Last week, I went on Pod Save America to talk about J Street and our approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s an important platform with an audience that largely overlaps with ours – Democrats and politically engaged progressives. Ten years ago, this would have been an easy interview. There was much more agreement: Israelis and Palestinians both deserve freedom, equality, security, and prosperity – and we need to do all we can to bring about that outcome.

But now things are more complicated. We have all experienced ten more years of an Israel led by Bibi Netanyahu that every day seems to move further away from the liberal values that define our worldview. In the aftermath of the horrors we all saw in Gaza, many of us are reassessing the US-Israel relationship.

For J Street, that has meant continuing to fight for the vision of a liberal Israel we are deeply attached to and want to see thrive, and being willing to apply greater American leverage and pressure on the Israeli government than we may have supported in the past to move in that direction. But given where things stand, many other Pod Save America listeners are asking why we should bother with a US-Israel relationship at all and questioning if it is possible to have a Jewish state that does not discriminate against and oppress Palestinians.

We need to be able to have honest and constructive dialogue about these differences inside the Democratic coalition. I’ve been thinking about that conversation with Tommy Vietor, the feedback since, and how I want to respond going forward. This is still very much a work in progress, but here are a few core points.

J Street is advocating for something fundamentally different that has never been tried before. This is not the “same old peace process” dressed up in new language.

One of the more frustrating critiques I hear from the left is that J Street is simply putting a more progressive face on the same old policy. During my interview with Vietor, he framed J Street’s policy as part of the old peace process approach that has failed for the past 30 years.

That’s just wrong.

The policies we’re advocating today are fundamentally different from what the United States has done before.

We are calling for conditioning military assistance to Israel – something that had long been treated as untouchable in American politics. And we are doing something about it, recently lobbying for votes in the Senate that would block armed bulldozers and 1,000-pound bombs to Israel. Forty senators voted to block the bulldozers, and 36 voted to block the 1,000-pound bombs.

We are not just responding to settlements as previous U.S. governments have done by wringing our hands and putting out mildly angry statements. We are supporting sanctions on violent Israeli settlers and the networks that sustain them. These sanctions can meaningfully change behavior.

We have backed the recognition of a Palestinian state.

We have abandoned the traditional peace process model – bilateral Israeli-Palestinian talks mediated by the United States, where America’s role is to strictly reassure and support Israel, pre-cook solutions with Israel before sharing them with Palestinians, and refrain from ever applying meaningful pressure. We are calling for bringing in the Arab states, Europeans, and others, and fundamentally changing the model of negotiations.

And most recently, we’ve argued that it’s time to responsibly and rapidly phase out the $4 billion annual financial subsidy to Israel for military equipment, even while maintaining security cooperation in ways that serve both of our countries’ interests.

That is not business as usual. It’s a real shift in policy. One that has never been tried before. And I believe using our influence and leverage to change behavior and forge a better future for both Palestinians and Israelis has a better chance of working than punishing Israel and cutting off the relationship altogether.

The path forward that will result in lasting, meaningful change isn’t choosing between Israelis and Palestinians – it’s backing moderates in both societies who want a better future and helping them defeat the extremists.

It is understandable (even if painful for those of us in the pro-Israel community) that years of Israeli government policies of occupation, discrimination, and violence against Palestinians have turned many against Israel. This backlash is even harsher because at every step of the way, the U.S. government has stood beside Israel or at least looked the other way.

But the solution to this behavior is not to just condemn Israel and cut it off, which might feel good and just.

It’s about recognizing that in both societies, the central struggle is between extremists and those still fighting for a better future.

The extremists feed off each other. Hamas’s suicide bombings in the 1990s brought Benjamin Netanyahu to power and derailed the Oslo process. Netanyahu, since returning to office in 2009, has pursued policies that empowered Hamas while weakening more moderate Palestinian actors. Allowing Qatari cash to fly into Ben Gurion Airport and be driven into Gaza while withholding billions of dollars from the Palestinian Authority wasn’t an accident. It was part of a strategy. Weaken the moderates. Empower the extremists. Make a two-state solution impossible.

As in most conflicts, there is a minority of extremists on one side. There is also a minority of hardcore peacemakers on the other who will keep fighting for coexistence and freedom for all Israelis and Palestinians. In the middle sits the majority: People who just want freedom, security, and opportunity for themselves and their loved ones. Depending on the situation, they can be swayed in either direction. In the 1990s, they believed peace was the best way to achieve those goals. Today, with extremists ascendant on both sides, the majorities in the middle of both societies are jaded. In poll after poll, a majority of Israelis see permanent occupation as the only way to security. And a majority of Palestinians see armed struggle as the only way to freedom.

If we actually want a different outcome, we need to invest in and empower the people working toward it. That means supporting organizations like Standing Together that bring Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel together to advocate for peace, equality, and an end to the occupation. It means featuring leaders like Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon, who spoke at the first night of J Street’s recent national convention.

It also means rejecting approaches that isolate or weaken those allies, such as the anti-normalization and BDS movements. When Peter Beinart was criticized by supporters of the BDS movement recently for speaking at Tel Aviv University to an audience of people who were likely mostly aligned with his broader goals of equality and freedom for Palestinians, it raised a real question: How does this help Palestinians? How does it strengthen the people inside Israel who are fighting for change to boycott them?

You see this same dynamic when people talk about Israel as if it’s a monolith. They ignore the hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting in the streets against the war, for the hostages, and for democracy. They also ignore senior leaders like Yair Golan, Tzipi Livni, Bogie Ya’alon, and Ehud Olmert, who spoke out publicly against Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Writing off Israeli society entirely doesn’t advance peace. It sidelines the very people we need to be working with.

Finally, our primary focus should be on solutions that improve Palestinian lives. Part of that means looking for leverage and applying pressure on Israel, including through withholding or conditioning arms sales, but that cannot be the entire frame of the argument.

There’s no shortage of outrage towards the Israeli government right now, and much of it is justified. The suffering in Gaza is real. The inequities, the violence in the West Bank, the expansion of settlements are serious and ongoing problems. The answer is not to ignore them or just keep supporting Israeli policies. Pressuring Israel to change its behavior is part of the answer, but it cannot be the whole answer.

We need actual answers that help Palestinians. During our interview, Tommy Vietor grilled me on whether a two-state solution was dead and why we should even continue to support it. When I responded that, as J Street, we are focused on the 23-state solution that regionalizes the negotiation and creates much stronger incentives for peace and a better future for both peoples and for the entire region, he grilled me on whether that was even plausible. Fair question.

But what I found frustrating was that Tommy didn’t really offer any alternatives. If you don’t believe that Israel will ever give up the West Bank and Gaza, which make up 22% of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, then how can you realistically advocate for a state in which Israel gives up control of all the land by agreeing to a binational state where eventually Jews will be the minority? That, to me, is much more fanciful than a regional peace that involves the creation of a Palestinian state.

At J Street, we’ve tried to focus on concrete steps that can actually shift realities on the ground.

That includes supporting legislation like the West Bank Violence Prevention Act to sanction extremist settlers and the institutions that support them. I find this approach preferable to broad sanctions that would cut off all of Israeli society, including those advocating for peace.

It includes advocating for conditioning U.S. assistance through measures like the Ceasefire Compliance Act to incentivize changes in Israeli behavior instead of arms embargos that could leave Israeli civilians open to attack by withholding short-range rocket and ballistic missile defense systems.

It includes supporting the key forward-moving provisions of the Trump Administration’s 20-point plan for Gaza and pushing to enable the Palestinian Authority to return to Gaza as part of a viable alternative to Hamas. Some of the ways in which the administration has implemented this plan are deeply problematic. For example, insisting that all reconstruction for Gaza be contingent on Hamas agreeing to disarmament first, instead of as part of a process. And they have also neglected its implementation as they’ve been distracted after starting a war against Iran that has been disastrous for U.S. interests. Still, in my mind, supporting the plan is better than just saying the ceasefire isn’t working (or isn’t a ceasefire at all), without offering an alternative while Trump is in power.

Anyway, these are just some initial thoughts. I welcome feedback on this discussion, and I know that I, and many of us at J Street, will continue to wrestle with the hard questions that are now being raised in this debate on the American Left.

I woke up this morning with a pit in my stomach.

From the beginning, I worried this war could drag on for months or even years. That was one of the reasons I opposed it. But I also believed the most likely outcome was a short conflict – a few weeks.

I may be wrong about this, and I hope I am, especially as Trump posts on Truth Social every other day or the White House leaks that negotiations are constructive and the war might end soon. But from where I sit today, a short war now seems unlikely.

Instead, we may be staring at something far worse: A war with no clear endpoint, drifting toward something that feels uncomfortably familiar. I remember being at the Pentagon at the start of Ukraine in 2022, when many thought it would be over quickly. I remember being at the White House on October 7, assuming the Gaza war would last a few months. The more I think about where this is headed, the more worried I get.

There is no clear path to end this war. The United States does not appear to have a realistic strategy, and the Trump Administration seems to misunderstand the position it is in. The 15-point plan floated last week – demanding Iran give up all Highly Enriched Uranium, shut down its nuclear program, dismantle its missile capabilities, and end support for proxies – is not a serious diplomatic framework. It suggests either a profound overestimation of U.S. leverage, a refusal to accept reality, or a basic inability to conduct effective diplomacy.

At the same time, Iran shows no urgency to end the conflict. Iranian officials are now talking about reparations, guarantees that the United States and Israel will not attack again in six months, and broader demands about the U.S. role in the region. They may not expect to achieve all of this, but that is not really the point. The point is that they do not feel pressure to end the war.

And when neither side feels urgency to stop, wars tend to last.

I worry first about American troops and U.S. land operations. There has been increasing discussion of potential moves against Kharg Island or other Iranian-controlled territory around the Strait of Hormuz, and in the next few days, my guess is we enter a window where such an operation becomes imminent. A raid to seize highly enriched uranium from deep inside Iran is far more difficult and less likely, but even limited operations in the Gulf carry real risks. I do not have a clear sense of potential casualties, but I hope for this to be as bloodless as possible.

Some in the Trump Administration seem to believe a sharp, decisive blow that takes out a large part of Iran’s ability to export oil could force Iran to back down and end the war. That theory feels deeply unrealistic. If anything, it is more likely to cause Iran to double down and escalate its attacks on energy infrastructure.

I worry about what this means for Israel. The vibrant, dynamic and innovative Israel so many of us have come to love. Even before this war, Israel was facing a growing brain drain, increasing global isolation and a society living with so much trauma since October 7. Now imagine living under sustained ballistic missile and UAV attacks for months, maybe years. Not the kind we saw after October 7, but the much more significant and damaging attacks we are seeing today all over the country.

What does that do to families, to businesses, to investment, to the broader society Israelis have worked so hard to build? If normal life becomes impossible, the long-term impact could be profound.

I also worry about what this war is doing internally to Israeli society. War breeds extremism. Since the war with Iran started a month ago, we have seen a spike in Jewish terror against Palestinians in the West Bank. An incident this weekend involving a CNN crew led to a rare disciplinary response, but only because it was caught on camera. Settler attacks are happening every day, often without consequences. The Israeli government is not just failing to stop this – it is complicit. This is not the Israel I have known.

I worry about the Gulf states. In recent years, countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar have deliberately taken a deescalatory approach toward Iran and focused on economic development, diversification and global integration. It was exciting and refreshing to see, when visiting the Gulf, how much the region was changing. The region’s development had jumped to the top of the agenda while some of the traditional security issues receded. But that vision depends on stability. If these countries face sustained missile attacks for six months or more, does that model survive? Do investors stay? Does that future still feel possible?

I worry about Iran – and especially the Iranian people. For years, comparisons to North Korea felt overstated. Iran is more open, more complex, with multiple centers of power. But what happens after a prolonged war? Does the regime become more hardline, more militarized, more isolated? Do pragmatic elements lose what influence they have left? Are we looking at a much larger, more dangerous version of North Korea – 90 million people increasingly cut off, impoverished and repressed? That is no longer unthinkable.

I worry about Lebanon. There are increasing signs this could become the next major front. If Israel launches a large-scale ground operation – and the Israeli Defense Minister is openly talking about turning southern Lebanon into the next Gaza – the human consequences could be catastrophic. And alongside the suffering of Lebanese civilians, Israeli soldiers are already facing significant casualties in another grinding ground campaign.

I worry about Gaza. Have you heard much about it in the past month? Aid is down. Reconstruction has not begun. Plans for the post-conflict are stalled. As attention shifts to Iran, Gaza is fading from view – but conditions on the ground are not improving. When focus moves elsewhere, things in Gaza tend to quietly get worse.

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I worry about the global economy – and our own. In 2019, I worked on war game scenarios with energy and security experts examining what a conflict like this could do to oil markets. Scenarios in which the Strait of Hormuz stayed shut for 4-10 weeks estimated prices would rise to $185 to $200 per barrel. We are at around $115, but it feels to me like markets are still underreacting and waiting for a near end that isn’t coming.

The Strait of Hormuz is also a critical pathway for so many other goods, including many of the components that make up fertilizer, with the potential for a major drop in crop yields. This could bring catastrophe for parts of the world as well as a sharp rise in food prices.

We may not have even scratched the surface of the economic consequences of this war.

And I worry about what this means for the United States. How many wars of choice can we undertake before the world loses faith in the system we helped build after World War II? That system – imperfect as it is – has always been underwritten by American military power. But it was also anchored by American leadership, alliances and a commitment to stability and rules. Each unnecessary war erodes that foundation. At some point, the damage becomes irreversible.

There is still a way out – but it requires a shift. The United States should make clear that it is prepared to end military operations in exchange for a limited, realistic set of conditions: Constraints on Iran’s nuclear program, an end to attacks on its neighbors, and no interference in shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. In return, the United States would halt operations and restrain Israel. Even if Iran does not immediately accept, such an offer would shift global pressure onto Tehran and could create a pathway to end the war.

Right now, that pressure is not there. So yes, I have a pit in my stomach.

Because this war has the potential to go nowhere good and to do far more damage than anyone anticipated. It could reshape the Middle East in deeply negative ways, damage the global economy and further erode America’s standing in the world.

At this point, the best we can do is push for a change in course, for a serious strategy to end this war and for a more responsible path forward.

One of the questions I’ve been asked in recent days is this: How can you be pro-Israel and oppose the war with Iran when Israelis overwhelmingly support it? I’m going to answer this question as a foreign policy wonk by evaluating U.S. and Israeli interests. This weekend, you should expect Jeremy to also take on this question from the perspective of how American Jews and community leaders can navigate this dichotomy at the moment.

The answer for me is twofold. First, just because the Israeli public supports the war doesn’t mean it’s a good idea or in Israel’s interest. 72 percent of Americans supported invading Iraq in 2003. That didn’t make it a wise decision.

Second, answering this question requires understanding that Americans and Israelis see this conflict through very different strategic lenses. After all, while 93 percent of Jews in Israel and 26 percent of Arabs in Israel support the war, most polls show that around 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the war, while only about 40 percent support it. And that is because American and Israeli interests and perspectives are not perfectly aligned.

Where You Sit is Where You Stand

There’s an old saying in Washington: Where you sit is where you stand. In other words, perspectives really matter.

Israel is a small country in a very tough neighborhood. For decades, it has contended with adversaries who threaten its security, and today many Israelis see Iran as the single most serious threat they face. So when the United States, the world’s most powerful country, begins bombing Iran alongside Israel, many Israelis see that as America going after their most dangerous enemy.

As one very senior former Israeli official who broadly aligns with J Street on Israeli-Palestinian issues told me last week, “If the American President wants to go to war with my biggest enemy, who am I to say no?”

From an Israeli perspective, that reaction makes complete sense, even if, as I will get into later, it is not clear that this war will make Israel safer in the long-run.

But Americans occupy a very different strategic position in the world. The United States is a global superpower protected by two oceans, and we evaluate national security challenges on a global scale. From that vantage point, Iran simply is not America’s primary strategic challenge.

China is the central geopolitical competitor. Russia remains a major security challenge. One could even argue that North Korea poses a more direct military threat to the United States than Iran does, given that North Korea already possesses nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States.

Iran is a serious regional problem, but it is not an existential threat to the United States in the way it is perceived in Israel. That difference matters enormously when it comes to evaluating the costs of war.

From an American perspective, this raises difficult questions. Does it make sense to expend significant portions of our missile defense inventory and precision munitions in the Middle East when we may need those same capabilities to deter China in the Pacific – especially in a potential war over Taiwan? Does it make sense to move missile defense systems out of places like South Korea – where they defend against North Korea – and redeploy them to the Middle East? Does it make sense to risk global economic disruption, $100 or $120 oil, and rising inflation because of a conflict that does not directly threaten the American homeland?

For Israel, these sacrifices may feel worth making because the Iran threat feels existential. For the United States, it does not. That gap in perception is at the heart of the difference, which is why Americans overwhelmingly oppose this war while Israelis support it.

There is another factor shaping Israeli public opinion as well: trauma. Israeli society experienced a horrific shock on October 7, and less than three years later, that trauma is still very raw. In the aftermath of such events, societies often seek something that is ultimately unattainable: absolute security. That can lead to aggressive policies – preventive strikes against Iran, a war that went on far too long against Hamas – in an attempt to eliminate threats before they emerge.

The United States went through something very similar after September 11. Two and a half years after 9/11, the United States was deep into the Iraq War, and the American public overwhelmingly supported the mission. At that time, the United States had adopted policies – such as torture, regime change and preventive war – that violated American values and were at odds with a strategy it had long pursued. The country was acting out of a mixture of anger, fear and trauma.

Looking back today, many Americans see that period as a time of profound strategic overreach. Israel is likely going through something similar now. And just as the United States eventually reassessed its choices after Iraq, Israel will likely go through its own reassessment in the future.

These differences in threat perception also shape how Americans and Israelis think about the possible outcomes of this war. Broadly speaking, there are three potential endgames. The first is that the Iranian regime survives but is weakened, leaving the United States deeply entangled in the region, trying to contain it. This is an outcome that is bad for both the United States and Israel, but it is also by far the most likely.

