The war that erupted after the Hamas-led massacre of October 7, 2023, has become the most transformative conflict in the Middle East since the Arab Spring. Yet more than 22 months after the Israel Defense Forces launched a campaign to destroy Hamas, Israel still has no defined political endgame. Negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza have faltered, and Israel’s failure to envision the war’s “day after” has deepened a humanitarian catastrophe in the strip, which now includes worsening hunger. As the conflict increasingly becomes a deadly regional and international problem, actors outside Israel are stepping in to try to bring resolution.
encouraging other countries to recognize the state of Palestine and support the creation of states along borders delineated in 1967 on the basis of UN Security Council resolutions. Canada, France, and the United Kingdom have said that they will recognize the state of Palestine by September unless the war ends. Israel’s current government appears unable to change its approach, even though its principal military objective—to dismantle Hamas’s terror infrastructure—has largely been achieved. The absence of any long-term Israeli vision has left Israel, Gaza, and the broader region in a protracted state of chaos.
Wars without a clear political goal cannot be won. They cannot be ended. The longer the vacuum in Israel’s planning persists, the more international actors will have to come together to prevent an even worse catastrophe than the one currently unfolding. They must do so not only for the sake of Israelis and Palestinians but for the region’s stability and their own interests. The war that followed Hamas’s October 7 slaughter was just. Today it is becoming unjust, immoral, and counterproductive, shifting responsibility for the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza from Hamas to Israel.
Two events have reshaped the strategic landscape of the Middle East in the twenty-first century: the Arab Spring and the October 7 attacks. The Arab Spring, which began in late 2010, radically altered the internal dynamics of many Middle Eastern regimes. It empowered street movements and weakened autocrats’ traditional legitimacy, forcing even the most authoritarian leaders to become more responsive to their publics’ sentiment. Israeli and U.S. leaders should have understood that, in the long run, the Arab Spring would influence how a variety of regional actors responded to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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