On March 4, the Arab League convened in Cairo to propose a long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of which the war that presently torments Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon constitutes the most bloody manifestation. This summit—and the external reaction it has received—exemplify salient features of the broader disagreement between Arabs and Israelis that has bedeviled the Middle East for over three quarters of a century.
Most worthy of note is the sheer unanimity with which the twenty-two nations that comprise the Arab world expressed their view on the matter. Every Arab government sent a delegation; none dissented from the Egyptian-authored peace plan or the principles expressed therein.
Calling for a two-state settlement based upon 1967 borders coupled with an immediate demilitarization of Gaza, the Arab states have offered to spend five billion dollars to help reconstruct the strip after the war and have suggested that the EU donate a further fifty billion to finance the project. England, France, Italy and Germany have all endorsed this plan, promising to contribute the necessary funds if the deal goes through. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, an international body that represents every Muslim country on earth, has also pledged its support.
This is not the first time that the Arab world has evinced its desire for comprehensive peace between Israel and itself. In 2002, Saudi Arabia promulgated the Arab Peace Initiative, demanding that Israel withdraw from the lands it had occupied since 1967 and concomitantly establish a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital in return for full recognition from the Arab states. Both the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation endorsed the initiative; every Muslim country, with the possible exception of Iran, has since championed its essential framework. From the 1970s onwards, individual Arab governments and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) have made similar offers to Israel, none of which have been met with Israeli approbation.
What distinguishes the most recent Arab olive branch from those that have preceded it is that its authors have produced it in the context of the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war. Not only must those who desire peace reckon with the destructive effects of Israel’s unsparing assault on Gaza as they formulate paths for a just future but they must also address the crippling political divisions within occupied Palestine that underlie the ongoing violence. While the PLO-led Palestinian Authority governs the West Bank from the city of Ramallah, represents the State of Palestine at the United Nations, and is recognized by 146 countries as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, Hamas receives military backing from Iran and has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2006. In that year, the terrorist group took power in a bloody revolt against the PA, which had formerly administrated all of the occupied territories (with the exception of Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem).
On October 7, 2023, Hamas triggered the current war by striking Israel proper in a merciless demonstration of brutality, killing 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping hundreds of others, some of whom they continue to hold as hostages. Israel responded by launching a full-scale invasion of Gaza that has resulted in about fifty thousand Palestinian deaths since the commencement of hostilities. Throughout the war’s first year, Hamas had offered to return all hostages in exchange for a permanent ceasefire, but Israel showed itself unwilling to accept any dénouement that would have left Gaza in the hands of Hamas. While the Israelis had agreed to the first phase of what was supposed to develop into a permanent ceasefire, they broke the armistice on Tuesday with a series of military strikes that killed over four hundred Palestinians. Evidently, those in charge of the Jewish state have not altered their stance on Hamas; Israel’s leaders remain committed to annihilating the terrorist group and will only accept a complete end to the fighting once it ceases to inhere the Gaza Strip.
In this respect, the Arab states are in complete agreement with Israel. The deal they proposed in Cairo calls for Hamas’s political extirpation from Gaza. To achieve this end, they advocate that Ramallah regain control over the strip and lead the Palestinian people toward statehood with copious foreign aid.
Tel Aviv, however, has ruled out any future in which the PA returns to Gaza. Since there exist no viable alternatives to Hamas other than a permanent Israeli military presence or a revitalized PA, it remains unclear how Israel seeks to bring enduring peace to Gaza. Last June, the failure of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to produce any “day-after plan” prompted opposition leader Benny Gantz to leave the unity coalition that had formed as an immediate result of the October 7 attacks. Netanyahu also fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in November due to disagreements over the direction of the war. While Golant favored a cease-fire deal to bring the hostages home, Netanyahu wished to prolong the ongoing hecatomb in Gaza to ensure Hamas’s total destruction.
Some Israeli commentators have noted that Netanyahu’s general strategy vis-à-vis Hamas has borne an unconstructive and highly inconsistent character. Israel’s longest-reigning prime minister disapproved of the PA’s 2018 decision to cut the salaries of functionaries employed in the Gaza Strip due to Hamas’s unlawful domination of that area. Rescuing Hamas from financial ruin, Netanyahu arranged for Qatar to foot the bill—a move that Israeli’s intelligence service, the Shin Bet, has blamed for the group’s military buildup that engendered the October 7 attacks. Netanyahu defended the policy by explaining that his government would supervise the aid delivery to make sure that it “goes to humanitarian causes,” while dividing the Palestinian leadership and undermining their quest to realize statehood.
Israel’s Arab neighbors nevertheless envision a future in which a sovereign Palestinian state administers Gaza and the rest of the occupied territories. They believe that they can, one day, convince Israel to fulfill this desire in return for what the Jewish state has ardently sought since its creation in 1948: international recognition. The vast majority of Arab nations continue to deny Israel the benefit of normal trade relations, the possession of which would provide Israel with significant commercial opportunities. The Arab League has thus used the coveted prize of normalization to press Tel Aviv into withdrawing from the occupied territories and granting the Palestinians statehood.
