There has been a long history since the Six Day War of 1967 of international efforts reach a diplomatic solution for the outstanding issues on Israel and Palestine, two successor entities of of UN’s partition plan of 1947. The official goal of the United States, the most powerful external player in the situation, was to achieve a two-state solution. Israel never actually accepted the idea.
After the recent two-years-plus war of Israel with Gaza – with much side action on Israel’s part in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, and Qatar – reached a milestone with the Trump-based agreement in October that had the US, Israel, and Hamas that Trump touted as potentially an Everlasting Peace Plan. That included a ceasefire that apparently still is considered to be in effect. But it already has the distinctive characteristics of all the previous such agreements, with Israel making repeated attacks, always blaming them on action by the other side, in this case Hamas. A feature of this pattern is that the Israeli “counter”-attacks are very often much greater than the alleged triggering offenses by Hamas.
There is a difference this time in that most of the conflicts Israel has
had that are called wars were much shorter than this one. The Israeli armed
forces (IDF) were very active for two consecutive years. But the IDF is
structured on the expectation that its wars will be relatively brief and it
relies heavily on draftees. By all accounts I’ve seen, the IDF has been
experiencing real strains from Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2023-2025 Gaza War. (What
is conventionally known as the First Lebanon War of 1982-2000 did not involve the kind of intense continuing engagement of the most recent Gaza War, with the active combat mostly occurring inn 1982-83.
Peter Beinart spoke recently with Muhammand Shehada and talked about the sad state of Trump’s Everlasting Peace Plan. It’s a familiar pattern. Israel concludes a ceasefire. Then they start violating it right away. Meanwhile, the so-called Peace Board is still not being created, which has to happen before the theoretical multinational peacekeeping force can start operating. (1)
Helena Cobban is an analyst of Middle East policy who has been keeping a close eye of what Trump advertised as his Everlasting Peace Plan of October 9 (which technically took effect on October 10). The “everlasting” aspect of it remain, uh, in question.
She calls it “a holding action for the [Palestinian] resistance” in this interview with The Electronic Intifada: (2)
In an August article, she stresses the particular effect that the US support for genocidal actions by Israel since October 7, 2023 has had on further diminishing American “soft power” in the Global South:
The fully U.S.-backed genocide that Israel has pursued for the past two years in Gaza has echoed a lengthy string of similar actions that “White” colonial powers– including the United States–have enacted against Indigenous peoples on all continents for the past five centuries. In today’s largely post-colonial world, this genocide has thus provoked a tsunami of revulsion across (and beyond) the whole of the Global South. This has greatly reduced the appeal and “soft power” that, before October 2023, Washington was able to deploy in its conduct of world affairs. It has also thrust the 30-year-long, de-facto hegemony that Washington has exercised over the UN’s global-level decision-making into ever sharper question. (3)A key factor in understanding the ongoing situation is that despite the Everlasting Peace Plan, the illegal Israeli annexation of occupied territory in the West Bank continues. Jack Khoury reports:
What's happening in the West Bank has long moved beyond mere declarations. Hundreds of IDF checkpoints and gates restrict Palestinians' freedom of movement. Settlers repeatedly raid villages and attack property and residents, including olive harvesters, often with the accompaniment or tacit approval of Israeli security forces.There was a recent spate of countries formally recognizing a Palestinian state. This is a symbolically important step, and symbolism in international diplomacy is important. But the practical effect of those formal recognitions of a state that doesn’t actually exist on the ground on Israeli is limited.
Private Palestinian lands are being seized, illegal outposts are being legalized and Israel's grip on the region keeps tightening without a Knesset vote or ceremonial speeches. De facto annexation unfolds daily, step by step, under a harsh apartheid regime that deepens segregation and cements control. (4)
The “two-state solution” has been key part of the international diplomacy over Israel, Certain tropes and common rhetorical diplomatic frameworks are often used in international relations, despite having only a tenuous relationship with reality. The idea envisioned two separate and independent states - one Palestinians and one Jewish - in the territory of what until 1947 the British mandate of Palestine. Something like that was possible in the context of 1947-1948, though the Zionist side never accepted the notion in practice. For reasons that have been intensively discussed internationally in the last two years, the Israeli government doesn’t even accept this as the basis of negotiation.
And Israel maintains control of Gaza, even though the Everlasting Peace Plan envisions it being somehow controlled in the immediate future by the Peace Board headed by Peace President Bush and the famously pacifist former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. (Yes, that’s meant to be sarcastic!) Even before the war began, Israel’s aggressive annexation policy in the West Bank, still formally an occupied territory, had proceeded far enough to make the fabled two-state solution impossible.