The second is that a more moderate leadership emerges in Iran that changes the country’s regional behavior and opens the door to de-escalation. The third scenario is a collapse of the Iranian state itself, producing chaos and instability across a country of nearly ninety million people.

From an American perspective, only the second scenario clearly represents a positive outcome. The first risks pulling the United States deeper into Middle Eastern conflicts at exactly the moment when our strategic focus should be shifting toward the Indo-Pacific. The third – a collapse of the Iranian state – could create profound instability stretching from the Gulf to Afghanistan and Pakistan, triggering refugee flows, proxy conflicts and regional chaos, which would not only draw the U.S. in but result in so many of our allies and partners blaming us for this mess.

For Israel, however, the calculation looks somewhat different. Even if the Iranian regime survives but emerges significantly weakened, Israel may view that as an improvement over the status quo – especially if it draws the US into a long-term commitment to the region. Though it should also be noted that this scenario potentially puts Israel into an endless cycle of escalation where it finds itself at war with Iran or Hezbollah every six months or year – a terrible outcome for Israelis.

A complete collapse of the Iranian state, meanwhile, would be terrible for Iranians and for America’s Gulf allies, but it could also eliminate Iran’s ability to project power against Israel for years. What looks like a strategic disaster from Washington is an acceptable outcome from Jerusalem.

You can see this disconnect in how the war is being conducted. When Israel chose to strike major Iranian oil depots and energy infrastructure, causing massive fires, senior American officials reportedly reacted with alarm. U.S. officials described themselves as “dismayed” and indicated that the president was unhappy with the strikes. From Israel’s perspective, targeting energy infrastructure may be part of a broader strategy of weakening Iran and sowing internal instability. From the American perspective, however, those kinds of strikes increase the risk of the very outcome Washington most wants to avoid: the collapse of the Iranian state.

This divergence I am describing is not new. Over the past two decades, Israeli leaders have repeatedly argued to American presidents that the United States should take military action against Iran. Presidents from both parties – George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden – ultimately chose to restrain those impulses. They did so not because they dismissed Israel’s concerns, but because they concluded that a large-scale war with Iran was not in America’s national interest or in Israel’s.

Instead, they pursued imperfect alternatives that attempted to address both American and Israeli concerns. Those approaches ranged from the diplomatic deal that produced the JCPOA under President Obama to strategies focused on containing and deterring Iran while allowing internal pressures to weaken the regime over time.

The Consequences of this War

Today, we are seeing the consequences of abandoning those approaches and joining Israel in attacking Iran. And over the long run, those consequences may be negative not only for the United States but for Israel as well.

The first consequence is that if we have learned anything from the past three years it is that these repeated cycles of violence just suck Israel further in and do not necessarily address its security. In early 2024 Benjamin Netanyahu argued that Israel had to conduct the Rafah operation because it was the only way to defeat Hamas. Two years later, Hamas still holds half of Gaza because Netanyahu refused to actually do real planning for the day after and create conditions for alternative Palestinian leadership. In June of 2025, Israel launched the 12-Day War. Afterwards, the argument was that Iran was set back for years and its nuclear program “obliterated.” Eight months later, Israel and the United States are at war again, partially because of how quickly Iran was able to rebuild. The most likely outcome of this war is the same. Playing whack-a-mole again and again and again and rallying around the flag might feel good in the moment, just as the American public mobilized for years around the War on Terror after 9/11. But it will not offer Israel any long-term solutions to its security while also plunging it into a costly cycle of one war after another.

Beyond this fundamental strategic problem, there are also other dangers to Israel that stem from the U.S.-Israel disconnect. Over time, many Americans will come to believe that the United States fought this war because of Israel. Already, we see early signs of that narrative emerging, with some officials suggesting that Washington was effectively dragged into the conflict. Whether that is accurate or not almost doesn’t matter politically. The perception itself could weaken American support for Israel for a generation.

Israeli leaders have long emphasized that Israel must be able to defend itself by itself. One reason for that principle, especially amongst national security professionals, was precisely to avoid the perception that Americans were dying in Israel’s wars. Israelis wanted American support in the form of arms and intelligence sharing, but they usually insisted on fighting their own wars. This conflict blurs that line in ways that could have lasting consequences.

There is also a domestic concern: the risk of rising antisemitism in the United States. We are already seeing rhetoric that frames this conflict as “Netanyahu’s war.” It is a short step from there to older antisemitic tropes – that Jews control American foreign policy, that American troops are dying for Israel or that wars are being fought for Jewish interests.

That is why it is so important to be clear about responsibility. When American troops are placed in harm’s way, that decision belongs to the President of the United States. It is the single most consequential decision that a president makes. Even if Israeli leaders support the decision or encourage it, the buck must stop with Donald Trump.

This war also risks weakening the United States strategically in ways that ultimately harm Israel as well. Some Israeli commentators have argued that confronting Iran somehow strengthens America in its competition with China. That argument collapses under serious scrutiny. The future of global power will largely be determined in the Indo-Pacific, not the Middle East. Every missile interceptor used in this war is one that cannot be used to deter China in a potential conflict over Taiwan, which still produces 90 percent of the advanced chips used in technologies around the world, and is equally, if not more critical for the global economy than Middle Eastern oil.

Moreover, if the United States becomes weaker globally vis-a-vis China, one of the countries that will feel that most acutely is Israel. Israel’s strategic position in the world is closely tied to its relationship with the United States. American diplomatic protection, military support and global influence are central pillars of Israel’s security.

And this war also pushes another long-term goal further out of reach: The vision of a more stable Middle East in which Israel is integrated into the region and living at peace with its neighbors – what we at J Street call the 23-state solution. In the aftermath of the agreement on the 20-point plan for Gaza, there is a pathway that can ultimately move Israel towards greater and eventually total regional integration.

Because of the decision of the US and Israel to go to war with Iran, that vision is now farther away. Gulf states are furious – certainly with Iran for attacking them, but also with the United States and Israel for launching a war that has placed them directly in the line of fire without ever seriously consulting them. Instead of seeing Israel as a partner in economic development, technology sharing and regional integration, many now see a country exporting instability across the region in pursuit of a level of security that will ultimately be unattainable and come at a great cost to its neighbors.

That is not a strong foundation for long-term peace.

Most of my Israeli friends support this war. I understand why they do. But I do not. I believe it is bad for American interests and bad for Israel’s interests.

And that is why it is entirely possible – indeed necessary – to be pro-Israel, pro-American and firmly opposed to this war.

When I worked at the Pentagon fifteen years ago on the Iran desk, we had comprehensive plans for the possibility of a war with Iran. One of the key questions we asked the military planners was simple: What does Phase IV look like? In military planning, Phase IV is post-conflict stabilization – the plan for what happens after the fighting stops.

The answer we got back was revealing: “That’s really up to the civilians.”

In other words, there was no plan. This was not long after the debacle of postwar planning in Iraq in 2003, and deferring it to others simply wasn’t a good enough answer. So for months, I was part of an interagency process involving the State Department, CENTCOM, the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. We debated and developed scenarios for what Iran might look like after a major or even limited war with the United States and ultimately gave the military direction and parameters that they used to plan.

Military planners often say that the purpose of planning is not the plan itself. Plans rarely survive first contact with reality. The real value is the process: thinking through scenarios, consequences and options before events force decisions upon you.

Fifteen years later, those experiences still shape how I think about the moment we’re in now. So the question is unavoidable: Where does this war go from here?

Let me walk through the key factors I am watching, the scenarios that could emerge and what they would mean for Iran, the region and the United States.

The Key Factors That Will Shape the Outcome

The first lesson from that Pentagon exercise was simple but crucial: The post-conflict outcome depends heavily on how the conflict itself unfolds. Right now, three major factors will determine how this war ends.

First, at the most basic level, the war’s trajectory depends on the military contest between Iran’s missile and drone arsenal and the missile and drone defensive systems of Israel, the United States and the Gulf States.

So far, the United States and Israel have had considerable success in degrading Iran’s ability to launch large salvos toward Israel. But Iran continues to launch drones and shorter-range missiles at U.S. and civilian and energy infrastructure targets across the Gulf while the U.S. continues to try to destroy them.

If that balance shifts dramatically in one direction or the other, it could shape the war’s endgame.

If Iran retains enough capability to impose real costs – wearing down interceptors or hitting key regional targets – it may secure better terms or prolong the conflict. But if Iran’s capabilities collapse and the United States and Israel can operate with near impunity, that would produce a very different outcome.

The second variable is domestic politics – particularly in the United States.

Wars are sustained politically as much as militarily. And this one is already deeply unpopular with the American public. Polling suggests roughly 60 percent or more disapprove, and the conflict has barely begun.

Oil prices are rising, feeding inflation. U.S. allies in the Gulf are furious with Tehran but also deeply anxious about their own security.

All of that raises a key question: How long does Donald Trump want to sustain this war? Does he push for maximal pressure and escalation? Or does he declare victory quickly and move on? Trump’s own attention span – and his tolerance for rising costs – could be decisive.

The third factor is far murkier. Reports suggest the United States and Israel may be supporting Iranian separatist groups – particularly Kurdish groups operating along the Iraq-Iran border. Other minority regions could also come into play: Baluchi groups near Pakistan or Arab groups in Southwest Iran.

If the United States and Israel begin actively encouraging internal armed movements inside Iran, it could fundamentally reshape the trajectory of the conflict.

Even if Washington is cautious, Israel may be pursuing some of these efforts independently. That possibility introduces a third – and highly unpredictable – variable.

Given these variables, how might a conflict unfold?

Iran as Saddam’s Iraq in the 1990s

The most likely outcome by far, in my view, is something that looks a lot like Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.

In that scenario, the United States and Israel severely degrade Iran’s military capabilities. Iran’s navy is crippled. Much of its ballistic missile program is destroyed. Its nuclear program is set back.

But the regime survives.

After the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, power passes to another hardliner, such as his son Mojtaba Khamenei, strengthening the role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The war ends not because the regime collapses, but because the costs of continuing it become too high for everyone involved.

Iran emerges weakened but intact – a diminished but still dangerous adversary that is more aggressive and has less to lose.

That would mean a future resembling the long standoff with Saddam Hussein in the 1990s: sanctions, sporadic clashes, missile strikes and constant tension.

For the Iranian people, this would be devastating. The regime remains in power, but the country is economically shattered.

For the region, instability becomes the new normal. Gulf shipping lanes remain vulnerable. Oil prices stay elevated. Countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE see their long-term economic transformation projects threatened by persistent insecurity.

For Israel, the threat never truly disappears. Missile attacks and periodic escalations remain possible for years.

For the United States, the consequences would also be terrible.

Managing Saddam in the 1990s required massive U.S. military deployments, permanent carrier presence and continuous air operations.

Something similar would likely happen again. American forces would remain deeply engaged in the Middle East – precisely the outcome that three consecutive presidents, from Barack Obama to Joe Biden to Donald Trump, claimed they wanted to avoid.

And as the 1990s showed, unintended consequences follow.

The large American military presence in the region became a rallying cry for Osama bin Laden and helped fuel the rise of al-Qaeda.

No one can predict exactly what the ripple effects of this war will be – but history suggests they will be significant.

Meanwhile, two countries would benefit strategically.

China would welcome an America bogged down in the Middle East while Beijing focuses on expanding its power in Asia and preparing for potential conflict over Taiwan. Though it would suffer from higher energy prices and a less secure supply.

Russia would benefit from sustained high oil prices – an economic lifeline for Vladimir Putin as Moscow struggles under the costs of the war in Ukraine.

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A Regime Transition

A second possibility – significantly less likely but far better – is a leadership transition within the Islamic Republic.

This would not mean democracy. It would not mean Iran abandoning nationalism or suddenly becoming a Western ally.

But it could mean a more pragmatic leadership emerging in Tehran – one that decides Iran’s nuclear ambitions, missile program and regional proxy wars have become too costly.

There are figures within the Iranian system who might argue for such a shift.

One example is Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of Ruhollah Khomeini. He has ties to reformist circles while still maintaining credibility within the establishment.

If this happened, the benefits would be significant.

Iran could reintegrate economically into the region. Sanctions might ease. Regional tensions could decline. The U.S. would not get bogged down in the Middle East again. But this outcome requires three things that are far from guaranteed and could be quite unlikely.

First, the Iranian government would essentially have to capitulate. And right now, sentiment feels like it is going in the opposite direction. Even a more moderate leadership might not be willing to go far enough for this outcome to work.

Second, Trump would have to take yes for an answer – accepting a deal short of total Iranian surrender and regime change. That part feels quite plausible if he is looking for a way out. And in fact, his behavior in Venezuela would indicate that if he can find his Iranian Delcy Rodriguez and declare victory, he’d be happy to do so.

Finally, Netanyahu would have to accept such a transition instead of continuing to undermine it, and Trump would have to restrain him to get him to accept this outcome. Right now, it appears Netanyahu believes any version of the Islamic Republic must ultimately collapse, which would cause him to act against and try to kill even this more moderate leadership if it came about.

State Collapse – The Syria or Libya Outcome

The worst scenario is state fracture and civil war. Iran has existed as a unified civilization for more than 2,500 years. That deep national identity makes collapse less likely than in places like Syria or Iraq. But it is not impossible.

If outside powers begin arming separatist groups, the country could fracture. That is why reports of Trump making calls to Kurdish leadership in Iraq and of the U.S. and Israel supporting a potential Kurdish offensive are so disturbing. Kurds in the northwest, Baluchis in the southeast, Arabs in the southwest – all could become focal points for armed movements.

Once that process begins, it is unlikely to lead to a fast collapse of the regime and a shift in government. We are talking about a massive country with 90 million people. To militarily overthrow the Islamic Republic would be prolonged and messy.

There would also be spillover effects. Regional powers would intervene. Turkey might move to counter Kurdish groups. Saudi Arabia might support Arab factions. Pakistan could intervene along its border. External powers like Russia or China might back the central government.

Iran could become a proxy battleground on a scale even larger than Syria. The humanitarian consequences could be catastrophic, with the potential for a refugee crisis that dwarfs the Syrian one.

Power vacuums in Iran could spread instability and terrorism to places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We have seen this show before in this region, time and time again, over the past fifty years.

For the United States, this would mean years of renewed military involvement. For global energy markets, it would mean sustained volatility and higher prices.

Even Israel would face consequences. If Iran collapsed into chaos, the entire world would likely blame Israel and the United States for triggering the disaster, further eroding international support and deepening Israel’s isolation.

The Fantasy Scenario

There is also a fourth possibility frequently discussed in the run-up to the war and by Trump: that the Iranian people simply rise up and overthrow the regime. Or that someone like Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, returns to power.

But this scenario faces a basic problem. With what army?

Iran’s opposition movements are brave but fragmented. The regime has shown repeatedly that it is willing to use overwhelming violence to suppress protests. In January, security forces brutally killed thousands of demonstrators. And there are no signs that Iran’s security forces will simply put down their arms and peacefully allow unarmed protestors to stand up and take over.

I want this possibility to be true and real. But the U.S. cannot be investing in a major new war in the Middle East on the basis that this is the outcome we will see, given how unlikely and ahistorical the scenario is.

The Way Forward

So what do these scenarios tell us about the way forward?

The first conclusion is obvious. This war should never have happened. A realistic assessment of the possible outcomes – and serious post-conflict planning – would likely have led to a different conclusion.

The United States had another option. I wrote about it a few weeks ago with my former colleague Nate Swanson. After recent protests inside Iran, the regime was already under enormous pressure. Its leadership was aging. The country was economically strained.

A strategy of containment and pressure – combined with support for Iranian civil society and human rights – might have allowed the system to evolve or fracture internally.

That approach was not guaranteed to succeed. But it would have been far less risky than launching a costly war whose most likely outcomes are deeply problematic.

At this point, the best option is to try to steer events toward a managed transition while avoiding steps that push Iran toward collapse.

That means signaling clearly that a more pragmatic Iranian government – one that reduces regional aggression and responds to its own people – could receive sanctions relief and economic reintegration. It means restraining Israel from actions that would sabotage such an outcome and could lead to collapse. And it means recognizing that the most likely outcome remains the first scenario: A weakened but still hostile regime and a new long-term American commitment to the Middle East.

Even if the Trump Administration does everything right (And I am quite skeptical they will), achieving a stable transition would be the geopolitical equivalent of drawing an inside straight. Most of the possible outcomes are bad. Which is exactly why Trump should have thought much more carefully before starting down this path.

Over the past couple of years, as the war in Gaza has ground on, Americans have wrestled seriously and painfully with how to approach the issue of U.S. security assistance to Israel. The war in Gaza has ignited conversations – at kitchen tables, in college classrooms, on social media, and in the halls of Congress – about why the U.S. continues to provide billions of dollars per year in unconditional military aid when the Israeli government has used American weapons in ways that violate American values and interests.

J Street, too, has been wrestling with these questions. A few core conclusions have guided us as an organization.

We believe in U.S. support for the security of the State of Israel and the safety of the Israeli people. That commitment is core and fundamental. We believe in a secure, democratic, and Jewish Israel.

We believe that Palestinians deserve freedom, dignity, rights, and security of their own.

Lastly, we believe that U.S. security assistance and cooperation should be provided in a way that advances American interests and values and is in accordance with US law.

Today, everyone who cares about the safety and security of both Israelis and Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that the current system of U.S. military assistance to Israel is failing to advance Israeli security, Palestinian human rights, or the U.S.’s strategic interests.

Under the Netanyahu government, Israeli policy has moved sharply away from a vision of long-term security, regional integration, and peace. Instead, we are seeing policies that entrench occupation, enable settler violence, suppress Palestinian political aspirations, and will lead Israel down a path of permanently controlling Gaza and the West Bank, whether through formal annexation or indefinite occupation.

These policies are devastating for the Palestinian people and for their aspirations for statehood. They are also profoundly dangerous for Israelis, and they undermine U.S. interests by fueling instability, perpetual conflict, and repeated regional escalations that the United States gets dragged into.

Given these realities, J Street has increasingly focused on the core principles that should guide U.S. policy on Israel and security assistance.

First, U.S. assistance should never be a blank check – whether to Israel or any other ally. All assistance must be consistent with U.S. law.

Second, we support policies and legislation that link American military assistance to Israeli actions and incentivize policies that align with U.S. laws, interests, and values.

