One year since the Oct. 7 attack

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As the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war approaches, the prospects of peace between Israelis and Palestinians seem less likely than ever. Despite repeated attempts by U.S., Egyptian, and Qatari diplomats to negotiate a cease-fire and hostage release deal, the conflict in Gaza remains unresolved and is now spreading across the region.

Last year, Foreign Policy asked a group of writers what Gaza would look like in a year. This year, instead of seeking solutions or draft peace plans, we asked a range of contributors—Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, and Jordanians—to assess where we stand now and what the future may hold: In short, is the war in Gaza closer to its end or its beginning?—FP Editors

As the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war approaches, the prospects of peace between Israelis and Palestinians seem less likely than ever. Despite repeated attempts by U.S., Egyptian, and Qatari diplomats to negotiate a cease-fire and hostage release deal, the conflict in Gaza remains unresolved and is now spreading across the region.

Last year, Foreign Policy asked a group of writers what Gaza would look like in a year. This year, instead of seeking solutions or draft peace plans, we asked a range of contributors—Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, and Jordanians—to assess where we stand now and what the future may hold: In short, is the war in Gaza closer to its end or its beginning?—FP Editors

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By Dana El Kurd, senior nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington

Lebanese soldiers gather amid the rubble of destroyed buildings following Israeli airstrikes in Haret Hreik, outside Beirut, on Sept. 27. Ibrahim Amro/AFP via Getty Images

The war in Gaza is only the beginning of mass violence that is likely to increase and spread in Israel and the Palestinian territories and across the region.

The second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, from 2000 to 2005, revealed that the Oslo peace process framework was incapable of resolving the underlying structures of Israeli domination that plagued Palestinian self-determination. The international community, with the United States at the forefront, responded to this realization not by endorsing meaningful negotiation but by consolidating the status quo of Palestinian fragmentation, Israeli violence, and piecemeal forms of Palestinian governance.

This was unacceptable to the Palestinian public, as years and years of polling continued to affirm. Grievances increased, and living conditions worsened in the occupied territories, with no political horizon in sight. Many scholars and analysts—including myself—forewarned that escalating violence was inevitable.

The Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the ensuing destruction of Gaza are only the beginning, for a number of reasons. First, it is clear that the Israeli army’s violence in Gaza is a model for future warfare. For this Israeli government, ethnic cleansing is a clearly stated policy. Particular members of the cabinet, such as Bezalel Smotrich, have vowed to make Palestinians surrender or transfer, indeed long before the war began.

The world is already seeing the implementation of this policy in parts of the West Bank, as Israeli forces raze Jenin, blockade hospitals in Tubas, and attack civilian infrastructure across a number of communities, in addition to the settler violence that has besieged Palestinian towns and led to multiple deaths. Displacements have begun across the occupied territories, not just in Gaza. Palestinian armed groups unrelated to Hamas have also formed to confront Israeli forces.

Second, the Palestinian question is tied to regional dynamics. This is perhaps an obvious assertion, given recent events in Lebanon. Nevertheless, some corners of Washington would like to believe that people across the Middle East are attached to Palestine for vaguely emotional reasons or only as a result of Iranian machinations. Ongoing unrest across the region makes clear that this explanation is insufficient.

The Palestinian question is indeed weaponized by Iranian-backed networks of militias, and the likelihood of escalation into a larger regional war is very real. However, to understand Palestine’s impact on regional unrest only through the prism of pro-Iranian militias is an incomplete assessment because the Palestinian question is also crucial in understanding anti-authoritarian dissent in the region writ large.

The issue has long been a gateway to dissent and oppositional politics and has historically sparked large-scale social movements that have challenged regimes. It is true that Arab regimes today are more violently repressive than ever before and have attempted to shut down any such pro-Palestinian organizing. However, the grievances generated by the latest war in Gaza among Arab citizens demanding more accountable foreign policy from their regimes cannot be so easily swept aside.

These events, and regime repression of public outrage, are likely to be the seeds of political consciousness for new generations of Arab citizens. And, as the Arab Spring showed, regimes are not as immune from the impact of dissent as they would like to believe.

Finally, U.S. decision-makers seem to have not absorbed any lessons from the past year of conflict. The White House continues to tout Arab-Israeli normalization as the pathway to peace, despite it being a glorified form of authoritarian conflict management at best. Discussions of the “day after” in Gaza remain out of touch with reality, with no Palestinian input, only advocating for reconfigurations of the current status quo—the same conditions that led us to our current predicament.

Gaza has been destroyed, Palestinians have been displaced en masse, and the impact on Gazan society will take years to heal. But Palestine is larger than Gaza. With no deviation from the current path, the tragedy will only continue.

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By Amit Segal,........

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