The war in Gaza, now approaching its second anniversary, needs to end.
It needs to end for the people of Gaza, more than 60,000 of whom — roughly 3 percent of the population — have been killed. The victims include entire families and thousands of children. Neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. Most Gazans have been displaced from their homes. Starvation and illness haunt the strip.
The war needs to end for the nearly 50 Israeli hostages whom Hamas is still holding in Gaza. Those who remain alive are being held in brutal conditions, often underground, without adequate food. They have been held captive for more than 700 days, since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed about 1,200 Israelis and others.
The war needs to end for the sake of Israel and its security. The horrors that it has inflicted in Gaza have contributed to a sharp decline of support for Israel in the United States and elsewhere. Any additional military gains against Hamas pale in comparison to the long-term strategic threats from global isolation.
How, though, can this terrible war finally end? The most obvious answers appear to be the least likely ones. Hamas’s leaders could release the hostages, admit defeat in a war that they started and prioritize the well-being of the Gazans whom Hamas claims to represent. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel could stop catering to far-right members of his government and instead recognize the costs of continuing war to Israel’s national interests, as well as to its exhausted soldiers, reservists and their families.
Absent such epiphanies, the task will fall to the rest of the world, particularly to the United States — Israel’s most important ally — and to the Arab nations that express solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The peace plan that President Trump unveiled on Monday is promising. It includes typical bluster (such as a “‘Board of Peace,’ which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump”). Yet it also contains the pillars of a just cease-fire, including an end to military attacks, the return of all hostages and a Gaza free of Israeli occupation and Hamas governance. Notably, the governments of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates praised the plan.
Many obstacles to peace remain, as is the norm in the Middle East. Mr. Trump would need to show more follow-through than he often does. Hamas would need to accept the plan or something similar to it. Mr. Netanyahu would need to face down the extremists in his government, some of whom criticized the plan. All that is possible, however, if the Trump administration and leading Arab governments demand it. Both have more leverage than they have used so far, and both have good reasons to insist on the war’s conclusion.
For Mr. Trump, the continuation of the war has been an ongoing sign of weakness. He claimed that he could end it, and he has failed. Despite running a vastly larger and more powerful country, Mr. Trump often seems to defer to Mr. Netanyahu. The pattern is familiar by now: Mr. Netanyahu flatters Mr. Trump with ostentatious praise, and Mr. Trump then does what Mr. Netanyahu wants.
“Trump is better positioned than anyone else to bring the war to an end,” Daniel C. Kurtzer, a U.S. ambassador to Israel for four years under President George W. Bush, has said. “But he needs to do more than make public statements.” Above all, he needs to force Mr. Netanyahu to accept that Israel must leave Gaza soon and that Palestinians must eventually run it. Long before this war began, Mr. Netanyahu has been hostile to Palestinian autonomy. And the new White House plan gestures at it in only vague terms. Ultimately, Mr. Trump may need to threaten Mr. Netanyahu with consequences. Quietly at first, the president could explain that the United States is losing its patience and will soon restrict American military aid unless the war stops and Mr. Netanyahu accepts a future of Palestinian governance.
By insisting on that, Mr. Trump could make clear that he is a friend of Israel’s, trying to save it from self-defeating mistakes. He could remind Israel’s leaders of the stunning military victories they have achieved or made possible since 2023: the humbling of Hamas, the debilitation of Hezbollah, the weakening of Iran and the collapse of a Syrian regime with a ghastly record of oppressing its own people. Yes, Hamas still has active fighters and weapons in Gaza, and Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza City may reduce those numbers. But eradicating the group seems like a fantasy. Even some Israeli military and security officials opposed the invasion of Gaza City because they considered the costs greater than the benefits. Hamas is a terrorist organization with roots in the 97-year-old Muslim Brotherhood. Such groups are rarely eliminated.
Israel’s military successes against Hamas since 2023 mean that the group has lost the ability to conduct a major operation. More than 10,000 Hamas fighters and much of its leadership have been killed. After the war ends, Israel will be able to monitor Hamas and strike it if necessary.
The harder postwar question is who will govern Gaza. The calls for Israeli annexation from far-right members of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition are outrageous; they favor expelling roughly two million Palestinians, which meets any reasonable definition of ethnic cleansing. Hamas also should not have any governing role, given its record of violence, economic incompetence and authoritarian repression. The Palestinian Authority, which once governed Gaza, appears too corrupt and unpopular to do the job without major reforms.
Hamas and Mr. Netanyahu’s government deserve most of the blame for the war’s continuation, but the uncertainty about what comes next is a legitimately thorny issue that complicates any peace plan.
Arab governments can help fill this void. For years, their leaders have claimed solidarity with the Palestinian cause while doing too little to advance it. They have prioritized short-term stability over the governance reforms necessary to build a viable state. They have failed to cultivate moderate politicians who could command legitimacy among Palestinians and represent their interests on the international stage.
In recent months, Arab governments have shown signs of playing a more constructive role. This summer, all 22 members of the Arab League signed a declaration condemning the Oct. 7 attack for the first time. The statement called for the release of all hostages, the disarming of Hamas and the barring of Hamas from Gaza’s future governance. In its place should be a “a temporary international stabilization mission” invited into Gaza by the Palestinian Authority, the signers said. The 27 nations of the European Union and 17 other countries also joined the declaration. The plan that Mr. Trump announced this week is similar in many ways.
For any plan to succeed, Arab countries will need to form the crux of the security forces and civilian administration. If Europe and the United States dominate the mission, it will smack of a Western takeover of Gaza. If the Palestinian Authority alone is in charge, the risk of failure will be high.
The multinational authority should have an ambitious agenda. It would span the restoration of basic services, the feeding of the population, the reconstruction of neighborhoods and the creation of a police force. Crucially, as experts at the Wilson Center in Washington have argued, this authority should create a program in schools, the media and elsewhere “to remove Hamas’s pervasive radicalizing influence over Gazan society.” Another task would be disarming any Hamas fighters who keep fighting. Qatar, given its longtime relationship with Hamas, can help pressure the group, much as the United States can pressure Israel.
There are historical antecedents for an international mission along these lines. Deradicalization programs succeeded in Germany and Japan after World War II, and multinational police forces have operated in Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti and elsewhere. Of course, these efforts come with dangers. Participating countries would risk having their personnel become targets for Hamas. But there are no risk-free solutions in Gaza. And if the effort works, it could be the most significant progress in decades toward Palestinian statehood, which Arab nations have long supported.
The biggest risk in the wake of Mr. Trump’s proposal is that both Israel and Hamas will claim they want peace while failing to take difficult steps to get there. Mr. Netanyahu might slow-walk Israel’s departure from Gaza, and Hamas might attempt to retain a behind-the-scenes role in running Gaza — with each side blaming the other all the while. In that scenario, Arab and U.S. leaders will need to display more courage than they have so far. Arab leaders will need to tell Hamas that it is finished as a political force in Gaza and then back up that declaration with troops. Mr. Trump will need to require Mr. Netanyahu to choose between his domestic alliance with Israeli extremists and Israel’s international alliance with the United States.
Regardless, many other intractable problems would remain, including how to halt the growing crisis in the West Bank, whether future Palestinian leaders accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and whether Israel’s current leaders will accept Palestinians’ right to statehood.
But the Gazan people should not have to wait for those answers to stop burying their relatives and neighbors, to have enough food to eat and to begin rebuilding their lives. Nor should the Israeli hostages have to wait to return home to their desperate families. For everybody’s sake, this war needs to end.
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