Dennis Ross, a former special assistant to President Barack Obama, is an adviser to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and teaches at the Center for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University. David Makovsky, who served on the U.S. Middle East peace team in the Office of the Secretary of State, is a Ziegler Fellow at the Washington Institute and an adjunct professor at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
For Israelis, it is still October 7th. It's not just the shock and horror of that day; the hostages are daily reminders of the ongoing trauma. President Biden is focused on an agreement that will free the hostages and begin a process that will lead to an end to the war in Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the only way the war can end is if Hamas forces are destroyed, they no longer control Gaza, and the hostages are returned.
While both have the same basic objective, neither has been clear enough about when and how to end the war. Prime Minister Netanyahu has spoken of “total victory” from the beginning, but this is a slogan, not a goal. To be sure, the slogan gives him room for maneuver. But his desired end goal is clearly broader than Biden's goal of making Hamas “unable to carry out” large-scale attacks against Israel.
If Netanyahu's definition is too broad, Biden's is too narrow. Hamas could regroup and be rebuilt. But there is a path forward that the two leaders can forge together, and it would be based on the demilitarization of Gaza and guarantees that it will never be militarized again.
Israel is already on the verge of dismantling Hamas as a military force. Once Israel completes the destruction of its remaining battalions in Rafah and central Gaza, Hamas will no longer have an organized military force with clear command and control. To complete the demilitarization, Israel will need to destroy enough of Hamas' military infrastructure – weapons laboratories, production facilities, warehouses, tunnels – so that it cannot be rebuilt without constant resupply.
These are measurable goals. Because Israel is on the cusp of defeating Hamas as a military force, the Biden administration should now try to reach an agreement with the Israeli government about what is enough when it comes to destroying military infrastructure. Meanwhile, Israel should ask the Biden administration to outline everything the United States and its allies will do together to cut off Hamas's supply of funds, supplies, and weapons and ensure that it can never rebuild.
The Gaza-Egyptian border must be guarded to prevent smuggling above and below ground. Israel has tried to limit the flow of supplies into Gaza, but Hamas has managed to smuggle in all the materials it needs to build 300 miles of tunnels and a military industrial base capable of making missiles and bombs. A U.S.-Egyptian agreement on control of this border is therefore essential. The U.S. can provide sensors to detect and stop the rebuilding of the tunnels, but Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi should be aware that stopping smuggling will be a test of the U.S.-Egyptian relationship. By allowing Egyptian contractors to lead the reconstruction of Gaza, the Biden administration could give Egypt a huge economic incentive to stop smuggling.
Stopping smuggling is crucial. But without a credible team on the ground managing the reconstruction process, Hamas will divert legally imported reconstruction materials for its own purposes. Let's be clear: UN-brokered efforts to prevent the diversion of reconstruction materials after the 2014 Israel-Hamas war clearly failed. The US must do more. The US needs to put in place mechanisms to track materials from import to storage to end use. If there is diversion, reconstruction needs to be stopped immediately.
The Biden administration is preparing for the “next day” and is planning for an international task force of Egyptians, Emiratis and other countries to take over security while the IDF withdraws after the hostages are released. Such a task force would need to include Palestinians as part of the administration. But these Palestinians should not be stigmatized by ties to Hamas or other factions. Such a role could be filled by proven Palestinians like Salam Fayyad or Jihad al-Wazir. Both are products of the International Monetary Fund system and are very familiar with the developments and realities in Gaza.
Israel may be on the brink of demilitarizing Gaza, but it has not disarmed all of Hamas fighters, and there is little prospect of doing so no matter how long they stay. So the question is how an international military would deal with what remains of Hamas: Would it try to impose order? Or would it seek some kind of agreement with the fighters to keep the peace? And are there circumstances under which it would accept Israel responding to an uncontrollable threat? (Of course, Israel must know that Israel would act in response to any direct threat against it.) Any outside actor planning to stabilize Gaza must be prepared to answer these difficult questions. But they are particularly sensitive to Arab leaders who do not want to be seen as using force against Palestinians on Israel's behalf.
We do not want to address all the issues without being clear that this process can begin without a political vision for eventual Palestinian self-government, or at least whether the Palestinian Authority will actually be reformed, but we do not need to have all the questions answered to start thinking about the end game.
If the US and Israel can agree on an end point for the war, many other things will fall into place; if not, a much worse outcome looms in the region.
