The Gaza Deal Will Force an Israeli Reckoning on Democracy, Palestinians, and America

Israelis woke up last Thursday to news that many of them had been desperately hoping to hear for two years: the Israeli government and Hamas agreed to a deal to return all Israeli hostages and end the war in Gaza.

If the agreement holds, it will bring a much-needed end to the violent conflict that begins on October 7, 2023. But it will also force on Israelis three calculations that will shape the country’s future in more lasting ways.

Israelis woke up last Thursday to news that many of them had been desperately hoping to hear for two years: the Israeli government and Hamas agreed to a deal to return all Israeli hostages and end the war in Gaza.

If the agreement holds, it will bring a much-needed end to the violent conflict that begins on October 7, 2023. But it will also force on Israelis three calculations that will shape the country’s future in more lasting ways.

The first is the reckoning between the Israelis and their leaders.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had been in power for more than nine months when Hamas launched its attack. Despite the departure of key military and intelligence figures, the same government has remained in power, overseeing Israel’s actions in Gaza, the West Bank, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.

Netanyahu and his government are historically unpopular, and most Israelis blame them, at least in part, for their failure to prevent October 7th. But Netanyahu constantly claims that accountability, assigning blame, or even holding elections are not appropriate while the Israeli hostages remain in Gaza and the war continues. So far, his argument has worked. Despite feeling abandoned by their government, Israelis who turned out in their hundreds of thousands before October 7 to protest Netanyahu’s judicial reform and those who came out after October 7 to show solidarity with the hostages and their families remain reluctant to embrace an overt political agenda.

It will end now. The Israelis are likely to demand the resignation of this government, and Netanyahu will find it difficult to prevent members of his far-right coalition from withdrawing from the deal, which they consider a surrender to Hamas. The upcoming elections will be the most important in Israel’s history, marking the formation of a government that will not only have to deal with the fallout from Gaza and help Israelis heal from their physical and emotional scars, but will also have to rebuild the basic compact between citizens and their government.

The Netanyahu government ignored Israeli preferences on hostages and war, and failed to provide a basic response to the October 7 attack. This forced Israeli civil society to intervene to rebuild communities, secure shelters, provide emergency assistance, and organize a civil diplomatic effort on behalf of the hostages’ families.

The next government will have to prove its ability to perform basic tasks, while at the same time managing the next phase in Gaza and repairing Israel’s deteriorating relations with European and Arab countries. On top of all this, it will also have to confront the constant false attacks from the Israeli right, which is surrendering to terrorists and creating a hostile Palestinian state among Israelis. This would constitute a heavy burden in the best of circumstances, especially for a coalition that is likely to cover a wide ideological range and disagree on some of the thorny issues related to the Palestinians.

The second account relates to Israeli attitudes towards the Palestinians. About 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 250 were kidnapped on October 7, but all Israelis personally felt the impact. The lesson most people learned was that there can be no lasting peace with the Palestinians, and there is no way to build a Palestinian state that can peacefully coexist with Israel. As a result, Israeli attitudes towards the Palestinians have reached their lowest levels, driven by unprecedented hostility.

However, US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan calls for Israel to engage with the Palestinians in multiple ways, not only in working together in post-war Gaza but also in developing a “credible path to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.” It also commits the United States to holding talks between Israelis and Palestinians on a political horizon for peace — in other words, a renewal of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. These are things that are difficult for Israelis to comprehend.

Now Israel must begin a new phase in its relationship with the Palestinians under a cloud of mistrust, suspicion and anger. There will be a new Palestinian administration in Gaza, there is an existing Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and there are millions of Palestinians who remain under some degree of Israeli control and want to resume their lives, which requires daily interaction with the Israelis and their government. The Israelis must know what they will do after October. 7 The relationship with all these entities will be now that that period has been set to begin.

Will Israel maintain Netanyahu’s framework of claiming there is no real distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, or will it restore the working relationship it had with the Palestinian Authority only a few years ago? Will the annexation of the West Bank remain a continuing threat on the horizon, or will pressure from Arab governments and European countries that now recognize Palestine lead to a shift?

If Israel yields to pressure and offers any kind of political horizon for a Palestinian state, many Israelis will view this as a reward for October 7, which will create massive domestic political opposition. Alternatively, if Israel categorically rules out working with any Palestinian entity and continues to discuss Palestinian statehood in apocalyptic terms while deepening the dispossession of Palestinians in the West Bank, it will make the international landscape increasingly hostile. The result will be more government bans on weapons, more companies banned from participating in trade shows, and more Israeli tourists being harassed and even assaulted while traveling abroad. This will lead directly to the self-sufficient economy that Netanyahu recently spoke about.

The third calculation is between Israel and the United States. The Gaza war brought about a seismic shift in Americans’ relationship with Israel. Opinion polls show that a majority of American voters now oppose military support for Israel, while the majority sympathize with the Palestinians more than the Israelis, and believe that Israel deliberately kills civilians. Among Democrats, it has become increasingly common to call for restrictions on security aid to Israel. And the most influential voices in MAGA poetry — from Tucker Carlson to Steve Bannon to Candace Owens — speak of Israel in dark terms as a drain on America’s resources. There is no doubt that the relationship between the United States and Israel will change. The only question is how much.

While the Gaza war was ongoing, it was easy to dismiss Israel’s faltering situation as a short-term decline driven by daily news images, and to claim that everything would return to normal at the end of the war. Now that the war is over, Israelis are likely to discover that the views advanced by many Americans over the past two years will not be easily dissipated. Israelis will have to develop new ways of explaining their country to Americans, new arguments for why Israel is an important and worthwhile ally, and new strategies for operating in a world where American support is not necessarily complete or automatic.

Israel may be able to win over some skeptics on the issue of Israel’s strategic value. This will be especially true if improved relations between Israel and its neighbors allow the United States to reduce its presence in the Middle East, and if Israel is seen, as with Russia during the Cold War, as a decisive bulwark against China.

It will be difficult to convince skeptics about Israeli democratic values ​​and participation in the rules-based order amid accusations of genocide, International Criminal Court convictions of Israeli leaders, and ongoing efforts by the Israeli right to continue annexation and transfer of the West Bank. If Israeli leaders rely on old mantras that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East or that the IDF is the most moral army in the world without making a real shift in policy, they will only exacerbate the problems the country already faces.

Israelis will spend the coming days and weeks preoccupied with the return of hostages from brutal captivity, and mourning the loss of those who are no longer alive. But they will have to pivot quickly to the new challenges on the horizon and lead their country in new directions to deal with the massive currents brought by October 7th.