In a commentary on its website, the Stimson Center says Israel “cannot eliminate or even contain” the Palestinian resistance groups if it fails to address their legitimate demands.

“Israel cannot eliminate or even contain its enemies long-term without finally addressing Palestinian grievances and the desire for dignity and sovereignty,” Stimson Center says.

It suggests that the October 7 attack on Israel and the disproportionate retaliatory attacks by the Israeli army should help to immediately find a solution to this nearly eight-decade conflict.

“Now is the time to begin to plan for the end of this war, and hopefully shorten that conflict by announcing those plans as soon as possible,” it added.

Following is the summary of the commentary:

Reporters who have spent a long time covering the Middle East are rarely optimists. Indeed, the operative phrase has been that “it can always get worse.”

In the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, things have gotten much, much worse.

The civilian death tolls in Israel and Gaza surpass anything seen in the region since the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s,… or the various atrocities committed during the 1975-1989 Lebanese civil war. 

In terms of Palestinians killed, the deaths in Gaza, including those at hospitals and schools, already exceeds 15,000, according to the Palestinian health ministry. That is fifteen times those killed or unaccounted for in the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut 41 years ago by Lebanese Christians as Israeli soldiers stood by.

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to empower the Christians and destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – at the time, Israel’s bête-noire. Instead, Israel wound up facing a far bigger menace in the form of Hezbollah as well as a string of armed groups that now threaten Israel more severely than the PLO ever did.

Israel cannot eliminate or even contain its enemies long-term without finally addressing Palestinian grievances and the desire for dignity and sovereignty. Now is the time to begin to plan for the end of this war, and hopefully shorten that conflict by announcing those plans as soon as possible.

“The longer the conflict continues, the greater the threat will be to Israel and to U.S. interests in the region and the world at large.”

Both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have been turbocharged by the grievous images emanating from the Middle East. The longer the conflict continues, the greater the threat will be to Israel and to U.S. interests in the region and the world at large. Already, the conflict shows signs of spreading to Israel’s northern border and the U.S. military in Iraq has come under drone attack from resistance groups.

The rising death toll in Gaza has led to a rise in Muslim and Arab anger against Israel and the U.S. as Washington is providing military aid to Israel.

No one – outside a few leaders of Hamas – knew what form that violence would take. But the notion that Israel, the U.S., and Arab leaders could create a more stable Middle East through the so-called Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and Arab states while providing only a few minor concessions to the Palestinians, was flawed from the start.

“Creating a more stable Middle East through the so-called Abraham Accords was flawed from the start.”

The Biden administration tried to build on this shaky foundation left by its predecessor, which besides negotiating for Israeli diplomatic recognition from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco, handed Israel multiple gifts without demanding anything in return. The Donald Trump administration moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (al-Quds), violating decades of insistence that Jerusalem’s status should be resolved in peace talks with the Palestinians. Trump recognized the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in the 1967 war, kicked out a Palestinian office in Washington, and closed a U.S. diplomatic office in Jerusalem that addressed the needs of dual Palestinian-U.S. citizens and grievances by the Palestinian population at large. Had Israel announced that it was annexing the West Bank, Trump would likely have given it his blessing.

Biden did not reverse the embassy move or reopen the Jerusalem consulate. His administration did restore funding for the UN agency that provides aid to Palestinian refugees and their descendants. But there has been no effort to condition the $4 billion annual U.S. military aid to Israel on stopping the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank that encroach on the freedom of movement of Palestinian residents and increasingly make a Palestinian state untenable. U.S. criticism of Israeli actions, including an increase in anti-Palestinian violence by settlers, has been tepid and formulaic while Washington’s diplomatic energy has gone into trying to convince Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel.

That effort now appears moribund as even Saudi leader Mohammad bin Salman dares not ignore the newly restoked pro-Palestinian sentiments of his population. Other autocratic pro-Western Arab leaders have also had to bow to their streets, canceling a summit with Biden and permitting rare protest demonstrations.

The U.S. focus, apart from consoling Israel, has been to try to deter a widening of the conflict. The Biden administration has sent two aircraft carrier groups to the Mediterranean.  President Biden, when asked in an interview with CBS’s Sixty Minutes what he would say to Iran and others possibly looking to expand and escalate the war, answered simply “Don’t.”

But as the saying goes, you can’t beat something with nothing.

Diplomats and conflict resolution experts must begin to think about what comes next in terms of addressing the legitimate concerns of millions of Palestinians in that enclave and on the West Bank. The U.S. should also tell Israel that its pounding of Gaza cannot go on much longer.

Israel has tried repeatedly to eliminate its enemies but wound up with more lethal foes. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a particularly poor record as someone who has frustrated previous peace efforts and facilitated settler expansion. His actions since returning to power in a third term late last year have divided Israeli society and left it more vulnerable to this surprise attack. Israel, too, needs new leadership capable of planning a future that gives hope and security to all the people under its rule.