Third, if Israel pursues policies in Gaza or the West Bank that violate those laws, interests, and values, U.S. weapons should not be used to carry them out.

Finally, the United States should continue to support Israel’s legitimate defensive needs – especially ballistic missile defense – given the very real threats Israel faces from Iran and its proxies.

That brings us to the good news: There is now legislation in Congress that operationalizes these principles – the Ceasefire Compliance Act, introduced today by Congressman Sean Casten and 25 of his colleagues.

At its core, this legislation establishes a simple, common-sense standard: If Israel is pursuing policies in Gaza or the West Bank that are inconsistent with U.S. laws, interests, and values, it cannot use American weapons in Gaza or the West Bank

The Ceasefire Compliance Act enforces this policy by creating a framework that conditions the use of U.S. weapons in Gaza and the West Bank on compliance with basic commitments Israel has repeatedly made – to the United States and to the international community.

Under the legislation, the State Department, Department of Defense, and Director of National Intelligence would be required to regularly report to Congress on whether Israel is meeting specific, clearly defined criteria. These include compliance with the ceasefire, extensive facilitation of humanitarian aid into Gaza, allowing for transitional Palestinian governance to take hold in Gaza, and facilitating the International Stabilization Force entering Gaza. None of these requirements are radical. None are unreasonable. All are steps Israel has already agreed to in principle.

These reports will also assess Israeli compliance with conditions related to the West Bank: prohibitions on annexation and a requirement that the Israeli government take concrete steps to prevent and punish settler violence. Again, these are not new demands – they are promises Israel has made repeatedly and failed repeatedly to uphold.

If the Israeli government is determined to be in violation of any of these conditions, the Ceasefire Compliance Act bans the use of U.S. origin arms in Gaza and the West Bank. This prohibition is enforced through agreements with the Israeli government governing new proposed arms transfers, as well as a requirement for an agreement between the U.S. and Israeli governments that applies to all U.S. origin arms – even those previously transferred. To monitor Israeli compliance with this prohibition, the bill also establishes a dedicated oversight mechanism to monitor whether Israel is complying with this geographical end-use prohibition. If violations of the geographical prohibition occur, this bill authorizes real consequences – including the suspension of all offensive weapons transfers.

Importantly, the bill does not endorse President Trump’s deeply flawed Board of Peace – a problematic effort to undermine and replace the UN with an entity that reports entirely to Trump. Instead, the conditions focus on the parts of the ceasefire and 20-point plan that J Street has long endorsed and that most experts watching this space agree are the best way forward to try and replace Hamas with alternative governance and security mechanisms.

So why does this legislation make so much sense?

First, its conditions are reasonable, achievable, and fully consistent with longstanding American policy. Our assessment is that the Israeli government is not currently meeting these criteria and therefore should not be allowed to use U.S. provided weapons in Gaza and the West Bank. However, these conditions are absolutely possible to meet. Good faith implementation of the existing 20-point framework – on aid, ceasefire compliance, governance, and stabilization – would bring Israel into compliance with the conditions related to Gaza. Ceasing Smotrich and Ben Gvir’s annexation efforts and taking real steps to curb settler violence would bring Israel into compliance in the West Bank. None of this threatens Israel’s existence or security – in fact, it supports Israel’s security

Second, this legislation is fundamentally about incentivizing a change in behavior, not punishment. It does not say, “You can never have these weapons.” It says, “You cannot use American weapons in ways that directly contradict American law and interests.”

That distinction matters enormously.

Third, the legislation explicitly preserves Israel’s ability to defend itself in an extraordinarily tough neighborhood. There are clear carve-outs for Iron Dome, Arrow, David’s Sling, and other ballistic missile defense systems. Israel can – and should – continue to defend itself against attacks from Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, all of whom chose to escalate the conflict starting on October 7, 2023, and the law does not prevent Israel from doing so.

The legislation also ensures that if Hamas violates the ceasefire, Israel is able to defend itself. But some recent instances, where Israel has disproportionately struck Palestinian civilians, for example, killing 30 people in Gaza, including children, in response to a skirmish between the IDF and Hamas fighters coming out of a tunnel, should be considered a violation.

Finally, some ask: Why create a special process for Israel at all?

In an ideal world, there would be no need to. For years, our position has been that U.S. policy toward Israel should look like U.S. policy toward other close allies – no special treatment, no extra scrutiny.

But the reality is that Israel already receives exceptional treatment. No other country receives comparable levels of U.S. military assistance while benefiting from such extensive loopholes and bespoke processes that weaken the application of basic American laws. Israel is, quite literally, the only recipient of U.S. security assistance with a separate, exceptional mechanism for reviewing Leahy Law requirements – the human rights standards that all recipients of U.S. security assistance must meet. And when presidents from both parties repeatedly refuse to enforce existing U.S. law when the Israeli government’s actions render them ineligible for arms transfers, it’s clear that a more targeted approach is needed.

This legislation doesn’t single Israel out for punishment. It moves the U.S.-Israel relationship back toward a more normal relationship.

That’s not anti-Israel. It’s pro-accountability, pro-security, and ultimately pro-peace.

And it’s long overdue.

Register for the 2026 J Street National Convention – and don’t forget to use code ‘WOTS’ at checkout for a 20% discount.

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The next Israeli election – whether it comes in fall 2026 or sooner – will be the most consequential in the country’s history. That’s not hyperbole.

If, after everything Israel has been through, the public reelects Benjamin Netanyahu together with the most extremist coalition Israel has ever seen – Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, and their allies – it may well mark the end of the vision of Israel as a Jewish AND Democratic state.

Opportunities for regional integration and normalization are slipping away. Saudi normalization, once within reach, is already becoming more remote, and would be effectively off the table for the foreseeable future if Netanyahu remains in power.

Europe – Israel’s most important economic partner – is increasingly viewing Israel as a pariah state. Another Netanyahu government could bring unprecedented isolation, threatening Israeli participation in cultural staples like Eurovision and European soccer. Maybe eventually economic sanctions.

For many American Jews who have tried to maintain their relationship to the State of Israel by reasoning that this government does not represent Israel’s people, another Netanyahu victory would be devastating. The ability to separate “Israel” from “this government” would collapse.

Most critically, given the accelerating reality on the ground in the West Bank – settlement expansion, new recent legal steps towards full annexation, and unchecked settler violence – another term for this coalition would mean the effective end of any meaningful separation between Israelis and Palestinians and also a dead end for any progress in Gaza that could eventually become the bridge towards a regional peace deal – what we call at J Street the 23 State Solution.

The good news is that Netanyahu is not currently winning.

For nearly two years, his bloc – Netanyahu, the ultra-Orthodox parties, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir – has hovered around 50 seats out of 120. The public continues to blame Netanyahu for October 7 and wants a real investigation into what happened. Opposition to the judicial overhaul and democratic erosion remains deep.

There is no broad public enthusiasm for Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s ideological agenda. Given a choice, most Israelis would prefer regional integration over West Bank annexation.

And yet.

The opposition still cannot clearly cross the 60-seat threshold needed to govern. Depending on the poll, the “Jewish opposition” sits somewhere between the mid-50s and just under 60 – sometimes topping out at 61.

Without partners beyond that bloc, Israel remains stuck in stalemate, and stalemate most likely means Netanyahu stays in power (There are other configurations that may be possible, but most seem unlikely for different reasons and still take you down a dark path where Netanyahu remains Prime Minister).

That is an outcome Israel cannot afford. And it takes us to the core question – the most important political decision for Israel’s future in 2026 and beyond:

Will Jewish opposition parties accept Arab parties as legitimate coalition partners? And will Arab parties be willing to participate in some form in a coalition?

There is no way around it. Without Arab parties in, or at least supporting, a governing coalition, Netanyahu remains prime minister by default.

There is of course the important moral argument. Israel’s declaration of independence called for social and political equality and invited all residents, including Arab citizens of Israel, to be part of building the future state. If Israel is to achieve its founders’ vision of a Jewish democratic state, it cannot continue on this pathway of having 20 percent of its citizens participating but essentially politically excluded. It is time for that to change. And what Israel needs to get to this future is genuine political partnership between its Jewish and Arab citizens.

Just as compelling though, are the pragmatic arguments for going into a coalition together, starting with the reality that the political overlap between the Arab parties and the rest of the opposition is real and substantial.

All opposition parties – Jewish and Arab – agree on defending democracy, opposing corruption, and reversing the judicial coup. All want to end Israel’s slide toward international pariah status after October 7.

Arab citizens of Israel are demanding rule of law, personal security, and serious government investment in their communities – after years of rampant crime and police neglect under Ben Gvir. In recent polling 75% support having an Arab party as part of a future government.

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On Gaza, on the West Bank, and on Israel’s regional future, there is more common ground than many admit. Mansour Abbas for example recognizes Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Even parties that do not embrace a full two-state solution are willing to prioritize regional integration and avoiding pariah status in exchange for halting the most destructive policies in the territories.

At a minimum, politicians like Bennett and Lieberman could find ways to cooperate quietly on some things and pull back from the worst excesses of this extremist government. They may continue to support settlements and oppose a two-state solution, but would probably be willing to undo some of the recent steps towards annexation and cooperate with the United States and the international community on the 20-point plan for Gaza instead of continuing to block progress at every step. Even if their public rhetoric towards the Palestinians was still hostile – especially with liberal and centrist parties and the Arab parties to balance them out.

That is enough to govern.

And in practical terms, Arab parties today are no more “outside the Zionist consensus” than the ultra-Orthodox parties that routinely sit in government – strongly opposing any mandatory military service even after the terrible toll that the two-year war in Gaza took on reservists in the IDF, imposing massive economic costs through subsidies, and in many cases being quite ambivalent about the need for a Jewish state of Israel to exist in its current form.

Yet somehow, cooperation with ultra-Orthodox parties is considered normal politics and gives Netanyahu a 15 seat headstart, while cooperation with Arab citizens is treated as taboo despite their many contributions to Israeli society.

But perhaps the most compelling argument of all is the most pragmatic one. Keeping Arab parties out of the coalition is not just political suicide. It is political malpractice.

Imagine if progressives and moderate Democratic members in the U.S. House of Representatives decided they wouldn’t caucus together anymore because the disagreements were too sharp. Maybe just 50 of the most progressive members of the House would essentially stand aside. In that world you could just end up with Mike Johnson as the Speaker of the House in perpetuity.

That would be insane. Which is why while Josh Gottheimer and Rashida Tlaib don’t agree on a lot of things, they find enough things to agree on so that they can vote for the same Speaker of the House.

And yet that is exactly the logic Israel’s opposition is following.

Coalition politics 101 means you build governing majorities with people you don’t fully agree with. Israel’s opposition – Jewish parties and Arab parties alike – must accept this reality. Build the coalition, or hand the country back to extremists by default.

There is no third option.

Both Mansour Abbas and Yair Golan — two opposition leaders who support Jewish-Arab partnering — will be speaking at J Street Convention at the end of this month.

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I understand that reaction. These are painful comparisons, especially for American Jews who are appalled by the Trump administration’s cruelty toward immigrants and deeply uncomfortable — even outraged — by the actions of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extremist allies, but still recoil at putting these two situations in the same frame. It can feel wrong, even offensive, to suggest that they rhyme.

And to be clear from the outset: these situations are not identical. In our writing, we have been explicit about the differences. ICE is a formal state entity that is committing the violence and terrorizing communities. Settler violence in the West Bank is not officially state-sponsored — but it is routinely enabled, protected, and facilitated by the state in ways that, for all practical purposes, matter just as much.

Still, I want to walk through with some details and examples of why I think the analogy is fair — and why we have to confront the reality that what is happening in the West Bank today is state-enabled violence designed to dispossess people of land they have lived on for generations. That reality has uncomfortable echoes in what we are seeing in parts of the United States.

Awdah Hathaleen and Alex Pretti

Consider two cases.

Last summer, Yinon Levi — an extremist settler previously sanctioned by the Biden Administration (and unsanctioned by Trump) for violence against Palestinians — was filmed with a group of settlers who were driving a bulldozer into the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair destroying property. When residents tried to stop him, he pulled out a gun. Awdah Hathaleen — a Palestinian activist — filmed the incident and captured Levi firing the bullet that killed him. The video is pretty tough to watch:

Now look at what followed. Israeli authorities held the victim’s body for days, negotiating over funeral conditions to minimize unrest. The IDF’s initial response was to say that an Israeli civilian was attacked by “terrorists” who were throwing rocks at him. The IDF also raided the village and arrested multiple Palestinian men, holding them under administrative detention — an extraordinary legal mechanism that bypasses due process and is used almost exclusively against Palestinians.

The shooter? He was released within a day and, within a week, was back at the same village:

Ask yourself honestly: does this feel so fundamentally different from Alex Pretti filming a video, stepping in to protect a woman who was assaulted, being killed, and then being called a “terrorist” by the Trump Administration?

They are not the same — but they rhyme.

The role of ICE and the role of IDF Settler Reservist Units

In both contexts, security forces play a deeply troubling role.

In the U.S., we see ICE terrorizing communities on our screens every day. In the West Bank, it often works like this: since the war in Gaza began, IDF reserve units — many made up of settlers themselves — are often the ones patrolling the West Bank and responsible for security. Their mandate is to protect Jews, not Palestinians.

When extremist settlers go off in groups to attack Palestinian communities, these units often accompany them. They don’t initiate the violence, but when Palestinians try to defend themselves — throwing rocks, resisting attacks from extremist settlers — the IDF steps in to protect the Israeli assailants. Palestinians are arrested. Settlers are not.

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We have also seen many more instances of violent settlers being drafted directly into the reserves and then showing up in areas of the West Bank in uniform and committing these acts of violence. This is also a new development since October 7th, as IDF reserve units made up of settlers have expanded five-fold since the October 7th attacks.

Here is a video from just three days ago of IDF soldiers escorting settlers who stole 150 cattle from a Palestinian family.

And another video from last year of IDF soldiers standing by and escorting settlers while they attack and vandalize Palestinian communities.

Bureaucracy in Service of Extremism

Both the Trump administration and the current Israeli government’s extremist agendas are being advanced through the machinery of the state.

Americans have watched ICE and DHS violate court orders and shred the rule of law to pursue ideological goals. In Israel, a recent documentary on public television laid bare how senior ministers have deliberately built parallel bureaucratic systems to seize control over the West Bank — removing authority from the IDF and consolidating it in the hands of ideologues, while using loopholes and, in many cases, breaking Israeli law. And this is not hearsay — the documentary shows Smotrich bragging about this in an interview:

Land seizures; “illegal outposts” that are mysteriously connected to water, roads, and electricity systems almost instantly; “farms” that appear overnight, grab huge chunks of territory, and become bases for violence. This is not chaos conducted by hoodlums. The outposts and settler violence are part of a coordinated effort abetted by extremist elements within Netanyahu’s coalition to take over as much of the West Bank as possible.

When Israeli officials say these are just “bad apples,” they are obscuring the truth: these actors are part of the governing system and they actually brag about it on TV. Only when international pressure becomes overwhelming does anything change — and even then, only temporarily.

Dispossession as Policy

Finally, ICE’s actions are explicitly about removal and dispossession. So is what’s happening in the West Bank.

This isn’t just about random violence. Since 2023, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, 45 entire Palestinian communities have been erased by settler violence. These are small villages that comprise roughly 3,500 people whose living situation became so unbearable that they were forced to pick up and leave. I’ve stood in a building that used to be a school where you can still see desks and books amid the rubble.

On one visit, while we were in a recently attacked area, the IDF arrived — not to protect Palestinians, but to tell us to leave. As we drove out, we passed a settler monitoring us, clearly coordinating with the military whom he had alerted to our presence.

These aren’t isolated incidents. They are part of a systematic effort to make life untenable so people leave.

The Comparison Hurts but It’s Real

Is what’s happening in Minneapolis exactly the same as what’s happening in the West Bank? No. But let’s also be clear that what is happening in the West Bank is not just a few “bad apples” outside of the control of the state.

Both are symptoms of governments that no longer respect the rule of law, that deploy state power in service of authoritarian, racist, anti-democratic agendas, and that use violence — directly or indirectly — to dispossess vulnerable populations while denying accountability.

That is an extraordinarily painful reality for American Jews to confront. I don’t minimize that.

But I would urge anyone who visits Israel to also spend time in the West Bank. See this side of the story up close. Because if we care about democracy, about Jewish values, and about the future of both Israel and the United States, we can’t look away just because the comparison hurts.

Making this comparison does not mean condemning Israel and turning our backs on it, just as condemning the Trump administration does not mean abandoning American democracy. We fight for, and advocate for, the governments we want to see, grounded in the principles and values we were raised with as Americans and as Jews. As American Jews, we also have a responsibility to advocate for the Israel we want to see. And to do that, we have to be clear-eyed about what is actually happening on the ground.

Join me, and join J Street, in Washington, DC, from February 28 to March 3 for J Street’s National Convention, Building Tomorrow: Regional Peace & Resilient Democracy.

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Last Friday, something pretty stunning happened – something that fundamentally changes the potential trajectory of the US-Israel security relationship. It’s something I did not think was plausible even a few years ago. And yet, almost nobody noticed. It was barely covered. Barely discussed.

On Friday afternoon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an interview to The Economist in which he spoke openly about Israel’s desire, over the next decade, to end its dependence on US security assistance. On its own, that wasn’t entirely surprising. Netanyahu has gestured in this direction before and some of his hard-right allies have argued that ending this Israeli dependence will give Israel more freedom of action, especially with regards to policies towards the Palestinians.

What was surprising was that shortly after the interview, Senator Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees foreign operations and US security assistance, tweeted that he intended to work quickly to accelerate the end of American foreign military financing (FMF) for Israel – potentially even faster than Netanyahu himself was proposing. This is Lindsey Graham: a close supporter of Israel, a close political ally of Trump, and a longtime friend of Benjamin Netanyahu.

So what’s actually going on?

Let’s start with a reality check. The end of FMF does not mean the end of US-Israel security cooperation.

Israel will still buy American weapons – F-35s, F-15s, JDAMs, and more. Israeli-American collaboration on missile defense programs like Iron Dome will continue. Research and development cooperation will continue, including possibly joint funds that both sides pay into. Intelligence sharing and operational coordination will continue.

