Opinion: This deal could end the war in Gaza

Editor’s note: Peter Bergen is a national security analyst for CNN, a vice president for New America, a professor at Arizona State University, and the author of the Audible podcast “In the room,” too apple and Spotifyhe”The Rise and Fall of Osama Bin Laden“The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion On CNN.

CNN
—

It took more than six months, but President Joe Biden has finally unveiled an Israeli plan that could end the bloodshed in Gaza.

Generally, there are two ways to achieve peace: the complete surrender of the enemy, which happened after the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan’s surrender, ending World War II, or the recognition by the combatants of a “mutually hurtful stalemate” as a precursor to a deal, which is exactly what is happening in Gaza today.

But it’s by no means certain that the two sides will actually agree to a peace plan and then act on it — and the fact that the terms of the agreement have even been announced may be a bad sign, since in sensitive negotiations terms are often kept secret until an agreement is finalized.

And the two men at the helm of Hamas, Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both have reasons to potentially prolong the conflict: Sinwar because every Gaza civilian death hurts Israel’s global standing, and Netanyahu because he faces domestic political challenges that will likely intensify the day after the gunfire stops.

But Israel is unlikely to achieve Netanyahu’s goal of a “total victory” over Hamas. According to Politico, U.S. intelligence estimates that only about a third of Hamas fighters have been killed in the seven-month war, but the Gaza Health Ministry says that some 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict already. (Other estimates suggest at least 24,000 have been killed. Either way, the death toll is high.)

For Netanyahu to achieve complete victory, he will need to fight a never-ending war with Israel, with countless Palestinian deaths and increasing isolation around the world. Some 140 countries currently recognize the Palestinian state, and the International Criminal Court is considering an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister.

As the Gaza war continues, Israel’s dreams of normalization with the Arab world will steadily crumble. Importantly, the war is also steadily losing support from Israel’s most important ally, the United States. According to Gallup, Americans’ approval of the Gaza war has fallen from 50% in November, when the war began, to 36% in March. (With the November elections tight, Biden and his team will also be well aware that waning support for the Gaza war could hurt their chances of winning in battleground states like Michigan.)

The canary in this mine was U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s public criticism of Prime Minister Netanyahu in March. Senator Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish-American official in U.S. history, has long been a staunch supporter of Israel.

Still, Schumer on the Senate floor criticized Netanyahu, saying he had “showed no interest in doing the courageous and visionary work necessary to forge a path to peace that even preceded the current conflict.”

Schumer was, in effect, warning Israel that the bipartisan U.S. coalition that has helped preserve Israel since President Harry Truman first recognized the Jewish state is falling apart. This will have very bad consequences for Israel in the long run, because the young Americans protesting the Gaza war today are the middle-aged voters of tomorrow.

Netanyahu is also continuing the Gaza war without a concrete plan for “the next day,” i.e. without a strategy. Revenge is not a strategy, and as Sun Tzu long ago said, “Tactics without strategy are the noise before defeat.”

Meanwhile, Hamas can continue the war and turn Gaza into a Mad Max-style apocalypse, while the Gazans it is supposedly fighting succumb to spreading hunger and die in ever-increasing numbers. To paraphrase a quote from Tacitus, it is no peace or victory for Hamas to continue fighting indefinitely and turn Gaza into a desert again.

And now President Biden announced his Israeli peace plan on Friday. Significantly, the plan was announced in Washington, not Tel Aviv, and it has the backing of Israel’s closest allies. Hamas later issued a statement saying it viewed the plan positively.

To add to the confusion, on Saturday the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement saying that Hamas must be destroyed “before a permanent ceasefire can be implemented.” This could be explained by the fact that public statements issued to the public during sensitive negotiations may differ from private positions, or it could be an indication that Netanyahu is not truly on board with the peace plan. Still, you know, it’s hard to imagine a US president announcing an Israeli peace plan that doesn’t have Israel’s approval.

The time is ripe for such a peace plan because the Biden administration assesses Hamas to be too weakened to again carry out operations like the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people, with its leaders either dead or hiding deep underground in Gaza.

“I don’t think this proposal would have been possible three months ago,” a senior Biden administration official said at a closed-door press conference on Friday.

The peace plan is designed to achieve an immediate ceasefire and build on that to a permanent cessation of hostilities. The first phase of the plan would involve a six-week ceasefire and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and an unspecified number of hostages, both living and dead, in exchange for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from populated areas of Gaza.

Importantly, the plan would also allow 600 trucks of aid to enter Gaza per day, up from the roughly 500 trucks entering the country per day before the war began. In recent weeks, aid to Gaza has fallen to a paltry 58 trucks per day on average, according to the UN.

The second phase of the plan would ensure a final end to the fighting and the return of all hostages held by Hamas, including Israeli male soldiers, and the complete withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from Gaza. If Hamas and Israel continue to negotiate a final permanent ceasefire agreement through Qatar, Egypt, and the United States, the initial ceasefire could continue beyond the six-week phase, leading to the third phase, a multi-year reconstruction of Gaza.

There are obviously a lot of what-ifs in this plan, and it may not satisfy obstructionists like the right wing of Netanyahu’s government or some of the hardliners in Hamas, but the enemy of a perfect deal is a reasonable deal. And this is a deal that is reasonable enough for both sides. Otherwise the war will continue indefinitely, and the impact that would have on the people of Gaza and ultimately the state of Israel would be immense.