The only two realistic basic options are (1) a single, secular liberal democratic state including both current Israeli citizens and current Palestinians in the occupied territories; or, (2) a continuation of the still-ongoing Israeli policy of expulsion/ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. The official goal of Netanyahu’s Likud Party and of his current government is a Jewish state in all of Eretz Israel, aka, the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
As Jonathn Shamir recently described the current diplomatic dance:
State recognition, however, has never been the core demand of the movement for Palestinian liberation. In fact, in response to the consensus that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza, Palestinians and those amplifying their message have made a uniform call for an immediate ceasefire, a halt in weapons aid and sales to Israel, and the imposition of sanctions. Absent these concrete measures, critics have argued that recognition is little more than a trick—a sleight-of-hand meant to placate restive Western publics while perpetuating the same conditions that enabled a genocide against the Palestinian people in the first place. [my emphasis] (5)Shamir judges that the “ultimate endgame” of the current Israeli government for Palestinians looks something like this:
[F]ragmented cantons under a compliant local authority that is tasked with administration but stripped of sovereignty, all while Israel retains its demographic and military dominance. The occupied West Bank already offers a grim preview of what this sort of “State of Palestine” would look like. From the Oslo years onward, Israel and its Western allies have used the PA’s lack of sovereignty over its land, borders, and resources, and its dependence on economic aid, as a lever to secure the body’s compliance. [my emphasis]An apartheid state “From The River To The Sea,” in other words. He also reminds us:
From Netanyahu and his likely successor Naftali Bennett to the liberal figureheads Yair Lapid and Yair Golan, the entire Israeli political spectrum has been unanimous in rejecting the new international move for a two-state solution, claiming that recognizing Palestine is a reward for terrorism. [my emphasis]But Ilan Pappe explains how Israel has used the “two-state solution” trope:
The two-state solution, as noted earlier, is an Israeli invention that was meant to square a circle. It responds to the question of how to keep the West Bank under Israeli control without incorporating the population that lives there. Tims it was suggested that part of the West Bank would be autonomous, a quasi-state. In return, the Palestinians would have to give up all their hopes for return, for equal rights for Palestinians in Israel; for the fate of Jerusalem, and for leading a normal life as human beings in their homeland.But in terms of a practical goal now, Pappe gives a Halloween-ish description: “The two-state solution is like a corpse taken out in the morgue every now and then, dressed up nicely, and presented as a living thing. When it has been proven once more that there is no life left in it, it is returned to the morgue.”
Any criticism of this myth [of the two-state solution] is often branded as anti-Semitism. However, in many ways the opposite is true: there is a connection between the new anti-Semitism and the myth itself. The two-state solution is based on the idea that a Jewish state is the best solution for the Jewish problem; that is, Jews should live in Palestine rather than anywhere else. This notion is also close to the hearts of anti-Semites. The two-state solution, indirectly one should say, is based on the assumption that Israel and Judaism are the same. Thus, Israel insists that what it does, it does in the name of Judaism, and when its actions are rejected by people around the world the criticism is not only directed toward Israel but also towards Judaism. [my emphasis] (6)
A new US military base in Israel and international forces for Gaza
I recently tuned in to an October 29 Haaretz Zoom call featuring three of their journalists: Amos Harel, Dahlia Schindlin, and Amir Tibon.
Harel thinks that Trump at the moment is calling the shots on Israeli military actions, noting that Trump gave Israel a green light for the October 28 strike this week. They discussed the announcement last week, which Israel has preferred to downplay, that US Central Command (CENTCOM) has opened what it formally calls a “civil-military coordination center” on the ground in Israel itself. (7) Such a US military base inside Israel itself is a new thing in US-Israel relations, though it is not yet clear how much a distinctly new intervention by the US into Israel that may turn out to represent.
CENTCOM’s press release announcing its establishment says that “U.S. military personnel will not deploy into Gaza but will instead help facilitate the flow of humanitarian, logistical, and security assistance from international counterparts into Gaza.” (my emphasis)
Tibon notes that for the previous two weeks, the Trump 2.0 government did seem to be holding the Netanyahu government in check over Gaza. But he notes that the durability of Trump’s attention span is doubtful. He describes the current Israeli government as “ultra-extreme.”
Scheindlin describes some of the complications in trying to come up with specific plans for the vision of the Eternal Peace Plan for separate and distinct peacekeeping (or stabilizing) and peace-enforcing forces. And noted that there were potential problems with all the participant countries: Azerbaijan, Egypt, Indonesia Jordan, Qatar, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). She takes it as obvious that the soldiers on the ground in both forces would need to be fluent in Arabic. The primary language in Azerbaijan is Azerbaijan (aka Azeri), a Turkic language. Indonesians speak “several hundred languages” most of which “have an Austronesian base.” (8) That could be quite a challenge in itself!
