Middle East Update - July 8, 2025

Theater in Washington, Horror in Gaza, nonsense in the West Bank (An omnibus of the moment)

Twenty-one months into the Gaza war, Israel and its American patron are again circling the same old paradigm — trying to convince Hamas to agree to something plausible. The likely outcome in the coming days is another partial deal: a temporary ceasefire in exchange for a fraction of the remaining 20-odd live hostages. But this just delays the hard decisions. It risks the lives of those still in captivity and prolongs a quagmire without a coherent endgame.

What should happen instead is something entirely different. The war should be declared over. Israel can pull back to a secure perimeter and offer two clear scenarios — one where Hamas disarms and a reformed Palestinian Authority, backed by Arab and Western partners, takes over governance, triggering the release of tens of billions in reconstruction funds already essentially in escrow in the Gulf. Or, if Hamas refuses to disarm, no reconstruction enters, only humanitarian aid. In that case, Palestinians will be allowed to leave if they wish, to avoid living amid ruins under the same militant regime.

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This creates a different dynamic. It doesn’t rely on Hamas agreeing to anything up front — it creates pressure within Gaza, and among the Palestinians. Given these options, it’s likely that within a few weeks, polls will show that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians prefer the disarm-and-rebuild path. That internal pressure could fracture Hamas, already a badly degraded patchwork of criminals facing rival armed gangs, and potentially lead to collapse from within. In that scenario, even exile deals for the remaining leadership become possible.

It’s not a perfect plan — nothing in the Middle East ever is. But endlessly fighting a tunnel-based insurgency while hostages die one by one is not the least bad option. A war that drags on for another year or two or more, with no real exit strategy, will not deliver security — and it certainly won’t deliver the hostages.

If we understand this obvious thing, then the currently discussed 60-day interim truce is unnecessary nonsense. Nothing will happen that has not happened until now — but more people (Gazans, ISD soldiers, hostages) will die.

Whoever wanted Gaza punished for Oct. 7 should be satisfied, however immoral that instinct: The devastation is total, most of Hamas’s battalions have been broken, and what remains is an insurgency — and a choice. Either keep repeating the same cycle and expect a different outcome, or introduce a new paradigm that creates consequences, incentives, and momentum. Israel and the U.S. don’t need to beg anyone to agree to it. They just need to drive events.

And … in other events:

The Theater in Washington, the Horror in Gaza

Roughly 20 living Israeli hostages are still believed to be held by Hamas in Gaza. According to intelligence estimates, most of them are trapped deep underground, in stifling, sweltering, dark tunnels. They have little food, virtually no access to medicine, and many are injured. Based on witness testimony from those who’ve been released — often in skeletal and broken states — we know just how inhumane the conditions are.

Some children were branded with burns using the exhaust pipe of a motorcycle to prevent them from escaping. One was operated on by a veterinarian while in captivity. Then there are the stories of hunger and despair. Of captors feeding children sedatives to keep them quiet. Of women kept in cages. Of wounds left untreated. Of isolation. Relentless interrogations, and physical and psychological torture.

As part of the equation, hostages have had access to Israeli media — just enough to watch their families beg, scream, and plead for their return, only to be rebuffed or ignored by the very government coalition that claims to defend them. They’ve seen how some Knesset members insult or dismiss hostage families. They’ve heard far-right ministers say the hostages are not the priority.

And they probably saw the glittering display in Washington on Monday — a night of handshakes and self-congratulation.

That evening, across a massive dinner table in the White House Blue Room, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump embraced like old collaborators. With Sara Netanyahu smiling at his side (Melania Trump conspicuously absent), the prime minister surprised Trump with a letter nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. “It’s well deserved, and you should get it,” Netanyahu said, handing it across the table. “This I didn’t know. Wow,” Trump beamed. “Coming from you in particular, this is very meaningful.”

The two spent the rest of the almost hour-long “press availability” praising each other while taking softball questions from local media – as Israeli reporters, more likely to be critical and knowledgeable, were kept out. Trump declared their partnership a “tremendous success” and predicted even “greater success in the future.” Netanyahu called Trump’s efforts a “pursuit of peace and security,” saying that “he’s forging peace as we speak, in one country, in one region, after the other.”