The difference is who pays.

For decades, the United States has provided billions (at this point roughly $4 billion a year) in FMF, which Israel then uses – almost entirely – to buy American military systems. Under the most recent memorandum of understanding due to expire in 2028, Israel has been winding down the use of American FMF to invest in Israeli defense companies, and by 2028, 100% of FMF will be invested in the US defense industrial base.

We don’t have the details yet on what exactly the new model Graham and Netanyahu are proposing is. But it appears Israel will still buy many of those weapons. It will just use its own money.

From purely a policy and intellectual standpoint, this shift makes sense.

Foreign military financing for Israel was originally established in the late 1970s as part of the Camp David framework, alongside aid to Egypt. The goal was to provide security guarantees and incentives to sustain peace treaties that were still fragile. We are long past that era.

Israel and Egypt today have many reasons to uphold their peace treaty, and FMF is not what’s holding it together. Meanwhile, Israel’s per-capita GDP is now comparable to that of America’s wealthiest democratic allies – countries like France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Israel plays in that league economically. It does not need $4 billion a year from the United States to buy weapons.

And there are real downsides for Israel to this exceptionalism. Providing Israel more FMF than any other country in the world – by far – puts an outsized political spotlight on the relationship and on the nature of US security assistance. As I wrote about last week, treating Israel like a normal, wealthy ally isn’t anti-Israel. It’s actually what we do with other capable partners who don’t need permanent subsidies to defend themselves.

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The political hypocrisy and double standard are off the charts.

When I saw the tweet from Graham I thought about what would have happened if we had tried to propose this during the Biden or Obama Administrations, or if Kamala Harris was President today. Let’s just say it wouldn’t have been an afterthought.

When the Biden Administration withheld one shipment of 2,000-pound bombs – a shipment worth a few million dollars – it triggered a code-red meltdown from the organized American Jewish community. Endless accusations that Biden and Democrats were “anti-Israel.” Nonstop outrage.

Now we have Lindsey Graham publicly saying not only that FMF for Israel should end, but that he wants to do it faster than the Israeli Prime Minister has proposed – and there is virtual radio silence …

Why?

According to reports, Netanyahu showed up at Mar-a-Lago at the end of last month concerned that a new 10- or 20-year memorandum of understanding with billions in guaranteed aid was not something Donald Trump was going to support. Providing billions in financial support to allies is, after all, not something Trump is known for.

Whether Trump explicitly told him that FMF was over, or Netanyahu preemptively adjusted his position, isn’t entirely clear. What is clear is that Bibi was afraid of being embarrassed by Trump or angering him, and therefore chose to take off the table an element of the US-Israel relationship that for years we had been told was absolutely inviolate. Until last week, anyone who might even question some of this security assistance was “anti-Israel.”

So where is the outrage? Where is the anger? Where are the emergency statements and press conferences from Jewish community leaders? Dead silence.

BTW did you hear about what a mid-level political appointee for the new mayor of New York City said 13 years ago about Israel?

Debates over accountability still matter.

Ending FMF does not mean ending debates about accountability.

Israel will still have a large arsenal of American weapons. It will still be buying American weapons. That means the debates about the use of American weapons in Gaza and the West Bank aren’t going away. US law still applies. And those laws apply not only to countries that receive FMF but also to countries that buy American weapons with their own money.

Given the reports of violations of Leahy Law standards, credible cases involving misuse of weapons in Gaza or the West Bank, and clear withholding of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the debate over whether guardrails should be put in place to restrict or condition US arms sales will continue to be a live issue.

If anything, this shift slightly lowers the emotional temperature. There’s a difference between ensuring proper use of weapons someone buys from you versus weapons you give them. But the standards themselves should remain basically the same.

Rethinking US leverage

For years, some argued that cutting off military assistance would fundamentally change Israeli behavior. But here we are, with an Israeli prime minister and a Republican senator essentially saying: Israel doesn’t need it.

So where is the leverage in the US-Israel relationship?

It’s political. It’s diplomatic. It’s in whether the United States shows up when Israel is under threat, as it did after October 7 – deploying forces, defending Israel against Iranian attacks, and backing it internationally as we were right to do. It’s in whether the US chooses to publicly support Israeli military and diplomatic actions or distance itself, as we should do when Israel acts irresponsibly and damages US interests. It’s in how the Israeli public perceives the relationship between the American president and Israeli prime minister, and the ramifications of that in Israeli politics (certainly this has been a massive leverage point for Trump). It’s in how we defend (or don’t defend) Israeli behavior at the United Nations and International Criminal Court . And yes, it’s partially in arms sales – but mainly as a political signal, not as a decisive material lever.

On the Palestinian issue, which Israeli leaders view as existential – especially on the right – Israel was never going to reverse course because of $4 billion a year. For a country as wealthy and capable as Israel, it simply isn’t that much money.

And Graham and Netanyahu made that unmistakably clear.

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In the aftermath of the war in Gaza, real debates are being waged across the Democratic Party about the future of the US–Israel relationship. These debates are happening in activist circles and on Capitol Hill, and now we are beginning to see serious discussions among experts in the national security community – people likely to staff the State Department, Pentagon, and White House in future Democratic administrations.

Since the end of the Biden Administration, most former officials have been far more comfortable talking about Russia and Ukraine, China, artificial intelligence, and Venezuela than grappling seriously with Israel–Palestine, the administration’s legacy on the issue, and how Democrats should approach Israel in future administrations. That reluctance is understandable. Views on the US response to October 7 and the war in Gaza are sharply divided, and it is far easier to coalesce around issues where there is broad consensus – and opposition to Donald Trump – than to engage a subject this sensitive and contentious.

But that silence is breaking. In recent weeks, three thoughtful pieces have been published by people I deeply respect – former government colleagues and still friends – each offering a different vision for how the United States should approach Israel going forward.

In The Atlantic, former US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro argues that the US and Israel still share many common interests and that the core of the US–Israel relationship should be preserved. When disagreements arise, Shapiro argues, the best approach is to use US support and the strength of the broader relationship to influence Israeli government behavior and reach mutual understandings.

Ben Rhodes, a former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama, argues in The New York Times that the “hug Bibi” approach to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed and that the United States must dramatically shift course.

And finally, in Foreign Affairs, Andrew Miller, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs, argues that it is time to end Israel’s exceptional status and treat it like a normal partner.

Together, these three pieces lay the groundwork for what we can expect the Israel debate inside the foreign policy community to look like as we head into 2026 – and, more importantly, 2028. And so, even though Jeremy and I have already had both Dan and Ben on our show, I felt it was important to further break down their arguments, assess the strengths and flaws as I see them, and explain where I come down.

The Old Strategy: Incremental Influence at Too High a Cost

Dan Shapiro’s core argument is that the United States and Israel share enduring common interests and values and that, while Israel’s conduct in Gaza was deeply flawed, maintaining close cooperation gives Washington its greatest leverage. We shouldn’t give Israel a blank check, he argues, but instead we should continue working closely with Israeli leaders to shape their behavior.

There is truth in this. I’ve seen it firsthand through years in government service. This approach is especially effective when the US and Israel are aligned on core objectives such as joint technology investments, economic cooperation, intelligence sharing, and ballistic missile defense. Even in more difficult cases – such as Iran policy – where the US and Israel share the objective of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and countering its proxies, but sometimes differ on tactics (diplomacy versus military action) or risk tolerance (how much domestic enrichment, if any, is acceptable), there is real value in working together to align assessments and use cooperation as influence.

But what if the US and Israel are fundamentally unaligned on basic objectives, as is the case with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Most Democrats and most Americans still believe the best outcome is one in which Israelis and Palestinians share the land and both peoples enjoy freedom and security. That is simply not how Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir see it. They seek Israeli dominance over Palestinians. You cannot resolve that on the margins.

Take, for example, the Rafah operation in the spring of 2024. Shapiro points to the US role as an example of success. We worked with and applied pressure on Israeli officials to reshape the operation, resulting in a more limited campaign, fewer civilian casualties than initially anticipated, and increased humanitarian access. I don’t dispute that assessment. I was working at the White House at the time, and our approach did make things better.

But here’s the problem: Most American officials knew then what is now obvious. Going into Rafah was never going to end the war or “defeat Hamas,” as Netanyahu claimed. It was not essential, as it was portrayed to be, and it predictably caused a massive humanitarian disaster – displacing roughly 1.3 million people to the coast, where many remain today. It also imposed a tremendous international cost on the United States, which was seen as complicit in the operation, particularly since American weaponry was used.

So what did US influence and consultation buy us? Marginal improvements to a fundamentally flawed operation that we knew would neither defeat Hamas nor advance any viable post-war strategy – because Israel refused to pursue the one thing that actually could defeat Hamas over time: Building an alternative Palestinian governance structure in Gaza, which inevitably meant working with the Palestinian Authority.

And this came after extraordinary American support. The United States provided roughly $14 billion in additional assistance after October 7, surged aircraft carriers to the region, deterred Israel’s adversaries, and stood by Israel diplomatically at every turn.

Is that really the best use of American leverage? Or should we have drawn a harder line and further distanced ourselves – making clear that US support would be meaningfully at risk if Israel pursued an operation that was strategically unnecessary, morally indefensible, and directly harmful to US interests?

My bottom-line conclusion about Shapiro’s argument is this: Close cooperation can influence Israeli actions at the margins, but it only works when our interests and values are aligned. When we are fundamentally at odds – as we often are on the Palestinian issue – we cannot induce meaningful Israeli course correction. In those cases, whatever marginal benefits come from consultation are outweighed by the damage to US credibility and by the fact that we end up abetting policies toward Palestinians that we oppose and that run counter to US interests and values. Accepting those costs in exchange for limited influence isn’t worth it.

End the Hug – but Don’t Throw the Baby Out With the Bathwater

Ben Rhodes gets something essential right. What he calls the “hug Bibi” strategy – trying to convince Netanyahu to change course through reassurance and cooperation – has failed and is discredited. It effectively hands carte blanche to an Israeli government whose policies often diverge sharply from US interests and values. I agree with that diagnosis. But I think he goes too far in two places.

My first disagreement is a quibble. Rhodes argues that “hug Bibi” has been the dominant strategy for most of the past 15 years under Obama and Biden. I see it more as a strategy that the Democratic Party has been evolving away from, with an increasing number of politicians and experts questioning the approach. In 2015, for example, Obama successfully secured passage of the Iran deal with overwhelming Democratic support despite strong objections from Netanyahu. After Netanyahu returned to power at the end of 2022 and began attacking Israel’s judiciary, Biden refused to host him at the White House for nearly a year and raised serious concerns about Israel’s trajectory.

After the October 7 attacks, Biden initially returned to his instinct of hugging Bibi, which I believe was correct in the immediate aftermath. But he kept hugging Bibi for too long and ultimately gave him too much space to perpetuate an unjust war that included horrific human rights violations.

My larger disagreement concerns one of Rhodes’s policy prescriptions. He argues that the United States should:

“ … Refuse to provide military assistance to a government that has committed war crimes; support the International Criminal Court in its work, whether it is focused on Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu; oppose any effort by Israel to annex the West Bank or ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip; invest in an alternative Palestinian leadership to Hamas that can ultimately govern a Palestinian state; [and] stand up for democracy in Israel as in the United States.”

I agree with most of this. Where Rhodes goes too far is in arguing for a complete cutoff of military assistance as long as Netanyahu remains in power. His position is that the US should provide no arms at all to the current Israeli government – including purely defensive systems like missile defense and Iron Dome – because of war crimes committed in Gaza.

That, in my view, cuts against US interests.

There are hundreds of thousands of American citizens living in Israel – roughly 5-10 percent of the population. October 7 was one of the deadliest days for American citizens since 9/11. Is the United States really prepared to withhold defensive systems that protect so many of its own citizens?

More broadly, it is critical to distinguish between Israel’s conduct toward Palestinians and its actions against Iran and its proxies. After October 7, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi Shia militias all joined the fight against Israel. In these arenas, the US and Israel worked closely together in ways that ultimately led to major setbacks for Iran and its proxies – an outcome clearly in the US interest. This is, in fact, the strongest version of Shapiro’s argument for cooperation.

In Lebanon, American advice and partnership convinced Israel not to retaliate immediately with a major regional war against Hezbollah in the days after October 7. When fighting eventually escalated in the summer and fall of 2024, US cooperation helped Israel conduct a limited war that dramatically weakened Hezbollah while avoiding a massive land invasion all the way to Beirut.

Similarly, after Iran overreacted to the killing of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general in Syria in the spring of 2024 and again to the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in the summer – launching hundreds of missiles at Israel – the United States worked with regional and European allies to coordinate Israel’s defense and restrain Israeli retaliation, helping to avoid a broader regional war. Even after Trump ultimately greenlit a short war against Iran – a major strategic mistake, in my view, that will fuel recurring conflict without eliminating Iran’s nuclear program – the US was able to dictate a rapid end through a ceasefire mediated with Qatar.

Just as Shapiro underestimates how often cooperation fails when US and Israeli interests diverge sharply, Rhodes goes too far in the other direction, proposing steps that would cut off elements of the US-Israel partnership that genuinely serve American interests in the Middle East.

Treating Israel as a Normal Friend

That brings me to Andrew Miller’s argument, which I believe best threads the needle. Miller argues that it is time to stop treating Israel as an exceptional case and instead treat it like a normal country – a close partner, yes, but one subject to the same rules as every other US ally.

When US and Israeli interests align, we should work closely together: intelligence sharing, joint technology development, economic ties, and military cooperation against shared regional threats.

But when our interests and values diverge – as they clearly do on the Palestinian issue – we should stop pretending otherwise. That means no special exemptions from US law. No unique Leahy Law carve-outs. No automatic diplomatic shielding at the UN or ICC when Israel violates international norms in Gaza or the West Bank. And real consequences when Israeli leaders interfere in American domestic politics.

It also means recognizing that Israel is now a wealthy country, with a per-capita GDP comparable to Japan, France, or the United Kingdom. There is no compelling reason it should continue receiving billions of dollars in unconditional US military aid. That does not mean an abrupt cutoff that destabilizes Israel’s security – but it does mean gradually phasing out military aid and transitioning to a normal arms-sales relationship, with the same conditions and accountability applied to every other partner.

To be clear, for those of us who deeply care about a U.S.-Israel relationship based on common values and interests, treating Israel “normally” does not mean walking away. At times, we have had real disagreements with some of our closest NATO allies. When we do, we agree to disagree and go our separate ways on an issue while continuing to sustain the overall relationship. The closeness of these relationships also wax and wane based on who is in power both in the U.S. and in Europe (Hopefully, the current administration doesn’t permanently torch these relationships). The same can and should apply to how we approach Israel.

Beyond being substantively correct, this approach has a major political advantage: it is easy to explain. “Israel is a friend and ally, and we should treat it like our other friends and allies – working together where we agree and withholding support where we don’t.” That is a common-sense argument voters understand. It works in a Democratic primary. It works with independents. It even works with many MAGA voters.

Normalizing the US-Israel relationship in clear, conventional foreign policy terms has another advantage. Antisemites on both the far left and far right routinely exploit the relationship, particularly when it is framed as exceptional, to advance conspiracy theories about hidden Jewish influence. Rightsizing the US’s diplomatic relationship with Israel reduces the space for those distortions to take hold.

The bottom line is that the era of pretending that the US–Israel relationship can be managed through personal trust, quiet persuasion, and unlimited support is over. That approach has delivered diminishing returns at growing cost to US interests, credibility, and values. At the same time, there is real value in the relationship, and so going too far in the other direction would also be harmful to both American and Israeli interests. A strategy grounded in normal alliance politics – cooperation where interests align and consequences where they don’t – is the best way to protect US interests. It is also the best way to sustain the US-Israel relationship, which is the best option for Israel’s long-term interests.

On Monday, President Trump will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago. What does Trump need to get out of this moment – and what should we realistically expect from this meeting?

In the run-up to the meeting, implementing the Gaza peace plan was clearly issue number one on the agenda for Trump. In recent days, disturbingly but unsurprisingly, we have started to see reporting that Netanyahu will lobby Trump to conduct more strikes on Iran.

Let’s take a look at what Trump and his advisors should try to accomplish in this meeting and in the flurry of diplomatic activity that is likely to surround it. I’ll be honest that I doubt they can actually pull this off, or that they’ll even pursue the strategies I’m recommending, but this is what I would advise them to do.

Another Iran Conflict? Absolutely Not

For those of us who were deeply skeptical of the so-called 12-day war in June, it’s hardly surprising that – just six months after Israel and the United States supposedly “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program – reports are already emerging that Benjamin Netanyahu plans to present new Iran war options to Donald Trump.

This is the core flaw in the Trump–Netanyahu approach to Iran. By launching a preventive war with no clear endgame, they blew up any realistic path to diplomacy – only to discover what was always obvious: Iran’s nuclear program was set back, not permanently destroyed. Permanent destruction was never a realistic outcome. And so here we are again, exactly where many of us warned we would be – locked into a cycle of recurring instability and periodic wars between Israel and Iran.

That cycle is a disaster for all parties. It’s a disaster for the Israeli public if every six to twelve months the country is forced into one- or two-week stretches of life in bomb shelters. It’s a disaster for the Gulf states, who see missiles flying over their airspace – or, worse yet, hitting U.S. bases within their borders – as profoundly destabilizing and directly undermining their central goal of economic diversification beyond oil. It’s a disaster for both the Iranian regime and its civilian population, who sustained major losses during the last war. And it’s a major strategic distraction for the United States, which risks being repeatedly dragged into conflicts that do nothing to advance its long-term interests.

A deal that puts verifiable limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for some levels of sanctions relief was the best option in 2015 when President Obama negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It was the best option in 2018 when Trump walked away from the deal. And it was the best option last spring when Trump allowed Netanyahu to spike negotiations and go to war. It remains the best option today.

Hopefully, Trump shuts down Netanyahu’s talk of war – and there are reasons to think he might. Having declared Iran’s nuclear program permanently destroyed just six months ago, another war would be deeply embarrassing. He may prefer to keep polishing his Nobel Peace Prize narrative by focusing on progress in Gaza.

