.

The two leaders have been looking forward to an upbeat summit, but the test will be if they can establish trust and work through their differences on thorny regional issues.

The visit will set the stage for future U.S. assistance negotiations and allow King Abdullah to express his views on Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy and other regional issues, while the White House can bolster the relationship and (quietly) push for achievable reforms.

No one is going to invest in massive Gaza reconstruction unless there is a credible mechanism for ensuring that Hamas does not divert the bulk of this material for military purposes.

In this episode of the Middle East PolicyCast podcast, Grant Rumley & Neri Zilber share their assessments of the factors that sparked and escalated the May 2021 Gaza conflict and share advice for policymakers who seek to prevent the renewal of major violence between Hamas and Israel.

Even if the consensus-based coalition is sworn in, the big question mark hanging over Bennett and Lapid is whether Palestinian developments or Netanyahu’s relentless opposition will produce irreconcilable internal differences.

The administration should take a three-track approach: provide a formula of reconstruction with no rearmament, bolster the PA through assistance conditioned on reform, and broker Arab outreach to open the horizon.

Fatah and Hamas have tried every conceivable power-sharing mechanism to no avail, and many Palestinians now feel alienated from both brands of authoritarianism.

The Biden administration cannot solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem today, but it can shrink the conflict by helping both sides take small steps toward a two-state solution.