Trump praised himself – as well as the B-2 pilots and mechanics – for last month’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, suggesting incongruously they reminded people of Hiroshima. “I don’t want to say what it reminded me of, but… Harry Truman’s picture is now in the lobby.” He stressed that the bombs were “non-nuclear” but “very big,” and insisted – counter to intelligence assessments in Israel and the U.S. – that Iran’s program was “obliterated.” He also claimed Iran now has “a lot of respect” for the U.S. and Israel.

Netanyahu called it a “historic victory,” saying the U.S.-Israel strikes thwarted plans for “20,000 ballistic missiles” aimed at Israel. He warned Iran not to test their resolve and reiterated that the Abraham Accords were expanding. There was even talk of bringing Syria into a new normalization framework. Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy who is headed to Gaza cease-fire talks in Doha, said that a deal was near and added, “I’m hopeful for it very quickly.”

But what was not mentioned—or rather, what was only murmured in the background—was the actual content of the deal: a proposed 60-day ceasefire in which only half the remaining hostages would be released in two phases. No change on the ground. No shift in war aims. And all while every passing day leaves the remaining hostages more at risk.

Back in Israel, the hostage families are scandalized.

“We are in the same place all going round and round in this tragedy,” said Danny Miran, father of 47-year-old Omri, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7. “Why do they need to talk for 60 days? Whatever you are willing to do on the 61st day, do now. Our words have exhausted themselves. We cannot even beg anymore. I hope they find a solution to finally bring all our children back in one stage. It is a Solomonic trial. Imagine the feeling when you know your children will not be the ones returning in a first stage.”

But I’m thinking also of the Palestinians in Gaza.

For 21 months now, they have endured unrelenting fear and instability. The majority of Gaza’s 2 million-plus people have been displaced again and again — sheltering in tents, hospitals, UN schools, then fleeing again when the bombs follow. Their homes have been flattened – most Gaza buildings are believed to have been destroyed or damaged. Their hospitals have collapsed. Their shops are dust. They are trapped — unable to leave, even if they wanted to — and ruled by a cynical, genocidal mafia in Hamas.

They are targeted by a military that is no longer taking great care to protect civilians. Not after what happened on October 7, when Hamas invaded Israel, massacred almost 1,200 and kidnapped 251, and launched a madness which has crossed many thresholds. Things are not as they were, say, during the second intifada two decades back, when I headed the local AP operation: The military treated civilian deaths as a PR disaster, dispatching spokespersons to our office to justify, explain, persuade. They seemed, back then, to care.

Gazans will also have seen the footage from Washington. I’m sure that they, too, will be struck by the absurd detachment of the spectacle. Some will turn to ever more fanatical religion. Some to violent despair. Many to depression. Hatred of the Jews, and of the West, will deepen, without a doubt. If they are wise, they will blame Hamas for bringing this horror upon them. But traumatized people are not always so wise. It is hard to see nuance and perspective through the haze of fear and fire.

I want to think that I remember Gaza not just because I’ve had friends there for decades. I want to think that I do so out of a basic sense of humanity. I’m not actually certain. But this I know for sure: There is no universal roadmap to peace. Each of us start in our own place — under rockets or in tunnels, in the halls of power, perhaps in a green and pleasant land. Wherever we start the journey, the first station along the way is a place called empathy.

Local sheikhs are not the answer to the Palestine problem

Something seductive but unhelpful has emerged this week in the Israeli-Palestinian landscape: serious voices are entertaining the idea that a tribal initiative by local chieftains in Hebron could serve as an escape hatch from genuinely addressing a century-old and globally resonant conflict that is not about municipal governance.

Five sheikhs from the Hebron area, led by Wadee’ al-Jaabari, have pledged peace with Israel, asked to join the Abraham Accords, and proposed replacing the Palestinian Authority with a local “emirate.” The idea has floated upward, being featured in the Wall Street Journal like a trial balloon — one that risks leading not to peace but more war.

The sheikhs are not fringe figures, representing a backward-looking but undeniably potent structure in Palestinian society. Together they claim allegiance from clans representing most of the wider area’s 700,000 residents. Their rhetoric is pragmatic: They reject terrorism, pledge coexistence and are willing to recognize Israel as the Jewish state. And they’ve found a patron in Economy Minister Nir Barkat, who has hosted them and circulated their proposals. It is being branded as a version of Palestinian “emirates” – which, given Israel’s positive experience with the Gulf variant, projects a modern elan.

But while these gestures are not without value, the notion that this initiative represents a viable political solution is dangerously delusional.