But Netanyahu has persuaded Trump to strike Iran once before. There’s no guarantee he won’t succeed again.

Pushing for Phase 2 on Gaza

When it comes to Gaza, before we can even talk about Phase 2, it’s important to remember that the U.S. still needs to push harder on humanitarian aid. Conditions in Gaza are better than during the war – but aid flows remain inadequate. Commercial goods are getting in because they make people money, but humanitarian aid is subject to much tougher restrictions. That double standard must stop, and the U.S. must pressure Israel to end this practice.

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As for the peace plan, neither the Netanyahu government nor Hamas really want to move to Phase 2 of the agreement, when doing so would ultimately result in Hamas being replaced and disarmed, and in Israel withdrawing from Gaza.

Netanyahu is relatively comfortable controlling roughly half of Gaza. Hamas has reasserted its control in the other half. Civilians are trapped in between, in better conditions than those they endured during the war, but still in misery and with little hope of improvement. Netanyahu can avoid taking steps that could eventually lead to a Palestinian alternative to Hamas controlling Gaza – a development he is extremely eager to avoid, as it could ultimately lead to reunification between Gaza and the West Bank and a pathway to a Palestinian state. Hamas does not have to take steps that would ultimately lead to its own displacement or even disarmament.

Everyone says they agreed to the 20-point plan. But in reality, neither side wants to implement the parts that would move the region onto a meaningfully different long-term path.

That’s exactly why moments like this meeting matter. Trump still has tremendous leverage over Netanyahu because of his popularity with Netanyahu’s voting base. And he has significant leverage with Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt, who do not want to anger an unpredictable American President. They, in turn, have significant leverage over Hamas. So if Trump and his team want to make progress on Phase 2, they are going to need to use this moment to apply a lot of pressure on all of the parties, as they did to reach the initial ceasefire.

What Trump Needs From Israel

As I’ve written about previously, everything begins with the international stabilization force. It is the linchpin of the entire strategy. Without it, nothing else works. But to make that force viable, Trump needs several critical commitments from Israel.

1. Acceptance that the ISF works through Palestinians – especially the Palestinian Authority

The international force is not going to fight Hamas on the front lines or in tunnels. It will operate by supporting, training, and standing behind local Palestinian security forces.

In the real world, that means the Palestinian Authority has to play a central role. Netanyahu has spent years trying to sideline the PA, because empowering it raises the specter of Gaza–West Bank reunification and a pathway to a two-state outcome. Instead, Israel has experimented with alternatives – gangs, local militias, anyone but the PA. It hasn’t worked. It’s been chaotic and, frankly, absurd.

Yes, the PA has its shortcomings. But it is the only Palestinian entity with existing legitimacy, institutional depth, and real security forces. And without a PA role, Arab states will not participate. Period.

So far, the Trump team has been accommodating of Netanyahu’s objections to PA participation. That needs to change. An Israeli commitment to allow PA security forces to work with the international stabilization force may be the single hardest and important thing Trump needs to extract from Netanyahu. Without it, Hamas will continue to control Gaza and Phase 2 will go nowhere.

2. A realistic approach to Hamas disarmament

Israel also needs to accept reality on disarmament. Full, upfront Hamas disarmament is not realistic. It never has been. Disarmament is a phased process that happens over years as Hamas is replaced by alternative governing and security structures and steadily weakened.

That doesn’t mean there are no immediately achievable steps that can be taken upfront – but it does mean abandoning the fantasy of immediate, total surrender. If Israel insists on that fantasy, Phase 2 will die before it begins.

3. A real path for IDF withdrawal

Israel must agree that once an international force deploys into Israeli-controlled areas of Gaza, this will quickly lead to IDF redeployments.

Without that commitment, no serious country will participate. No one wants to be seen as enabling a permanent Israeli occupation of Gaza under another name.

4. Openness to Turkish participation in the ISF

This one is more of a “nice to have” than a must – but it matters. Turkey is one of the few countries that has both military capacity and an expressed willingness to deploy forces to Gaza. There is deep Israeli distrust of Turkey – understandably – but the list of alternatives is thin. Egypt will have to be part of it, but doesn’t want to be seen as going in on its own. Indonesia, Italy, and other European and Asian states have been discussed, but don’t have on-the-ground knowledge or relationships.

Turkey knows Gaza and its military has real capability. It also has a strong relationship with Hamas, giving it both leverage and credibility with the organization. This could prove invaluable in getting Hamas to accept the force and taking extra steps to avoid firing at it. Trump has a strong relationship with Erdogan. If Turkey is in the force, he’ll be able to lean on Erdogan, who will lean on Hamas. So, if Trump can get Netanyahu to accept a Turkish role, it could significantly strengthen the force.

What Trump Needs From Hamas – Via Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey

To keep moving Phase 2 along, Trump and his advisors will also need to get concessions directly from Hamas. Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey will have to do the heavy lifting. They need to press Hamas as hard as they did during the culmination of the ceasefire negotiations – putting it in a corner where it sees no better option than agreeing.

1. A commitment not to attack the international force or Palestinian security forces

This is basic, but essential. Hamas must agree to accept and not to fire on the international stabilization force and not to attack Palestinian police or security units supported by that force. Without this guarantee, no one will deploy.

Why would Hamas agree to this? Hamas is weak. It believes it can survive by relinquishing some power, going underground, and trying to remain the primary power broker in Gaza by leveraging what remains of its political clout and any small arms it can hold onto. But our gamble has to be that if the plan works and the ISF and supported Palestinian forces are able to deploy and work with a transitional Palestinian technocratic government entity, then over time Hamas will keep getting weaker and more marginalized. Eventually, it will have to give up its remaining arms.

2. Initial, visible steps toward disarmament

While Israeli insistence on full disarmament is a poison pill, Hamas needs to agree to some credible early steps on decommissioning its arms. That could include giving up heavy weapons – rockets and anti-tank systems – or placing certain arms under the custody of the ISF. These steps would signal that Hamas is actually living up to its commitments and create political space for the Israeli government to keep moving on its commitments by demonstrating that this plan could credibly lead to the complete defeat and disarmament of Hamas.

What Trump Needs From the Arab States

Beyond pressuring Hamas, the U.S. also needs the Arab states themselves to step up.

1. Real participation in the international force

This is the hardest piece in terms of international support. So far, there is little enthusiasm from the Arab and Muslim states to insert forces into Gaza. None are willing to do this alone, and mostly don’t want the ISF to be seen as a nominally “Arab” force doing Israel’s bidding. But it’s also true that this cannot work without at least Egyptian and possibly Turkish participation, since these are countries that actually know Gaza and understand its inner workings better than any other country. With their participation, you can get support from others, including Indonesia, Pakistan, and potentially European states like Italy or the UK.

Understandably, none of these countries want to go in if there isn’t a clear mandate and set of missions. I would argue for three central roles: a) support the local Palestinian security forces and police force that is set up to provide security on the ground in Gaza; b) reduce friction along the “yellow line” so that we stop having incidents where Palestinian civilians accidentally cross the line and the IDF responds with lethal force; and c) provide a secure environment for the provision of humanitarian aid. Importantly, the mission is not to directly fight it out with Hamas. No one would agree to do that.

2. Unity behind the Palestinian transitional entity

There is reportedly agreement amongst the PA, Hamas, Israel, and Egypt on a potential list of Palestinian technocrats who would temporarily govern Gaza. However, not all of the Arab states are in agreement on the potential names, and given that the Arab states will play a central role not just in providing troops but also in helping finance parts of the reconstruction of Gaza, sign off and agreement by Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the UAE on the Palestinian transitional governing entity for Gaza is important.

The UAE, in particular, has taken a hard line on the composition of the governance entity, driven by deep hostility and skepticism toward President Abbas (at least partially driven by advice they get from Abbas’ chief rival, Mohammed Dahlan, who is close to the Emirati leadership). At some point, the U.S. has to put its foot down and insist that this infighting has to stop. Reform the PA, yes – but don’t hold the entire process hostage.

3. Buy-in to the Board of Peace

Honestly, I still don’t understand the need for this high-level Board of Peace run by Trump. You don’t need a group of world leaders presiding over the future of Gaza, and the concept reeks of colonialism. But if this keeps Trump and the U.S. deeply engaged and therefore leads to progress, I support it. In the immediate term, Trump needs to nail down the participation of Arab leaders in this board and announce it.

The Bottom Line

None of this is easy, and of course I’m skeptical that any of it is possible. It doesn’t help that the U.S. policy apparatus is incredibly thin – largely centered around Witkoff, Kushner, and a small team that lacks the institutional depth this type of massive effort requires.

It’s even harder with an Israeli government that resists every step. Hopefully, with elections next year in Israel, that could change. And, obviously, negotiating with Hamas is no easy task either.

Still, the alternative is accepting a divided Gaza, frozen in a miserable status quo, until the next war erupts. And so we have no choice but to hope and encourage Trump to use this meeting as a moment of leverage to try to move things in the right direction.

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I spent the past weekend at the Doha forum – a massive conference with more than 5,000 participants from across the Middle East, the United States and around the globe. When it came to Gaza, one thing was clear: Everyone is waiting for the next move in the American 20-point peace plan. There are three central components to this plan: (1) The Board of Peace – the international mechanism for managing post-conflict reconstruction efforts for Gaza; (2) a Palestinian technocratic transitional entity to govern the Strip; and (3) the International Stabilization Force (ISF) that would ultimately create a security environment to replace Hamas.

By far the most complex and critical piece of this is the international force. Without it, there is no security on the ground, and without that, nothing else works. Yet there was little consistency, including from the Egyptian, Turkish, or Qatari foreign ministers, about what this force would actually look like, how it might come to fruition, what it would do, or how it fits into an eventual transition away from Hamas rule. And it wasn’t just the officials. I spoke to numerous experts who had different views on what this entity was meant to accomplish and how. The ambiguity is understandable. This is incredibly complex. But it is also disturbing. More than two months into a ceasefire and with an urgent need to transition to the next phase, there needs to be more public clarity on where this is all going.

When I was at the White House during the first year of the Gaza war, I spent a lot of time thinking about this force and the overall approach to post-conflict planning. I think there is a plausible theory of the case. Not a guaranteed path, but a realistic one. And it’s worth walking through it, step by step.

What is the theory of the case?

At its core, the theory is simple: you cannot transform Gaza politically unless you transform Gaza’s security reality. Basic counterinsurgency 101 says you need a legitimate, functioning alternative to the existing monopoly on force. Right now, that monopoly is Hamas. As long as Hamas remains the primary security provider – deciding disputes, enforcing order, intimidating opponents – no political shift will take root.

Ultimately, Palestinians themselves must provide security in a post-Hamas Gaza. Only a Palestinian force can credibly police Palestinian society. But such a force cannot appear magically. It needs time, space, training, and protection. And that’s the purpose of the international stabilization force: not to replace Palestinians but to create the conditions in which a genuine, grounded, Palestinian security structure that is not Hamas can emerge.

What would the force do?

The force would take on several tasks that we know – through painful experience – are essential in a transition like this. Think back to the “by, with, and through” model that was CENTCOM and the international coalition’s mantra for years as it fought ISIS: Partnering with local forces, helping them organize, providing logistical and intelligence support and creating breathing room for them to become credible actors.

In Gaza, the stabilization force should help train and enable new Palestinian police and security units; secure the routes for humanitarian aid; stabilize sensitive areas along the yellow line where incidents keep occurring; and offer a protective umbrella under which Palestinian institutions can regrow. The goal isn’t to run Gaza – it’s to shepherd the creation of an alternative to Hamas that Palestinians themselves will own.

Who would be in the force?

The ideal anchor is Egypt. No country understands Gaza better, and no country has more credibility with Hamas or more influence over what happens at the border. Turkey is the other major player with the military capacity and relationships to contribute meaningfully. Getting Israel to accept a Turkish role would be difficult, but perhaps not impossible – especially if Trump, who has a strong relationship with Erdoğan, leans on Netanyahu. With one or both of those as the anchors, you could also bring in others who have experience in peacekeeping, even if less of an understanding of the situation on the ground.

The US’s role is more ambiguous. Washington has signaled it will appoint a two-star general to help oversee the effort, but insists no US troops will enter Gaza. That’s awkward: It gives the US responsibility without control. Still, every participating country wants Americans involved in some way. For the Israelis, it gives the force greater credibility. For the Arab states – some of whom would participate – a US presence virtually guarantees Israel won’t mistakenly fire on the mission.

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Where does the Palestinian force come from?

There is no ready-made “Palestinian national security force for Gaza” waiting in the wings. The Palestinian Security Forces (PASF) under the auspices of the PA is the closest option. But there is strong resistance from Netanyahu and his coalition partners to getting the PASF in, and Trump would have to be willing to spend a lot of political capital pushing Bibi on that, which he should. But even that is going to take a while, both because the PA doesn’t necessarily have the capacity yet and would have to have more forces trained to do this, and because it’s not clear that you could just bring in a bunch of guys from the West Bank to secure Gaza and have them have any legitimacy.

So the best option is probably to pull from multiple sources at once and see what begins to cohere. Some forces are already being trained in Egypt and Jordan under PA auspices. Some former PA security officers remain inside Gaza and could return to service. There are also “blue police” – basic municipal police officers who worked under Hamas but aren’t necessarily ideologically tied to it, and may shift allegiances once a credible alternative emerges.

The US has been through different versions of this problem many times in recent years. In Iraq, we flipped entire tribal structures away from their alliance with Al Qaeda during the Anbar Awakening in 2007 and 2008. In Syria, we built a patchwork of Kurdish and Arab tribal partners that ultimately helped defeat ISIS. We also had spectacular failures, like the $500 million effort to stand up a Syrian rebel force that collapsed in days (the folks that killed those guys are now running Syria, and we are working with them and just removed sanctions). The lesson is clear: You have to experiment, adapt, and work with what’s actually on the ground, not what you wish was there.

What about fighting Hamas?

This is where many people misunderstand the concept. The international force is not going in to fight Hamas. No country would sign up for that mission, and it would be a disaster if they tried. The force will not be waging firefights in the alleys of Gaza. Instead, the idea is to create a political and military environment in which there are understandings – Hamas does not attack the force, and the force refrains from attacking Hamas.

If Egypt and/or Turkey are central players in the force, Hamas will think twice before shooting at it. And those two countries, along with Qatar, have the relationships to essentially cut a deal with Hamas in advance to avoid shooting at each other. And as we have already seen, Hamas generally tends to fold when the entire world unites in a position against it (e.g. on the ceasefire agreement that ended the war). It is not hard to imagine a mutually understood set of red lines: the force is there to protect civilians and build an alternative, not to hunt Hamas, and Hamas agrees not to treat it as a military enemy and refrains from attacking it or the Palestinian forces being set up in Gaza.

What about disarmament?

Expecting Hamas to surrender all its weapons upfront – especially while the IDF is still in Gaza – is simply unrealistic. No insurgent group in history has done this, and insisting on it now ensures paralysis. Disarmament has to happen in stages. Early steps might involve giving up certain categories of weapons – especially rockets or heavy weaponry – or putting them into monitored storage.

The real progress will come as, over time, Palestinian security forces grow, political pressure builds and Hamas’ leverage shrinks. As Hamas loses power and leverage, it may be willing to accept more disarmament. And Hamas is far more likely to hand over weapons to a Palestinian-led force with Arab and international backing than to the IDF.

The strongest counterargument is that this would just recreate the Hezbollah model but in Gaza – where the Lebanese Armed Forces were in place, but Hezbollah remained the most important power broker. However, there is a better chance this play could work in Gaza than in Lebanon, because in Lebanon, Hezbollah had easy resupply routes with weapons being flown in from Iran to Damascus and then shipped to the Bekaa Valley. Gaza’s borders can be locked down in ways Lebanon’s never were, which means rearmament will be much harder, potentially shifting the power dynamic.

Why would Hamas accept this?

It’s a fair question, and the answer starts with reality: Hamas is in an extremely weak position. They’ve already accepted the idea of giving up governance to a technocratic committee. If Qatar, Egypt, Turkey and the rest of the region come to them with a unified plan backed by the global community, Hamas will face enormous pressure – and very limited alternatives.

Their internal calculation may look something like Hezbollah’s in Lebanon: allow a new governance structure to emerge, preserve some residual role, and hope to rebuild influence. Hamas will assume it can survive and have the “Hezbollah model” take root. The point of the stabilization force and the growing Palestinian security force would be to steadily prove otherwise.

So where does all of this leave us?

This will be messy. It may fail. It will certainly take time. But there are real reasons not to dismiss the idea out of hand. Gaza is geographically small. Its borders can be controlled. The international community, for once, is unusually aligned and mobilized. And the US actually knows how to do parts of this – not perfectly, but well enough to give it a fighting chance.

Would it have been better if this planning had started two years ago? Of course. Many of us pushed hard for exactly that. Netanyahu shut it down because it meant admitting that Palestinians would ultimately govern Gaza, and we are now playing catch-up on one of the most complicated state-building challenges imaginable. But we are where we are. The question now is whether we try something ambitious and difficult – or whether we resign ourselves to the status quo, where Hamas rules part of Gaza, Israel occupies another part, civilians suffer endlessly, and nothing ever improves.

This plan isn’t a panacea. It won’t erase Hamas overnight. But it might create space for a legitimate Palestinian alternative to grow and slowly marginalize Hamas. And while there is also a scenario where Gaza becomes Lebanon or Iraq with multiple entities, including Hamas exercising and competing for power, that would still be better than a Hamas monopoly of power in Gaza.

Ideally, this plan should be tied as much as practicable to the Palestinian Authority. And if it is conducted in parallel to an international effort in the West Bank that includes: Real reform of the Palestinian Authority; a shift by the Israeli government away from its 15-year strategy of undermining Palestinian moderates and empowering extremists (only possible after elections and a new Israeli government); and a mobilized international effort to fund and support the Palestinian Authority including through recognition of statehood, it could open the door to a unified Palestinian political project that includes both the West Bank and Gaza.

It’s a long shot. But the alternative of not trying at all and settling for the status quo – a permanently divided Gaza with a next round of fighting all but inevitable – is far worse.

