Opinion
Thomas L.
Friedman
How the
Biden Team Plans to Build Peace From Sinwar’s Death
Thomas L.
Friedman
By Thomas L.
Friedman
Opinion
Columnist
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/17/opinion/israel-hamas-war.html
It is
impossible to exaggerate the importance of the death of the Hamas leader Yahya
Sinwar. It creates the possibility not only of ending the Gaza war, returning
Israeli hostages and bringing relief to the people of Gaza. It creates the
possibility for the biggest step toward a two-state solution between Israelis
and Palestinians since Oslo, as well as normalization between Israel and Saudi
Arabia — which means pretty much the entire Muslim world.
It’s that
big.
But, but,
but.
The death of
Sinwar alone is not the sufficient condition to end this Gaza war and put
Israelis and Palestinians on a pathway to a better future. Yes, Sinwar and
Hamas always rejected a two-state solution and were committed to the violent
destruction of the Jewish state. No one paid a bigger price for that than the
Palestinians of Gaza. But while his death was necessary for a next step to be
possible, it was never going to be everything.
The
sufficient condition is that Israel have a leader and a governing coalition
ready to step up to the opportunity Sinwar’s death has created. To put it
bluntly, can Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel live up to his
Churchillian self-image and go along with something that he has previously
rejected? That is the participation of a reformed West Bank Palestinian
Authority in an international peacekeeping force that would take over Gaza in
the place of the Sinwar-led Hamas.
For the last
month or so, according to my U.S., Arab and Israeli diplomatic sources,
Secretary of State Antony Blinken — at the direction of President Biden and
Vice President Kamala Harris — and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi
Arabia, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt and Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab
Emirates have been discussing ideas of what to do on the day after this war
ends to rebuild a post-Hamas Gaza, pave the way for Saudi-Israeli
normalization, and create the conditions for another attempt by Israel and the
Palestinians to negotiate a different future in both Gaza and the West Bank.
The broad
idea is for the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, to agree to
appoint the economist and former P.A. prime minister Salam Fayyad — or someone
of his sterling reputation for incorruptibility — as the new Palestinian prime
minister to lead a new technocratic cabinet and reform the Palestinian
Authority, root out corruption and upgrade its governance and security forces.
Such a
reformed Palestinian Authority would then formally ask for — and participate in
— an international peacekeeping force that would include troops from the
U.A.E., Egypt, possibly other Arab states and maybe even European nations. This
force would be phased in to replace the Israeli military in Gaza. The
Palestinian Authority would then be responsible for rebuilding Gaza with relief
funds provided by Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and other Arab Gulf states,
Europeans and most likely the U.S.
A reformed
Palestinian Authority, with massive Arab and international funds, would attempt
to restore its credibility in Gaza, and the credibility of its core Fatah
organization in Palestinian politics — and sideline the remnants of Hamas.
The U.S. and
Arab diplomats — with quiet assistance of the former British prime minister
Tony Blair — have been working on this concept with Israel’s minister of
strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s closest adviser. It requires Israel,
for now, only to quietly permit the involvement of the Palestinian Authority in
the rebuilding of Gaza as part of the international force — not to formally
embrace it.
Netanyahu
understands, though, that the Arabs will participate in an Arab/international
peacekeeping force to clean up the mess in Gaza only if it is part of a process
leading to Palestinian statehood.
Mohammed bin
Salman, in particular, has made it very clear to everyone that for Saudi Arabia
to go ahead with normalization with Israel — after so many Palestinian deaths
in Gaza — he needs the war in Gaza to end and any Arab peacekeeping force to be
a step that will one day lead to a Palestinian state. The same is true for the
U.A.E. and Egypt.
M.B.S. needs
to show in the wake of the Gaza war that he got something from Israel that no
other Arab leader ever got, because he is potentially giving Israel something
no Israeli leader ever got: relations with the home of Islam’s two holiest
mosques. M.B.S. is also vital to getting President Abbas to appoint a reformer
like Fayyad. Abbas respects M.B.S.
Let me
repeat: A diplomatic initiative to end the war along these lines — and engineer
a Saudi-Israel normalization and Arab peacekeeping force — will eventually
require Israeli commitment to a pathway to Palestinian statehood. That will
trigger virulent opposition from Netanyahu’s extremist messianic right-wing
partners, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister
Bezalel Smotrich. They will foolhardily see the killing of Sinwar and the
collapse of Hamas as an opportunity to think they can kill every last Hamas
member in Gaza in order to carry out their agenda of putting Jewish settlements
into Gaza and expanding them in the West Bank.
Netanyahu
has long wanted to show that he is a historic figure, not just a tactician
always maneuvering to stay alive politically — but never ready to take a big
risk to change history.
Well, this
is his moment.
Will he
cross the Rubicon or do what he usually does — just dog paddle in the middle of
it and tell those on each side that he is coming their way?
But this is
also history time for M.B.S. If he wants a security treaty with the U.S., then
the process needs to be launched while Biden is still president. (Senate
Democrats will never vote for it under Donald Trump.) That means M.B.S. is
going to have to normalize relations with Israel before a Palestinian state is
actually created — but do it on the basis of both Israelis and Palestinians
specifically moving in that direction.
As someone
who has covered the turmoil in the Middle East intensely since Oct. 7, 2023, I
am newly hopeful about the possibility that the killing of Gazan Palestinians
will stop, the hostages will be returned and real diplomacy will start. And if
the respective leaders rise to this moment, there could be a lot more to be
hopeful about. Today is a start. What happens on the day after this war is
everything.
Thomas L.
Friedman is the foreign affairs Opinion columnist. He joined the paper in 1981
and has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of seven books, including
“From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National Book Award. @tomfriedman •
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