She also noted that that Netanyahu became highly unpopular during the first six months of the war, but his popularity rebounded considerably beginning in April of 2024. Scheindlin also argues that serious reconstruction in Gaza can’t really begin for at least a year.
In a column last week, Scheindlin also notes that Netanyahu’s allies are trying to shift blame for the war onto the pro-democracy advocates who has been fighting his efforts to turn Israel into a more authoritarian country.
[Netanyahu’s] chummiest correspondent in Israeli news, Amit Segal, delivered a monologue on Monday explicitly calling to investigate the pro-democracy protesters and the media. Netanyahu himself was busy giving a combative, defiant and triumph-filled opening speech at the Knesset on Monday. But the real action that day was behind the scenes, where Netanyahu reportedly held consultations about rushing a law to establish [a] government-friendly commission of inquiry [into responsibility for insufficient preparedness for the October 7, 2023 attack.]. His primary aim, reported Ynet, is to engineer a commission that will investigate the role of the courts and the protests. (9)Jared Kushner also has plans for Gaza, of course. Joshua Leifer reports on a speech Kushner made at during the opening ceremony of the new CENTCOM base:
[In] Kushner's vision for the future, it seems, the Gaza Strip would remain divided, not just territorially but also administratively, into two areas: one behind the "yellow line," under full Israeli control; the other, effectively under Hamas control, which comprises to less than half the territory of the Strip. That would amount to something like the West-Bank-ification of Gaza – a scenario that has become dangerously more likely since the cease-fire went into effect.Notes:
According to the Wall Street Journal, the cease-fire talks' Arab mediators have become increasingly worried that the division of Gaza floated by Kushner would not be merely a stop-gap measure between phases of the agreement but could become a permanent partition of the devastated coastal enclave.
It is easy to see how this might happen. The temporary, interim stage of the agreement becomes permanent reality [in this scenario], while a final status-agreement is indefinitely deferred, ostensibly because consensus about the subsequent stage of negotiations cannot be reached. Israel remains the occupying force in most of Gaza, while aid groups and the vaunted international consortium manage civilian infrastructure and reconstruction efforts under the watch of Israeli guns. [my emphasis] (10)
(1) There is No Ceasefire. Beinart Notebook YouTube channel 10/26/2025. <https://youtu.be/yHbzwgHJ6Pk?si=uMy9CEYhMy_LnBTp> (Accessed: 2025-27-10).
(2) What's next for Gaza? with Helena Cobban. The Electronic Intifada YouTube channel 10/18/2025. <https://youtu.be/qr1rC4aMOmM?si=ZPoCzRSo2keQYkI9> (Accessed: 2025-09-10).
(3) Cobban, Helena (2025): Gaza, and the UN at 80. Globalities 08/25/2025. <https://www.globalities.org/2025/08/gaza-and-the-un-at-80/> (Accessed: 2025-09-10).
(4) Khoury, Jack (2025): Trump's Paradox: Opposing Israeli West Bank Annexation in Words but Allowing It in Practice. Haaretz 10/26/2025. 2025). <https://www.haaretz.com/west-bank/2025-10-26/ty-article/.premium/trumps-administration-opposes-west-bank-annexation-in-name-yet-enables-it-in-practice/0000019a-1ff3-d2fc-a79a-9ff7dceb0000> (Accessed: 26-10-2025).
(5) Shamir, Jonathan (2025): The Recognition Trick. Jewish Currents 10/06/2025. <https://jewishcurrents.org/the-recognition-trick> (Accessed: 2025-09-10).
(6) Pappe, Ilan (2024): Ten Myths About Israel, 142. London: Verso Books.
(7) CENTCOM Opens Civil-Military Coordination Center to Support Gaza Stabilization. U.S. Central Command 10/21/202 <https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/4325130/centcom-opens-civil-military-coordination-center-to-support-gaza-stabilization/> (Accessed: 2025-09-10).
(8) "Indonesia"in Encyclopedia Britannica 10/29/2025. <https://www.britannica.com/place/Indonesia> (Accessed: 2025-30-10).
(9) Scheindlin, Dahlia (2025): Guess Who the Netanyahu Government Is Blaming for October 7. Haaretz 10/22/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-10-22/ty-article/.premium/guess-who-the-netanyahu-government-is-blaming-for-october-7/0000019a-0c01-d582-a39e-5ef5dbed0000> (Accessed: 2025-28-10).
(10) Leifer, Joshua (2025): Why Jared Kushner's Vision for Post-war Gaza Is So Dangerous. Haaretz 10/23/2025. Full link: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-10-23/ty-article/.premium/why-jared-kushners-vision-for-post-war-gaza-is-so-dangerous/0000019a-1169-dfc6-a3bf-f16d85d20000?gift=c790e2429b0645caacd00a4987312afd> (Accessed: 2025-30-10).
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