Not all Arab countries have adhered to this strategy, however. A minority of them have already recognized Israel to serve their own economic and security interests. Jordan and Egypt did so decades ago; four others—the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco—signed mutual recognition treaties with Israel as part of the 2020 Abraham Accords. But due to Israeli intransigence, these governments had to ignore the issue of Palestinian rights to achieve normalization with the Jewish state.
Saudi Arabia almost made the same determination before October 2023, but now it and the other Arab countries that have yet to recognize Israel have made it clear that they will only do so once Israelis resolve the Palestinian question with a two-state settlement.
The Gaza reconstruction plan is an articulate expression of this conviction. The editors of Le Monde consequently praised the initiative as a “realistic plan for peace,” noting that—in contrast to the Abraham Accords—it upholds the following moral principle: “the peace to which all nations in the region aspire cannot proceed from the negation of any people’s legitimate rights”—namely that of the Palestinians to self-determination.
Israel disagrees. Its parliament resolved last summer that a Palestinian state must never come into being, arguing that the national aspirations of the Palestinian people represent an “existential danger to the State of Israel.” Within the 120-member legislative body, only nine deputies rejected this historic resolution. Netanyahu has officially stated, moreover, that his country should forever “maintain full security control over all areas west of the Jordan River” to the Mediterranean Sea. In the same announcement, he went on to boast: “Everyone knows that it was me who—for decades—has blocked the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
Likud, the party that Netanyahu leads, first took power in 1977 under the banner of Prime Minister Menachem Begin. In that year, its official platform took the same rejectionist stance as its current chairman: “Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” Postulating that the Jewish people are entitled to the entirety of historic Palestine because of their Biblical connection to “Eretz Israel” (Greater Israel), the manifesto proclaimed that any “plan which relinquishes parts of western Eretz Israel” must never go into effect. During the tenure of another Likud prime minister, Ariel Sharon, Israel rejected the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. Since then, support for a two-state settlement among the Israeli public has plummeted while the settler population has mushroomed to 700,000. The Israeli right hopes for that number to reach one million—a threshold that will only further diminish the likelihood of Palestinian statehood.
Yet most of the world ardently supports the two-state solution and considers those settlements illegal, desiring a meaningful resolution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict based upon the principles of human rights and international law. Since 1974, the UN General Assembly has passed innumerable resolutions condemning the state of Israel for its occupation of Palestine. Even the Western countries most supportive of Israel—with the exception of the United States—have endorsed the recent Gaza reconstruction plan and have consistently denounced Israel’s unlawful settlements in the West Bank, which they believe to constitute the most serious obstacle to peace.
But Israel regards the near-international consensus on its occupation as nothing more than antisemitic calumny aimed against the world’s sole Jewish state. Tel Aviv’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Dannon, referred to the most recent General Assembly resolution condemning its behavior in Palestine as “a shameful decision that backs the Palestinian Authority’s diplomatic terrorism.” According to him, the General Assembly “dance[s] to the music of the Palestinian Authority, which backs the Hamas murderers.” He neglected to explain how a beleaguered enclave of three million paupers—under foreign occupation—possesses the power to so profoundly orchestrate global opinion. He also did not validate his astounding accusation that the PA surreptitiously supports Hamas, with whom it has aggressively contended for mastery of Palestinian politics since the terrorist group’s birth in 1988. What he did make clear is Israel’s avid opposition to the two-state solution and to any suggestion that it withdraw from the occupied territories.
For this reason, Israel has rejected the Gaza reconstruction plan, just as it has rejected all other comprehensive peace overtures originating from the Arab world. On March 4, the foreign minister admonished the suggested deal for being rooted in “outdated perspectives” and for raising “baseless accusations” against the state of Israel. The United States initially followed suit, rejecting the plan in favor of Trump’s idea to forcefully expel Gaza’s population of two million and transform the strip into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, announced in response to the March 4 proposal, “President Trump stands by his vision to rebuild Gaza free from Hamas,” and so cannot support the Arab League’s new peace plan. But on Thursday, Trump made a stunning volte-face: “Nobody is expelling any Palestinians,” he stated during a conversation with journalists at the White House. After tersely renouncing his “Riviera” plan, however, Trump neglected to put forth any new proposal to replace it.
While Washington and Tel Aviv offer no alternatives to the Gaza reconstruction plan, they appear firmly committed to maintaining the status quo. Pursuant to longstanding US policy, the Trump administration will allocate billions of dollars in weapons and aid to Israel during this fiscal year. Netanyahu likewise hopes to expand settlements in the West Bank and keep the Israel Defense Forces embroiled in the Gaza Strip. Both leaders have thus spurned the Egyptian proposal in favor of continued strife between Israel and its neighbors.
The Arab League’s meeting in Cairo and its reception reflect the prevailing contours of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. While the Arab states and the PLO strive to address the problem with a two-state solution, Israel intends to retain its sovereignty over the whole of Eretz Israel. Until one side acquiesces to the will of the other, the irreconcilable visions of each will prolong the conflict indefinitely.
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