How can we imagine the “day after”, when the war rages in Gazathat bombs are raining on the south of this narrow strip of land and that the hope of new releases of hostages fades with the end of the truce? There will, however, be a tomorrow, even if neither party is yet able to envisage it. Of course, it is difficult to imagine what will happen in the coming weeks, as the fog of war obscures the horizon. But the exercise is no less useful for planning ahead. Here are five scenarios that seem likely to us, in the more or less long term. They suggest the worst, but also explore hopeful perspectives. From international governance to the two-state solution, here is the range of possibilities. Third scenario in our special report: regional conflagration.
September 23, 2023. Two weeks before the Hamas terrorist attack, Benjamin Netanyahu speaks before the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Armed with a red marker, he brandishes with satisfaction a map of the “new Middle East”, a region where Israel will in the future be at “peace” with its Arab neighbors, thanks to the normalization of bilateral relations. Disturbingly, the Palestinians are not represented on the map and the Israeli Prime Minister makes no secret of his disdain for the approach of imagining a two-state solution – between Israel and Palestine – which has not translated into ” a single agreement” in a quarter of a century.
Since the October 7 killings, Netanyahu has not changed his mind. But this drama has brutally put the Palestinian question back at the center of debate, and, paradoxically, has brought back to the surface in Washington a pattern that has been marginalized for years. “A two-state solution is the only way to ensure the long-term security of the Israeli people and the Palestinian people,” wrote US President Joe Biden in an op-ed published in mid-November in the Washington Post. Before specifying: “Gaza and the West Bank should be reunified under the same governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian authority.”
Such a path is not impossible, but it is fraught with pitfalls. “Three conditions can allow a return to a real peace process, as at the time of the Oslo Accords of 1993, estimates Frédéric Encel, doctor in geopolitics and lecturer at Sciences po Paris. The first, the demilitarization of Hamas – so that it can no longer threaten Israel with missiles or terrorist attacks. The second, the return to the Gaza Strip of the Palestinian Authority, driven out by Hamas in 2007. The third condition is the fall of the Netanyahu government.”
None of these milestones will be easy to achieve. “One of the prerequisites for negotiations is that Israel in the future has only one interlocutor on the Palestinian side,” adds Yonatan Freeman, an expert in international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A Palestinian authority with a new generation of leaders, and who, with international supervision, are capable of guaranteeing Israel’s security.” Only elections could restore its very damaged legitimacy. “The Israelis will have to agree to cooperate with it and allow it to achieve some successes, underlines Ghaith al-Omari, former Palestinian negotiator and researcher at the Washington Institute. But the Palestinian Authority will also have to reform in depth, by fighting against corruption and bad governance.”
However, a peace process can only be consolidated with the support of the United States, the only one capable of bringing together all the players around the table. The fact remains that the time has not yet come for discussion, as the traumas are so painful: the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 on the one hand; the thousands of civilian victims in the bombings on Gaza on the other. “Even if the conditions are one day met, it will take a long time for Israelis and Palestinians to agree to trust each other,” said Ghaith al-Omari. “We must keep the two-state solution as an objective, but I don’t see how it could be revived in the foreseeable future.” The only hope is that the suffering endured on both sides will convince both parties to move towards lasting peace.