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This weekend, two Palestinian boys – Fadi and Goma, just eight and eleven years old – were killed for crossing the artificial “yellow line” that now separates the areas of Gaza controlled by Israel and by Hamas. The IDF’s official statement said it had “identified two suspects” who were “conducting suspicious activities on the ground,” and that the air force “eliminated the suspects in order to remove the threat.” These “suspects” were children gathering firewood.

This horrific incident raises a question that a lot of us are struggling with: How can we say there’s a “ceasefire” when horrifying incidents like this keep happening, and more than 300 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire went into effect?

This new reality is more complicated than what came before. As the war went on, our goals became crystal clear: Stop the bombing, get the hostages out and get aid in. Now that the war is over, the daily reality for Gazans has improved, but it is still nowhere near acceptable. At the same time, the best route forward – the only one with any real chance – is the 20-point US peace plan that all sides have nominally endorsed. But that plan is being actively undermined every day. Netanyahu wants to avoid any path that leads to Palestinian statehood. Hamas wants to avoid any path that leads to its disarmament. And the Trump Administration, which deserves credit for negotiating the ceasefire in the first place, is moving too slowly, distracted by a new initiative to end the war in Ukraine, and still operating with some of the faulty assumptions that resulted in the total Gaza aid cutoff we saw in the first half of 2025 and the catastrophic Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) experiment.

So yes, it’s complicated. Here’s how I try to grapple with it:

First, we have to be clear: The situation is still horrific – both in Gaza and the West Bank.

The war as we knew it in Gaza is over, and conditions – while still dire – are fundamentally different from the past two years. The mass death toll and nightly airstrikes that killed an estimated 70,000 Palestinians have stopped, aid is entering the Strip at higher levels and all living hostages have been returned. It is inaccurate to describe the reality today by saying “there is no ceasefire.”

But we also have to be realistic about what is happening. Gaza before October 7, 2023 was already in crisis; today’s Gaza is in far worse shape. Over the past two months, more than 300 Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes, often because small clashes between Hamas and the IDF trigger an excessive Israeli response that – as has been consistent throughout this war – kills an intolerable number of civilians.

Every crossing of the poorly defined yellow line bisecting Gaza cannot result in Israel shooting first and asking questions later after civilians have been killed. Hamas was supposed to begin disarming and allow others to come in. Instead, it has violently reasserted control over its half of Gaza. Israel was supposed to allow the Rafah crossing to open; it hasn’t. The Netanyahu government has loosened its restrictions on aid, but the amount getting in remains insufficient. At J Street, we have and will continue to call attention to these issues.

And the West Bank is not a separate story. Just this week, we saw a video of IDF soldiers shooting and killing Palestinian suspects who were clearly on their knees, disarmed and surrendering. Ben-Gvir’s first instinct was to promote the commander involved. If this much is captured on one phone video, imagine the images we’re not seeing.

Settler violence is spiking while the number of investigations into those actions plummets. The data speaks for itself.

It’s why J Street keeps pushing the West Bank Violence Prevention Act, which now has more than 100 supporters in the House and a growing number in the Senate.

Second, we have to keep calling for full implementation of the American postwar plan while being clear-eyed about the challenges.

The 20-point plan remains the best route available. I worked on versions of similar plans during the Biden Administration, and the basic logic is the same: Stabilize Gaza with an international force, build an interim Palestinian governance structure and create a pathway to a unified Palestinian state. But Netanyahu and Hamas want this plan to fail for different reasons. For Netanyahu, it leads to a Palestinian state he will never accept. For Hamas, it ends with them weakened, disarmed and replaced. So both sides are working – openly and quietly – to freeze the situation in place, with Gaza split in half and no political horizon.

The only actor with the ability to prevent that outcome is the United States, working with Arab states. But the Trump Administration is hardly a model of discipline or consistency. They say the right things some days, then lose interest the next. They’ve already drifted toward Ukraine, with Kushner and Witkoff apparently investing most of their attention there and Trump declaring – absurdly – that his Middle East plan has already achieved “enduring peace.” None of this inspires confidence.

Still, when they do something right, we should say so. The recent UN Security Council resolution is one example. Was it perfect? Not close. Did it contain all the language I would have wanted on Palestinian statehood and past UNSC resolutions? No. But that was never what this resolution was going to be. Its purpose was to authorize an international stabilization force. And for many countries, UN authorization was the only way they’d agree to participate. On that core question, the resolution did what it needed to do. That matters.

But then there are the moments when the administration is clearly heading in the wrong direction – and we need to call that out just as forcefully. The biggest problem right now is the apparent US willingness to go along with Netanyahu’s “red line” forbidding any Palestinian Authority (PA) involvement in Gaza. That’s simply not workable. There is no alternative Palestinian governance structure waiting to be invented. We’ve just seen two years of failed experiments trying to create one from scratch in Gaza.

Rejecting the PA outright is like saying, “I hate the US government under Trump, so let’s just build an entirely new American government from zero.” Governments don’t work that way. Any serious plan requires PA involvement – especially PA security forces, who actually have a real track record of coordination with Israel and the US. If the Trump Administration is indeed planning for a Gaza without the PA, we should be raising every alarm bell we have.

There’s a whole range of issues in the middle where we should be skeptical but still open-minded. Trump’s “Board of Peace,” for example, risks looking like a colonial overseer. When I worked on these types of plans, we always acknowledged a need for an international coordinating mechanism, but I never expected the Palestinian transitional entity running Gaza to report to it instead of working with it. On the other hand, forcing Trump and other world leaders to take long-term responsibility for Gaza’s stabilization could have value. I’m not optimistic, but I’m not dismissing it outright.

Then there’s the idea of building “Alternative Safe Communities” on the Israeli side to draw Palestinians in and create a model for rebuilding Gaza. As long as the IDF is in charge, this is a non-starter. Palestinians trust the IDF even less than they trust Hamas, and they are certainly not going to walk toward a border where they are currently being shot at. The fact that the idea is being concocted by many of the same people who brought us the GHF mechanism over the summer also makes me deeply suspicious. But if an international force takes over these areas and the IDF withdraws, maybe there’s a narrow version of this idea that could help. In post-conflict environments, you have to try a lot of things. Some will fail – spectacularly. (Think of the $500 million US program in Syria that produced maybe 100 fighters who were immediately routed). Others, like the initial partnership with the Kurds in Northeast Syria, started small and blossomed into key pillars of US strategy as they led to success on the ground. So I’m willing to be open to supporting these communities as long as they are one of a number of initiatives, and the US is also focused on concepts that can work on the Hamas-controlled side of Gaza.

Disarming Hamas is another example. Everyone agrees on the end goal; the question is when and how. Israel wants it up front. That’s not realistic. The sequence has to be: Replace Hamas governance and security mechanisms, weaken them, then disarm. The US understands this intellectually, but the question is whether the Trump Administration is willing to push Israel hard enough to operationalize it.

This is the reality we’re in. It’s messy. It’s contradictory. It’s excruciating.

And so what we need is a kind of double vision. Keep shining a light on the daily injustices and calling for better. Support the US peace plan because it’s the only viable path, while calling out Netanyahu and Hamas when they sabotage it. Support the Trump Administration when it moves in the right direction, and challenge it when it heads off a cliff. And in the wide space in between, stay skeptical but open – insisting that we try multiple approaches rather than betting everything on one untested idea.

That’s the only way to navigate this incredibly complicated moment: With moral clarity, strategic realism and a willingness to hold more than one truth at the same time.

For years, the safe political move for Congressional candidates on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was simple: Support Israel no matter what. A small, organized and well-funded group of American Jews treated the issue as a threshold question in elections, and most candidates decided it wasn’t worth antagonizing them. The result was policy that was bad for Israel, bad for Palestinians, and didn’t reflect where most American Jews and Democratic voters actually stood. J Street was created to fix this political distortion and expand the space for a more responsible US approach – and it has made real progress over the past 15 years. Increasingly, right-wing Israeli governments aligning with the GOP have also been a key factor in opening up much more room for honest debate within the Democratic Party and the American Jewish community itself.

But now something more transformative is happening. It started a few months after October 7 as the war in Gaza wrought relentless devastation. And with the upcoming elections in 2026 and 2028, we are likely to see the transformation come fully into focus.

Simply put: The old playbook is dead. Democrats are going to need a new way to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and about Israel – and they are already starting to do it.

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Shifting Sands

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not dominate the election cycle the way affordability, healthcare and democracy will, but US policy toward Israel is no longer a niche concern for a small minority of voters.

It has entered the mainstream, and even though it doesn’t show up in the polling on the list of priorities, the positions candidates take are read as broader signals about their values, judgment and view of the world.

A candidate who sticks to the old playbook – reflexively supporting Israel, placing near-exclusive blame on Palestinians, paying lip service to two states while opposing any meaningful steps to get there, and giving an extreme right-wing Israeli government a blank check – will be noticed by their constituents. And the message voters will hear in a Democratic primary or even a general election is: I am the establishment. I am a Washington insider. I support the old ways.

That’s a losing message, and not just in Democratic primaries, given broad voter dissatisfaction with the status quo and the fact that both Democrats and independents have become more critical of Israeli policy in recent years. Yes, a handful of older voters and donors may reward it, but it’s a dead end.

The opposite message – embracing an anti-Zionist or post-Zionist platform, calling Israel a settler colonial project, demanding a full arms embargo, and foregrounding the word “genocide” – may feel satisfying among segments of the left. The message many more moderate Democrats and independents will hear is: I’m more concerned with out-of-touch intra-party fights than fighting for your needs.

Democrats shouldn’t fool themselves into thinking that Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral election victory in heavily progressive New York City is an affirmation of anti- or post-Zionist politics. He won because he is a charismatic and effective communicator who offered bold, unapologetic, attention-grabbing policies that were laser-focused on affordability. And even in a city that sits far to the left of the national electorate, his Israel position was still one of his greatest political liabilities, as his opponents used those positions to unjustifiably try and portray him as an antisemite.

Embracing this kind of position in many ways would be akin to the mistake a small group of Democrats made in 2020 in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, when they interpreted genuine national concern over police behavior as a signal to take positions on defunding the police that were far outside the mainstream. Democrats shouldn’t repeat that mistake. Real horror from the American public over Gaza indicates clear opposition to the Israeli government’s actions and policies, but does not translate into broad support for a total abandonment and disconnection from Israel.

Key Messages

All of this is, of course, complicated, but the good news for candidates is that there is a lane that threads the needle – allowing Democrats to demonstrate that they are breaking with the practices of the past while not swerving too far outside the mainstream. And as is so often the case, good politics also happens to be good policy.

1. Lead with humanity: Acknowledge the horrors of October 7 and the war in Gaza – and place responsibility where it belongs.

Voters want to elect people with empathy, not foreign-policy nerds (And I know I’m a foreign policy nerd). Candidates should speak honestly and specifically about the trauma on both sides of this conflict: The horror Israelis experienced on October 7 and the devastating suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as the West Bank.

And they should not speak in the passive voice. Hamas bears responsibility for the 10/7 terrorist attacks and for triggering so much of the catastrophic suffering in Gaza. Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing government bear responsibility for much of the immense suffering in Gaza, the immoral conduct of the war, and the way in which they prolonged the war to stay in power despite opposition from the Israeli public and hostage families.

2. Make clear that Israel is a friend, but the blank check era is over.

Israel is a close ally, and it is often in our interest to work together. But friendship doesn’t mean unconditional support for actions that are against US interests and values. As we saw with the ceasefire that ended the war in Gaza, it was American pressure that helped bring about a deal that the overwhelming majority of the Israeli public wanted but Netanyahu and his allies long resisted. The US has leverage, and there are times when we must use it.

Candidates have multiple policy options to back this point. They can support Iron Dome funding while calling for restrictions on offensive weapons until a more responsible Israeli government is in place, or condition them on Israel implementing its parts of the 20-point peace plan. They can state that Israel should be subject to the same arms transfer standards as every other country, including adherence to American and international humanitarian law: If there is evidence of violations, restrictions must follow.

3. Pledge to use US leadership and apply pressure on both sides to end this conflict once and for all.

Candidates should say clearly that we cannot return to the pre-October 7th status quo. The conflict needs to end, and the United States must help end it. The best path is full implementation of the American peace plan that was associated with the Gaza ceasefire.

The hostages have come home, and the fighting has mostly stopped, but Gaza remains in agony, and the ceasefire is fragile. We need to follow through and implement the rest of the plan. Extremists on both sides – Hamas and Netanyahu – prefer a frozen status quo where Gaza stays divided and hopeless. We cannot allow that.

The US, working especially with Arab partners, must apply real pressure on both sides to implement the deal that leads to reconstruction in Gaza, a credible Palestinian government, a Palestinian state and Israel fully integrated into the region.

(And if a candidate wants to appeal to the center, it doesn’t hurt to acknowledge that – even while disagreeing with him on almost everything – Donald Trump played a role in securing the ceasefire).

4. Stay away from divisive labels and focus on what matters

People hold fundamentally different views about whether what happened in Gaza meets the definition of genocide. Rather than debating labels, I am much more concerned with what has happened and is still happening in Gaza. Ultimately, international courts – not candidates – will render a legal judgement on the issue of genocide in the years to come.

Rather than engage in this debate, candidates should pivot to what matters more: “I’m less focused on what you call it. I’m horrified by the suffering that both Palestinians and Israelis have experienced and am focused on ending it, stabilizing the ceasefire and addressing the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.”

Similarly, calling for a total arms embargo against Israel does not reflect the type of pragmatic policy position that most voters support. There is not a significant portion of the electorate that objects to the idea of providing Israel with Iron Dome and other ballistic missile defense systems that are being used to shoot down missiles targeting civilian populations, not just from Gaza but from Iran, Yemen and other parts of the Middle East. And calling for an end to that support is bad policy and will leave candidates open to political attack.

Two Redlines

Not all candidates will take this advice. Some will lean into the support for Israel no matter what stance, while others will go hard left to anti- or post-Zionism. But there are two red lines that must not be crossed.

1. Don’t weaponize antisemitism – or Islamophobia.

Candidates can highlight their pro-Israel credentials and criticize opponents. But they must not equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, fuel panic or indulge Islamophobia. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s criticism of Mamdani for his positions on Israel was fair game. Calling him an antisemite and stirring up Islamophobic fears and violent threats against him was not. For example, when Cuomo failed to push back – indeed, nodded along – after a conservative interviewer suggested that Zohran Mamdani would “cheer another 9/11,” he crossed a line. This kind of rhetoric is bigoted, fractures the Democratic coalition and risks pushing Jewish voters – who are legitimately worried about antisemitism – toward the GOP, which specializes in this sort of fearmongering.

2. Don’t use rhetoric that drifts into antisemitic tropes.

Criticizing Israeli policy or AIPAC’s political influence is fair game. But when candidates link money, Jews, weapons and Israel in the same breath, they veer into dangerous territory. A good example is Michael Blake’s recent launch video for his campaign against Congressman Ritchie Torres in New York. Torres is strongly associated with traditional pro-Israel positions; critiquing those is legitimate. But Blake’s ad visually tied money, genocide, weapons and Jewish figures together in a way that – while not explicitly antisemitic – came uncomfortably close. Dog whistles from the left are no better than those from the right. Progressives invoking global conspiracies and conservatives demonizing George Soros draw from the same poisoned well.

It’s Already Happening

The good news is that Democrats don’t have to invent this approach from scratch – many are already modeling it. Statements from Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee Adam Smith and several Senators on arms sales to Israel demonstrate how to support Israel’s legitimate defense while demanding accountability. A recent letter led by Representative Madeline Dean and signed by 90 Democrats backs the US peace plan and underscores that real progress will only come with sustained American engagement and pressure. Another letter, led by Representative Gabe Amo and signed by 125 members, affirms the importance of the ceasefire while urging urgent expansion of humanitarian aid.

The bottom line is that these issues will remain complicated terrain for Democrats. But there is a viable path – one that is both politically smart and substantively right. And the encouraging part is that an increasing number of Democrats are already walking it.

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Three weeks into a ceasefire that is largely holding, the same toxic pattern that has defined Israeli-Palestinian politics for decades is reemerging. Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas – longtime adversaries on the surface – are once again feeding off each other’s extremism, weakening moderates in both societies, and steering Israelis and Palestinians toward yet another cycle of despair. Each needs the other to stay in power.

The latest iteration of this symbiotic relationship would see both sides obstructing progress on implementing the 20-point American peace plan, resulting in a new status quo in which Israel controls half of Gaza and Hamas the other half. Hamas gets to survive and stay in power, while continued Palestinian division and extremism mean Netanyahu need not make any real concessions toward a Palestinian state. Hamas and Netanyahu win; Israelis and Palestinians lose. But this time things can be different.

A Long, Destructive Symbiosis

The strange relationship between Netanyahu and Hamas goes back decades. Thirty years ago, it was Netanyahu’s far-right allies who helped stoke the incitement that ultimately led an Israeli extremist to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Months later, Hamas’s suicide bombings before Israel’s 1996 election helped bring Netanyahu to power for the first time – marking the beginning of the end of the Oslo peace process. Each side thrived on the other’s extremism, and together they buried a historic chance for peace.

When Netanyahu returned to power in 2009, the pattern deepened. After a decade of setbacks – the violence of the Second Intifada and Hamas’s takeover of Gaza – there were glimmers of progress. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad had begun building functioning institutions in the West Bank, and Palestinian security forces were proving surprisingly effective, cooperating with Israel to maintain calm and counter Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had come relatively close to an agreement through the Annapolis process. That fragile progress could have provided the foundation for renewed state-building and diplomacy. Instead, Netanyahu came to power in 2009 and systematically undermined it.

For nearly 15 years, his strategy was clear: Undercut moderates in the West Bank, empower Hamas in Gaza and keep Palestinians divided. As long as Gaza and the West Bank remained politically split, there could be no meaningful talks on a two-state solution – and Netanyahu could tell Israelis there was “no partner for peace.”

Hamas received a steady flow of cash and legitimacy while the Palestinian Authority (PA) was left to wither. Netanyahu’s governments allowed over a billion dollars in Qatari cash to pass through Ben Gurion Airport into Gaza, bolstering Hamas’s rule and keeping the enclave quiet. At the same time, Israel withheld tax revenues from the PA and lobbied to cut off US aid – choking the only Palestinian institution still committed to nonviolence and security coordination with Israel.