Israel has tried similar things before. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, it backed a system of tribal leadership known as the Village Leagues. That effort, too, originated in the Hebron area. Led by Mustafa Dodin and supported by pro-Jordanian moderates, the leagues were meant to cultivate a peaceful alternative to the PLO. They failed.

Lacking democratic legitimacy, operating under occupation, and widely viewed as collaborators, the Village Leagues never gained traction among the broader Palestinian public. Their leaders were targeted by the PLO, discredited by Palestinian society, and ultimately abandoned by Israel. When the first Intifada broke out in 1987, the leagues were already defunct. The idea that traditional leadership could serve as a workaround to nationalist politics was buried — until now.

What is being resurrected in 2025 is not just the Village Leagues model, but something worse: a Palestinian version of Apartheid South Africa’s Bantustans. Many Israelis rebel against that comparison – but intellectual honesty demands that we consider it.

During apartheid, South Africa created ten self-governed “homelands” for black citizens, stripping them of South African citizenship and placing them in fragmented, dependent enclaves under white control. The Bantustans were framed as steps toward self-rule. In reality, they were instruments of control and exclusion — economically unviable, politically illegitimate, and engineered to prevent true sovereignty.

The sheikh-led “emirate” of Hebron fits this mold far more than it resembles a peace solution. It would be a local leadership accountable not to its people but to Israel, ruling over a pocket of land surrounded by Israeli territory, with no control over borders, airspace, or security. Add in work permits and a few economic zones, and you have a facade of autonomy masking continued occupation.

That route will not bring peace, but likely violence. It will pit clans against clans, and Palestinians against one another. In the fog of violence, Jews will be killed – the settlers of the West Bank are easy targets, living on land Israel does not formally even claim, hated by most Arabs. Israel will be drawn back in, and voila: another intifada.

It’s easy to understand the appeal of the fantasy. After October 7, and the collapse of trust in the two-state solution, many Israelis – and many Palestinians – want to believe in alternatives. And many will counter that the Palestinian Authority has failed — and that much is true. The PA has long been crippled by corruption. Its aged leader Mahmoud Abbas has not held an election in two decades, partly for fear Hamas would win. In doing so, he has undermined his own legitimacy while ironically serving Israel’s security interests.

The PA continues to pay stipends to families of terrorists, which many Israelis see as incitement but which Abbas has treated as a political necessity. Its school curriculum badly needs reform. Abbas also failed to respond constructively to Ehud Olmert’s far-reaching 2008 statehood offer.

But for all that, the Palestinian Authority remains the least bad option in a region where that is often the best you can hope for. The PA has recognized Israel and publicly opposed terrorism. It has made clear it is not serious about the right of return – the major blockage to any deal. It has cooperated with the IDF in the West Bank. It has called on Hamas to lay down arms and release hostages. Abbas has said Palestine will not have a traditional army. These positions are not minor. They reflect an orientation toward coexistence.

There is no viable alternative “brand.” Claims by Israeli spokespeople that the PA is no different than Hamas — a genocidal jihadist group — are absurd. Israel cannot afford to destroy the only Palestinian entity that collaborates on security while dreaming up a fragmented system of tribal protectorates.

Israelis should remember that separation remains vital – for the survival of Zionism. Without true separation from a contiguous Palestinian territory, the dominant reality is that between “the river and the sea,” Jews are not a majority. A future in which Palestinians live in isolated tribal enclaves under Israeli control — in non-contiguous sheikhdoms — won’t shield Israel from demographic or legal consequences of that, but rather formalize a reality in which a Jewish minority rules millions of Palestinians without political rights.

That path leads to pariah status. It invites boycott and isolation. It could even bring charges under international law, likely against a backdrop of inter-communal violence. Most of all, it makes the “one-state nightmare” permanent. Israel, inseparable from the West Bank (and possibly Gaza), will face global pressure to annex and enfranchise.

To be clear: I do not romanticize a full West Bank withdrawal. A sudden and total pullout could create a security vacuum that Hamas could fill. The pullout must be partial and phased, tightly monitored, with international guarantees. And any future Palestinian entity must be demilitarized. This aspect of sovereignty Palestinians will need to forego – if nothing else, Oct. 7 proved that imperative.

But they must receive enough. Whether you call them emirates or Bantustans, tribal fiefdoms are simply not enough. This is not how you resolve or “manage” a century-long conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land. It’s how you prolong and deepen it.