Hamas also reaped huge political rewards, such as the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit. Meanwhile, the PA was vilified for its deeply problematic prisoner payment system, which – while popular in Palestinian society – was used as a pretext to cut off funding to the PA. The message to Palestinians was clear: Violent resistance yields Israeli concessions; moderation yields nothing.

After October 7: Doubling Down

This basic approach continued – and only accelerated – after October 7. I worked on early post-conflict plans for Gaza, many of which resemble the 20-point plan, including developing a transitional international force and a technocratic government. Our proposal envisioned a reformed PA eventually taking over Gaza, since it remains the only viable Palestinian governing body. Israeli defense and intelligence officials were ready to engage on this, but from the start, Netanyahu refused. The order was simple: “No PA.”

Instead, his government pursued half-baked ideas about empowering gangs or clans in Gaza – all of which have failed. Two years that could have been spent building an alternative to Hamas were squandered.

Meanwhile, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich doubled down on starving the PA. In the aftermath of October 7, he withheld half the tax revenues that Israel collects on the PA’s behalf – an arrangement in place since the 1990s. His justification was that the funds were going to Gaza, but most of the money actually supported Gazans explicitly unaffiliated with Hamas – the very technocrats and PA officials needed to build an alternative.

Smotrich also threatened correspondent banking relationships to destabilize the West Bank’s economy and trigger a financial crisis. During the Biden Administration, we worked on meaningful reforms to the PA welfare system to ensure it no longer rewarded Palestinians who committed attacks against Israelis. Israeli technical experts acknowledged the reforms as a step forward. Yet when the PA implemented them earlier this year, Netanyahu’s lieutenants refused to engage seriously and continued to claim this was all a ruse – because admitting progress would justify renewed funding for the PA, something Israel cannot abide.

None of this absolves the PA of responsibility. It is corrupt, ossified and deeply unpopular. Its leaders need to step aside and make room for reform and elections. But Netanyahu’s strategy of weakening Abbas while stabilizing Hamas has helped create this situation. One has to wonder if this is how the PA would look if Israel had spent the last fifteen years empowering it and weakening Hamas.

Repeating the Same Mistakes

Now, just weeks into a fragile ceasefire, both Netanyahu and Hamas seem determined to repeat the same pattern. Netanyahu insists that no postwar planning can begin until every hostage is returned – even though the entire purpose of any post-conflict framework is to ensure Hamas can never again threaten Israeli civilians. More revealingly, the Israeli PM has ruled out any role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza’s reconstruction or governance.

Instead, Netanyahu and his coalition partners envision an indefinite Israeli military presence in half of Gaza, with Palestinians somehow being incentivized to move to the Israeli half of the Strip and organizing themselves into a new “moderate” entity – neither Hamas nor the PA – that would magically emerge under Israeli oversight. It’s a fantasy. No such leadership exists, and no people will willingly submit to the army that killed tens of thousands of their civilians.

Faced with the false choice between permanent Israeli control and the return of Hamas, many Palestinians will tragically choose Hamas. That, in turn, will allow Netanyahu to claim once again that there are “no moderate Palestinians to work with.” The cycle of self-justifying extremism will continue.

Hamas, for its part, is already adapting to the post-ceasefire environment. In the absence of a credible governance and security plan that could have been in place more than a year ago, Hamas operatives are reasserting control in parts of Gaza, intimidating rivals and executing suspected collaborators. A divided, stagnant Gaza under partial Israeli control is exactly what Hamas wants: Time and space to rebuild, rearm and reclaim the mantle of “resistance.” Netanyahu’s vision of a fragmented, ungovernable Gaza is their ideal breeding ground.

Both sides are now effectively conspiring – without coordination but with shared interest – to preserve a disastrous status quo: Israel in partial control, Hamas entrenched in the shadows, Palestinians suffering in the rubble and the world too exhausted to intervene.

A Real Alternative Still Exists

After years of dismissing the Palestinians as a sideshow, Arab states are now signaling a serious willingness to engage in the aftermath of this horrific war, whose consequences are reverberating across the region. They are prepared to invest politically, financially and even militarily in an international stabilization force – but only if there is a legitimate Palestinian partner ready to take charge and a genuine political horizon toward Palestinian statehood. And with Hamas weaker than it has been at any point since seizing Gaza in 2007, this is the moment for Arab states to extract concessions that could finally marginalize the movement.

The United States also has tremendous leverage. President Trump – despite his deeply problematic behavior on so many fronts – is extremely popular in Israel, especially among Netanyahu’s political base. Netanyahu has spent years cultivating that image of Trump for his own political benefit. Now it has made it almost impossible for him to say no to Trump publicly. That dynamic gives Trump unique credibility to press for implementation of the 20-point postwar Gaza plan backed by Arab states and much of the international community, though realistically it may take Israeli elections in 2026 and new leadership to bring the full plan to fruition.

If Washington and key Arab capitals coordinate their pressure – one on Israel, the other on Hamas – a new Gaza is still possible. In the short term, that could mean a transitional governing authority of Palestinian technocrats alongside an international stabilization force to help secure Gaza, train Palestinian police and begin to replace Hamas. In the medium to long term, a reformed version of the Palestinian Authority and its security forces could assume governance and security responsibilities, leaving Hamas with little choice but to disarm.

This is a pivotal moment. Israel has a chance to emerge from this war not as a permanent occupying power but as part of a broader regional architecture that integrates it with Arab partners and stabilizes Gaza. Palestinians have a chance, however slim, to begin rebuilding a unified political system grounded in governance rather than militancy. But doing so will require breaking the unholy cycle of dependency between Hamas and Netanyahu – two leaders and movements that have spent decades convincing their people that peace is impossible.

With a tenuous ceasefire now in place in Gaza, attention is turning to the next phase of the deal – the gradual “disarming” of Hamas in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal. But there’s a widespread misunderstanding about what that means. Many imagine Hamas willingly surrendering its weapons, or that some future agreement can simply order it to do so. That’s not how this works. Hamas will not disarm itself. The only way to truly neutralize it is by replacing it and showing Palestinians in Gaza that someone other than Hamas can protect and govern them.

Two years ago, while serving in the White House during the early weeks of the war, I drafted an initial paper outlining possible postwar scenarios for Gaza. We saw two broad possibilities.

The first – and most likely – was grim: “Jenin on steroids.” In that scenario, the guns would fall silent, hostages would come home and humanitarian aid would trickle in – but there would be no agreement or momentum for what came next. A weakened Hamas would retain de facto control over much of Gaza, Israel would conduct periodic raids and no real reconstruction or governance would emerge. Gaza would remain a ruin – tense, hungry and unstable. That outcome feels even more plausible today – and, in fact, we’re already seeing it.

But there was also a second option, one based on the hard-learned lessons of the counter-ISIS campaign in Iraq and Syria – and on the many failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and even Vietnam. The alternative path, the one that could actually disarm Hamas, depends on building new, better structures of security and governance that replace it.

Why would Hamas ever agree to an approach that ultimately leads to its own replacement? Because in its current moment of weakness, Hamas may believe it can ride it out – essentially adopting a “Hezbollah model” in Gaza, where others govern but Hamas still holds the guns.

The challenge for Israel, the United States and the international community is to prove that better governance and security can outcompete Hamas – to make it politically and practically irrelevant and eventually, as it weakens, get it to disarm.

This time, that might actually be possible. Gaza is different from Lebanon in one crucial respect: Israel and Egypt control all its borders. Unlike Hezbollah, Hamas cannot easily rearm through Iranian supply lines. Combine that with Hamas’s political weakness – polls show it is deeply unpopular – and the leverage the international community currently holds, and there’s an opportunity to build alternative systems that gradually marginalize Hamas and make rearmament impossible.

It begins with security. Counterinsurgency 101 teaches that the population sides with whoever can provide basic safety and order.

That requires Palestinian forces on the ground who are not affiliated with Hamas but have credibility with the local population. The most realistic option is to use the model of the Palestinian Authority security forces – not because they’re ideal, but because they’re the only existing, semi-legitimate structure capable of the job. After the Second Intifada, and especially after Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in 2007, US-trained PA forces proved effective in restoring order in parts of the West Bank. Over time, similar forces can be trained, equipped and deployed in Gaza with international backing.

In the short term, however, there must be an interim international security presence – something reflected in President Trump’s 20-point plan. This could be a coalition led by Arab states, with Egypt playing a central role. Such a force would not fight Hamas directly – no country will send troops into Gaza’s tunnels – but it could secure aid routes, prevent looting and work alongside local Palestinian police units that should be part of this effort from the start. Over time, the Palestinian component would grow.

Hamas, recognizing that attacking Egyptian-led forces would isolate it across the Arab world, would likely tolerate such an arrangement – especially in its current weakened state.

Security alone isn’t enough. Gaza also needs a governing structure that excludes Hamas but draws legitimacy from Palestinian participation. That means assembling a technocratic administration of experienced Gazan professionals – those who once ran hospitals, utilities and municipalities – linked to, but not initially dominated by, the Palestinian Authority.

This entity would need broad consent: From key Gazan figures, the PA, Egypt, Qatar, the United States, and yes, tacitly from Israel and even Hamas. The goal is to establish a government capable of providing basic services and coordinating reconstruction with the Arab states and international donors. Paradoxically, this may not be hard to achieve – Hamas has long signaled a desire, like Hezbollah, to step back from day-to-day governance while retaining a military role.

With credible security and governance in place, international donors can finally move in. Reconstruction aid – long promised but rarely delivered – can begin flowing in ways that reach ordinary people rather than Hamas’s coffers. Rebuilding Gaza is not just humanitarian; it’s strategic. Showing that peace and order deliver tangible benefits is the surest way to keep Hamas marginalized.

When we developed these ideas two years ago, I believed that implementation had to begin during the war, not after it. That was the lesson from the counter-ISIS campaign in Syria and Iraq, where stabilization began alongside military operations. Waiting until the guns fall silent, as we did in Iraq in 2003, creates a dangerous vacuum.

Unfortunately, that early planning never happened. Some Israeli defense and intelligence officials, including members of the war cabinet during the first year of the war – Gallant, Gantz and Eisenkot – favored starting transition work during the war, but Prime Minister Netanyahu refused, fearing it would appear to concede Palestinian control over Gaza and threaten his coalition. As a result, we are late. The window is narrower – but it isn’t closed.

In the coming months, the United States, Israel and key Arab partners must stand up a transitional security and governance framework and begin training Palestinian forces. Washington will have to do what it did to secure the ceasefire: Apply sustained pressure on both sides to keep moving, however reluctantly.

There is still a path to disarming Hamas – not by demanding its surrender, but by rendering it irrelevant. That means empowering Palestinians who can govern and protect their own people, and mobilizing the world to rebuild what war has destroyed. If the world does that, then in time, Hamas may have no choice but to fully disarm.

The alternative is permanent chaos: A devastated, ungoverned Gaza where Hamas eventually reemerges from the rubble. After two years of horror, that would not just be a failure. It would be a tragedy.

It’s tempting to agree. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already spurned an extraordinary opportunity – choosing not to attend a regional summit in Egypt where he could have stood with Arab leaders ready to discuss what comes next. Netanyahu’s domestic politics and aversion to sharing a stage with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, combined with some posturing from Turkish President Erdoğan, all played their part. Meanwhile, Hamas has dragged its feet on returning hostages’ remains, and Israel has responded by threatening to withhold humanitarian aid. Hamas is already reasserting itself in Gaza with reports of fighting on the streets. On the surface, the same cycle of recrimination, punishment and stasis seems to be resuming.

Yet look a layer deeper and it becomes clear that the ground has shifted in ways that can’t easily be undone. “Managing the conflict” as a paradigm is discredited. Israel is increasingly isolated internationally, but also much stronger militarily. The Arab states and the United States are likely to be much more mobilized going forward in addressing and ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel now faces a choice. It can double down on occupation and an increasingly militarized approach to the Palestinians that leaves Israel internationally isolated – a path Netanyahu recently described as a “super Sparta.” The alternative is to use this moment to begin building a pathway towards a different future that we at J Street call the 23-state solution.

The End of “Managing the Conflict”

Since the Second Intifada, Israel’s de facto strategy has been to “manage” the conflict – contain Palestinian aspirations rather than resolve them and bet that technological innovation and economic growth could carry Israel forward even as just miles away Palestinians lived in a very different world that the average Israeli didn’t have to worry about or ever see.

The idea was that there was no credible Palestinian partner, so Israel should simply keep things quiet and stable. In practice, that meant weakening moderates and rewarding extremists so that Gaza and the West Bank would remain divided. For years, Netanyahu’s governments starved the Palestinian Authority of funds while allowing Qatari cash to flow directly into Gaza, where Hamas used that cash to consolidate control and was paid off to keep quiet. For years, it seemed to “work” – until it exploded.

October 7 exposed the illusion that conflict management could replace conflict resolution. It proved that indefinite occupation and blockade do not produce security, only recurring catastrophe. And it left the Israeli public asking what comes next.

Growing International Pressure

Another major shift has been the collapse of Israel’s international standing. Even if the mass protests subside and some of the more extreme measures that were being contemplated against Israel, such as banning it from Eurovision or the European soccer league, are put on hold, the reputational damage of the war in Gaza will last. The European Union – Israel’s largest trading partner – has begun taking real economic measures, and some of those may not go away. Legal proceedings at the International Criminal Court, where both Netanyahu and Gallant have been charged with war crimes, are unlikely to disappear. Once foreign journalists regain access to Gaza, the images they bring back may further fuel a reckoning. Israelis may still enjoy vacations in Paris or ski trips in Switzerland, but they will do so as citizens of a pariah state.

A New Regional Balance

Perhaps the most positive development since October 7 has been the geopolitical shift in the balance of power between Israel and Iran. The turning point came in the fall of 2024, when Israel’s war with Hezbollah went far better than expected – dramatically weakening Hezbollah’s military capabilities while avoiding the heavy damage most experts, including Israel’s own leaders, had anticipated. That success set the stage for the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and the emergence of a more constructive government in Lebanon. The conflict this past June also underscored Israel’s clear military superiority over Iran, though the extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program – and whether striking it was strategically wise – remains open to debate.

These developments could tempt Israel to double down on a military-first strategy. Yet they also create an opening: With Iran’s capabilities diminished, Israel can afford to take more risks in pursuing progress with the Palestinians, backed by the confidence that it remains militarily dominant over its greatest state adversary.

A Changed Arab World

Before October 7, the Gulf states had largely moved on from the Palestinian question. The Abraham Accords had normalized relations between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain. Saudi Arabia was deep in discussions with Washington about joining that normalization track. The Palestinians were an afterthought – useful for symbolic gestures but not a priority.

That has fundamentally changed. The images from Gaza reverberated across the Arab world, especially among the youth. Leaders who had sought to bracket the issue could no longer ignore the outrage of their own citizens. The instability that the fighting fueled in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Yemen had direct implications on the entire region and endangered the Gulf States’ focus on their most important project – transforming their economies and weaning themselves off of resource dependence. The war forced them to reengage.

Today, Arab states are putting tangible offers on the table: Reconstruction aid for Gaza, participation in a post-war stabilization force and even renewed talk of recognition for Israel – if, and only if, it takes real steps toward a Palestinian state. This is not the window dressing of the past; it reflects genuine strategic recalibration. If Israel wants true regional integration, it cannot bypass the Palestinians. That fantasy is over.

America’s Reassessment

Washington, too, is changing. Public opinion in the United States has shifted dramatically since October 7. Polls show declining support for Israel among Democrats, independents and younger voters – including American Jews. The bipartisan consensus of giving Israel a blank check that once underpinned US policy has fractured. It is not coming back.

Even Donald Trump, whose instincts remain to embrace Netanyahu, ultimately felt compelled to pressure Bibi publicly to change course in order to secure the ceasefire. Twenty-seven US senators – an unimaginable number a few years ago – voted against an arms sale to Israel. On the right, figures such as Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene now question the US-Israel relationship itself.

The Choice for Israel: Super Sparta or the 23-State Solution

None of this means a dramatic transformation will happen overnight. In the near term, Israel’s extremist government is likely to tread water, focused on coalition survival rather than strategic vision. Netanyahu’s instincts – status quo, deflection, delay – are deeply ingrained. He will resist any move that smacks of a big step. That means progress will be painfully slow if it occurs at all.

But elections are coming to Israel in 2026 and represent a potential key pivot moment. Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s alternative will be to double down and move from “managing the conflict” to the “super Sparta” model – fortress Israel, hyper-militarized, secure but morally adrift and internationally isolated. This is the path of deepening occupation, permanent control of the West Bank, indefinite misery in Gaza and a society defined more by fear than by vision.

But Israelis will have an alternative. The public can hold Netanyahu accountable for the failures of October 7. A new government – centrist or center-right, composed of figures like Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman, Yair Lapid, Gadi Eisenkot and Yair Golan – could seize the chance to turn the page and, given the new post-October 7th and Gaza war world, offer a new pathway. It wouldn’t need to immediately embrace the full vision of peace, only to recognize that continuing to fund Palestinian extremists while undermining moderates is self-defeating. It could take a longer view of security, working to reduce Israel’s growing international isolation, strengthen ties with its Arab neighbors and preserve its special relationship with the United States.

Working with Palestinian counterparts, the United States, the Arab World and the international community, a new Israeli government can begin implementing the vision of Trump’s twenty-point plan – a vision that many of us including in the Biden Administration and at J Street have long argued for: International coordination for Gaza’s reconstruction, a multinational stabilization force, empowerment of reformed Palestinian leadership, an end to extreme settlement growth and settler violence; and eventually Palestinian elections. If such a framework took root, it could evolve – slowly but credibly – into the foundation for the 23-state solution and lasting peace between. Israel and all of its Arab neighbors, including the State of Palestine.

It is a moment of huge relief and joy. We need to remain cautious — implementation of these deals is always hard and often touch-and-go. We’re already seeing public posturing from both sides and threats to renege because the other side isn’t living up to its obligations. But this feels real. It feels like the end of the war. It also happened remarkably quickly — less than two weeks after the plan was announced — much faster than I expected. And yet it also took far too long. If you had told me on October 7, 2023, that this war would go on for two years, I would never have believed you. Here are some initial thoughts and reactions.

The Trump team did the right thing by going for a limited deal.

One of my biggest concerns when the 20-point plan was announced 10 days ago was that negotiating all the details would take too long and could drag on for months. The right move was to focus first on implementing the immediate deal to end the war, then work on the other elements later. You didn’t need an agreement on the details of an international force in Gaza, for example, to stop the fighting. The deal appears to have done that by focusing on the hostage release, Palestinian prisoners, Israeli withdrawal lines, and aid into Gaza. Importantly, a detailed plan for disarming Hamas does not appear to be part of the initial deal — that will take months or years to work out, and including it could have given Netanyahu a way to stall or kill the negotiations. It also appears that Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt got Hamas to cave on some of its demands for a withdrawal timeline, which had been another major sticking point. But we’ll have to see the details.

Israel, Hamas, the United States, the Arab world, and the international community now need to follow through.

In every Gaza conflict since 2007, each round of fighting was followed by a deal to stop the violence, along with promises of next steps to break the cycle. Those steps were never carried out — Israel and Hamas lacked incentives, and mediators got distracted once the shooting stopped. That can’t happen this time. There is a plan on the table: to stabilize Gaza, bring in an international force and technocratic government, reform the PA and have it take over Gaza, and ultimately move toward what we at J Street call the “23-state solution.” It will take years, hard work, and tough negotiations. Were the elements of the day-after plan just window dressing to get to a ceasefire, or will the catastrophe of the past two years finally push everyone to make sure this doesn’t happen again? Time will tell.

Could this have happened earlier if Trump had applied more pressure?

It’s genuinely remarkable how fast this all came together in just two weeks. Despite objections from Netanyahu and Hamas, Trump bullied everyone forward. When he presented the plan to Arab leaders in New York and the Israelis raised concerns, he pressed ahead. When Bibi got the Americans to add potential poison pills and the Arabs complained, Trump told them to keep pushing and make Hamas take it. When Hamas “accepted” the deal with what was essentially a “yes, but,” and Netanyahu tried to get Trump to declare it a “no,” Trump refused — and publicly said it was a yes. Which makes one wonder: how much earlier could this have ended?

Given his support among the Israeli public — especially Netanyahu’s base — Trump could have ended it much sooner. His March decision to let the ceasefire expire and give Israel a green light to cut off all aid to Gaza was a tragic and inexplicable mistake. He could have stopped the war then.

Could Biden have ended it earlier?

That’s a more complicated question. Biden had overwhelming support from the Israeli public early in the war and real leverage — before Netanyahu systematically undermined him by highlighting and exaggerating public daylight between Israel and the U.S. It was also earlier in the conflict, when Hamas was still under Sinwar’s control and Hezbollah and Iran were stronger and more disruptive. And we can’t forget that Gideon Sa’ar’s entrance into the government in the fall of 2024 gave Netanyahu more wiggle room to cut a deal and not lose his coalition and by then Biden was a lame duck.

At the same time, the Trump plan isn’t that different from the ideas we were developing in October and November 2023. As I’ve written before, if Biden had gone public and jammed Bibi — which I was advocating at the time — might it have ended the war? I don’t know. But it’s something all of us who served in the Biden administration, and those who might serve in the future, need to consider.

I’m haunted by what a former senior IDF official told me after I left government: “Our initial plans for Gaza were to fight for three months and then stop. We assumed you — the Americans — would make us stop. But you never did.”

How will this play in Israeli politics?

Will it collapse the coalition and trigger new elections? Maybe. But based on initial reactions, Smotrich and Ben Gvir don’t sound like two men preparing to walk away. Ben Gvir might go — which wouldn’t collapse the government — and his poll numbers in the event of a new election are solid. So, he is probably fine risking a new election. Smotrich’s numbers are terrible, and he still wields major power in the West Bank in the current government. He has no incentive to leave. It was a bluff all along. Once Gideon Sa’ar entered the government in September 2024, Ben Gvir could no longer trigger elections on his own, and the far right’s leverage dropped sharply. The U.S. never pressed enough, and Netanyahu was never forced to call Smotrich’s bluff.

The other big question is how this affects Bibi’s support. Elections are coming in the fall of 2026, probably sooner. Does this deal give him a boost? I doubt it. For two years, his coalition has polled around 50 out of 120 seats, versus 70 for the opposition. The Israeli public will never forgive Netanyahu for October 7th or his refusal to take responsibility and launch a proper inquiry. But he doesn’t need 60 seats — just enough to make it hard for the opposition to form a government. That could lead to paralysis and multiple elections, with Netanyahu staying on as caretaker prime minister. Will this deal give him that boost? I hope not.

A historic turning point — or the road to entrenchment.

The coming years could mark either a historic opportunity to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or a shift toward permanent occupation and entrenched apartheid. This moment reminds me of the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Then, Israelis felt secure after 1967 — until the shock of 1973 changed everything, traumatizing the public and forcing leaders to rethink their assumptions. It also refocused the Egyptians, who realized they couldn’t keep fighting. The U.S. and international community, reeling from the oil crisis and a near-miss with nuclear escalation between the US and USSR, recognized this conflict could not be allowed to continue to fester. The stakes for all were too high. And so immediately after the war, Kissinger started a diplomatic push; five years later, Carter finished it.

We could be at a similar inflection point now. Israelis and Palestinians are exhausted. Polling shows a paradox: rising support for peace initiatives (when framed properly) and for extreme options like forced displacement and armed resistance — two societies searching for direction.

The “conflict management” paradigm, born after the Second Intifada, is dead. Netanyahu’s strategy of empowering Hamas — letting it receive Qatari cash through Ben Gurion Airport while strangling the PA — is discredited. The U.S. and Gulf states, which in recent years had begun dismissing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a sideshow, now understand there’s no stability in the Middle East without resolving it.

If implemented, the Trump plan could channel this moment toward progress: bringing the world — especially Arab states — into Gaza, reforming and revitalizing the PA, and building toward a comprehensive regional peace with a Palestinian state.

Whether we go down that path depends on Israel’s next election. I don’t expect major movement before then. If Netanyahu wins, Israel will go down a dark path — de facto apartheid, continued settlement expansion and violence in the West Bank, and no progress in Gaza. Israeli society will harden, and a new generation of Palestinians, radicalized by the war, will keep fighting.

But a new Israeli government — even a centrist coalition with Bennett and Lieberman alongside Eisenkot, Lapid and Golan — could choose a different path. After all, no one expected Menachem Begin - the first Likud prime minister and one of the leaders of the Irgun - to make peace with Egypt. Perhaps today marks not only the end of the war, but the beginning of a new future for Israelis and Palestinians. We can only hope.

This is a moment of real promise – and tremendous peril.

First, the promise: This plan reflects principles long championed by the international community, Arab states and groups like J Street. Principles I myself advocated for when I served at the White House. On paper, it offers a real path forward, and we at J Street welcome this proposal by President Trump.

All hostages home. A permanent end to the war. A flood of aid into Gaza. No forced displacement. No role for Hamas. No permanent occupation or annexation of Gaza. A real post-war plan with the entire world contributing, including key Arab states. Reforms to the Palestinian Authority. Security guarantees. A pathway to Palestinian self-determination.

The president is finally listening to international allies who want to see an end to the devastation. Netanyahu is finally being forced to reckon with a realistic post-war plan. Critically, it marks a clear departure from Trump’s grotesque “Gaza Riviera” ethnic cleansing plan.

But the measure of a deal is not how good it looks on paper – but whether it can be locked into place and deliver results. Therein lies the peril.

The key Arab States, European allies and the rest of the international community have come out in unison in support of this proposal.

Now, the world must exert every ounce of pressure on Hamas to push this deal to the finish line.

And then there is Netanyahu.

We’ve seen Netanyahu publicly embrace and privately torpedo similar plans: Shifting goalposts. Undercutting negotiators. Adding poison pills.

Netanyahu’s comments at the White House yesterday described a deal greatly at odds with the text handed out to reporters.

To hear him tell it, the Palestinian Authority is no better than Hamas. To hear him tell it, the plan gives his government license to occupy Gaza indefinitely and restart the war when it chooses.

And so we return to the simple truth: This deal only works if Hamas is forced to yes – and if both Netanyahu and Hamas are forced to follow through on its intent.

And that will only happen with sustained and unrelenting pressure and vigilance from the United States.

And there’s the true peril: If this deal falters – if Hamas refuses, if Netanyahu brings it down, if patience wears thin – then Trump has signaled he would give Netanyahu a green light to “finish the job” and all but flatten Gaza.

That cannot be the fallback. We must end this war – no matter what.

No failed deal should ever become a blank check for endless war. The hostages cannot be abandoned. Aid must not be blocked. Families in Gaza deserve an end to this nightmare.

What was true a year ago remains true today: Netanyahu could offer a simpler plan – one that has been on the table for over a year – a permanent end to the war in exchange for every hostage home. And if he did, the Israeli public would support him even if his far-right allies would not.

We cannot allow failure to become twisted into a justification for more destruction.

At J Street, we’re determined to make both the opportunities and risks of this moment clear, to ensure our leaders proceed with eyes wide open and to press for the strong leadership necessary to bring about a better future.

Trump has shown he can make both Netanyahu and Hamas move, and if he is serious about ending the war, he must use that leverage now to lock in an immediate ceasefire and get the hostages home.

Immediate Ceasefire Elements

First, the immediate ceasefire provisions. These are the pieces that need to be worked out in detail before any agreement can begin:

• Immediate End to the War in Exchange for Hostages: All hostages released within 48 hours. No more drawn-out, staged processes releasing ten hostages today and ten more in six weeks for repeated ceasefires. Bring them home now and end the war.
  

• Humanitarian Aid Surge: Aid to return to levels seen during the last ceasefire—about 600 trucks per day—the most since the war began nearly two years ago.
  
  

• Prisoner Release: Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for the hostages.

Post-Conflict Gaza Framework

Second, there are the more complicated provisions for post-war Gaza. These are key, but they will take months to hammer out. The priority should be to get an agreement in principle now, with implementation worked out later:

• Hamas Amnesty or Safe Passage: Hamas fighters could be granted amnesty if they renounce violence or offered safe passage to another country if they refuse. This is a new element. It seems reasonable in that it offers fighters multiple exits while also allowing Israel to declare victory. But the question is: who will take them? Perhaps Turkey or Qatar.
  
  

• Transitional Governance: A technocratic authority with no Hamas involvement, limited Palestinian Authority (PA) participation, and eventual greater PA involvement if reforms are implemented. This is consistent with the NY Declaration supported by France, Saudi Arabia and much of the world and is also consistent with what was put forward by Secretary Blinken at the end of the Biden Administration .
  
  

• No Forced Displacement: Civilians remain in Gaza with the right to return if they leave. This reverses the damaging “Trump Riviera” plan that appealed to the Israeli far right’s fantasies over the past six months.
  
  

• Arab-Led Stabilization Force: A temporary multinational force, including Palestinian police, tasked with security Gaza and helping disarm Hamas and ultimately transitioning authority to a Palestinian police force. This concept—that many of us have argued for since late 2023—remains the only realistic alternative to indefinite Israeli occupation.
  
  

• PA Reform and Deradicalization: An emphasis on PA reform, combined with deradicalization programs in Gaza (a Ron Dermer priority). If implemented, these could set the stage for eventual PA governance of Gaza and even long-term Israeli–Palestinian peace talks.

Unresolved Risks and Pitfalls

Despite these promising elements, there are still major uncertainties:

• The Risk of Dragged-Out Negotiations: The biggest danger is that both Israel and Hamas say “yes” in principle, but then insist on negotiating every detail—from demilitarization to governance—dragging things out for months while the war continues. Why? Because neither side truly wants to say “yes,” but neither wants to be blamed by Trump or the international community for saying “no.” This is exactly what happened with Biden’s May 2024 ceasefire proposal, which both sides nominally accepted, but which did not come to fruition until January 2025. The best way to avoid this is to frontload the agreement: hostages released, war ended, aid surged, and prisoners exchanged immediately—then negotiate the details of the rest later. For this to work, Trump will have to apply major pressure on Netanyahu and on the Arab states whom will then have to press Hamas to prevent this from dragging out.
  
  

• Has Hamas Even Seen the Proposal? Reports suggest Hamas may not have seen the full text yet. Historically, U.S. peace efforts have sometimes shown drafts to Israel first, allowing for edits that later made them unacceptable to Palestinians. By the time the plan reached them, “poison pills” were inserted, and they were blamed for rejecting it. The most significant risk in this plan is that the Israeli withdrawal schedule is unclear and that could lead Hamas to reject it if they do not believe there is a clear guarantee for the Israeli presence in Gaza to end. The good news here is that Trump reportedly consulted Arab states first, and the plan seems to meet their key criteria. Hopefully Hamas has already been briefed on the central elements.
  
  

• Smotrich and Coalition Politics: Netanyahu has prolonged the war in part to maintain his coalition. Itamar Ben Gvir will almost certainly reject the plan and walk. Netanyahu can live with that—but Bezalel Smotrich is pivotal. Smotrich has said he will only accept a deal that excludes the PA entirely from Gaza, as any PA role raises the prospect of Gaza–West Bank reunification and a pathway to Palestinian statehood. But Arab states have made clear that some PA role is essential, since they will not assume responsibility for Gaza indefinitely with no handoff mechanism. Netanyahu could try to placate Smotrich by pushing for West Bank annexation, but Arab states have already said that’s a red line, and even Trump has opposed it (Though noticeably he did not mention opposition to annexation today during the press conference). So will Smotrich fold to avoid elections that might push him out of the Knesset? Or will Netanyahu finally choose to risk elections, and accept Trump’s plan? To date, he has refused that path.
  
  

• Will Arab States Commit to an International Force? There are reports Hamas is asking that international forces only monitor Gaza’s borders, not enter the Strip. Some Arab states may accept this, but that would be a fatal flaw. In that scenario, Hamas could give up governance but retain control of security—cementing its power. Realistically, Hamas will not disarm on day one, and Arab states will not fight them directly. But the whole point is to establish new governing and security institutions that can compete with Hamas for legitimacy while Hamas is weak and unpopular. That cannot happen if the international force won’t even set foot inside Gaza.
  
  

• Israel’s “Freedom of Action” Demands: Israel insists it must retain “freedom of action” in Gaza. In practice, it already has this, just as it does in Syria and Lebanon despite ceasefires. It will act when necessary regardless. Pushing this as a formal clause only risks deadlock, since neither Hamas, the PA, nor Arab states will accept it.
  
  

• The Limits of This Israeli Government: Let’s be clear: the most ambitious aspects of this plan with regards to post-conflict Gaza will never be implemented by a Netanyahu government that includes Smotrich and Ben Gvir. That’s fine for now. The immediate priority is ending the war. Negotiations on the details of a broader framework will likely stall until Israeli elections, when the country may (or may not) elect a government more willing to take the necessary steps that could implement this plan and put Israel on a path to a broad comprehensive regional peace - what we at J Street call the 23 state solution.

But when I probed further, the story turned out to be more complicated. Two years earlier, the same teacher had defended Israeli military actions in the immediate aftermath of October 7th, even as students raised hard questions about the treatment of Palestinians. This wasn’t an ideologue opposed to Israel. The situation had simply changed.

Since October 7th, I’ve read the Times of Israel live blog daily. It’s the fastest way to get news in English from a largely Israeli perspective. And now, not a day goes by without multiple stories of Israel being shunned or isolated internationally.

For this piece, I ran an experiment and scanned just 24 hours of headlines: Israeli chess players withdrawing from a tournament in Spain because they couldn’t compete under their flag; the Netherlands threatening to boycott Eurovision if Israel participates (five countries have now announced they won’t participate if Israel does); a Belgian festival boycotting the Munich Philharmonic over its incoming Israeli conductor; an international cycling team abbreviating its name to avoid the word “Israel” and the protests it triggers.

Meanwhile, Europe—Israel’s largest trading partner—is starting to consider official economic measures. In her state of the union address last week, Ursula von der Leyen announced the EU would suspend “bilateral payments” to Israel tied to joint projects and the EU Commission has proposed suspending parts of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. The UK has halted negotiations on a new free trade deal. Germany has stopped selling arms.

In the United States, a state senator just cancelled a government-sponsored trip to Israel and explained her decision publicly—something unthinkable a few years ago. Twenty-eight U.S. senators now support conditioning arms sales to Israel, including stalwart supporters of Israel like Elissa Slotkin, Jack Reed, Patty Murray, and Amy Klobuchar. Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s National Security Advisor—who traveled with him to Israel after October 7th and vociferously defended Israel early in the war—now says restrictions on weapons must be considered.

Look at me. I love Israel. I was born there. I love going back. I have many dear friends there. Israel is part of me—part of my identity and history. That’s why I’ve spent the past twenty years working to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians and to ensure Israel’s security. Yet here I am, advocating against arms sales to Israel. Not something I ever imagined.

Yes, Israel is often held to an unfair standard internationally, and antisemitism is certainly part of that. Yes, Hamas started this war on October 7th, killing 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping 250 others. Yes, Israel’s initial response was justified—no country would have tolerated such an attack without a swift military response.

But by now, it is clear: the war must end. If not because of the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza, then for Israel’s own national interest. Whatever marginal tactical security benefit there may be in returning to Gaza City and displacing another million people—and at this point, there is very little—it is not worth the damage this war is inflicting on Israel’s global standing.

The government’s response—usually a tweet or statement from the foreign minister accusing longtime partners of aiding Hamas, falling for propaganda, or being antisemitic—is tone-deaf. Punitive measures like threatening to close consulates in Jerusalem or suspend diplomatic ties are even worse.

And Prime Minister Netanyahu’s call for Israel to become a “super-Sparta,” while admitting the country faces “a sort of isolation,” reflects the disastrous path his extremist government is charting.

Even if you believe Israel is entirely in the right and its critics are duped or hostile—and I don’t—it doesn’t matter.

If this continues much longer, Israel may indeed become a pariah state—if it isn’t one already.