Israel had barely begun its military operation in Gaza, after Hamas slaughtered 1,200 people and kidnapped 240 more, when the Biden administration began talking about what would need to happen the day after the war was over. “There has to be a vision of what comes next,” President Biden said on Oct. 25, 2023.
Subsequently, the term “the Day After” was everywhere. In part, it was a device used to cast doubt on the Israeli military operation altogether, presenting it as an emotional response born of trauma and driven by a desire for vengeance—base instincts that can be tolerated only for so long. Sure, smashing things might bring immediate, short-term gratification, but what’s the plan for “the Day After”?
Administration officials leaked how they were “frustrated by Netanyahu’s unwillingness to seriously discuss plans for the day after.” What comes next, the president said on Oct. 25, “has to be a two-state solution.” That is, once Israel got its quest for blood out of its system, it needed to sit down and get with the plan—the underlying assumption being that Israel is responsible for (or at least capable of meaningfully shaping) Palestinian behavior. Clearly, the problem with Israel’s pre-Oct. 7 policy toward Gaza was that Benjamin Netanyahu needed to let more Qatari money and Iranian weapons into the Strip. Only by granting Hamas a state with full control over its borders and diplomatic relations with the European Union could future large terror attacks be prevented.
Needless to say, there is something completely insane about holding the victims of a horrific large-scale murder rampage responsible for the future happiness of their attackers. On the other hand, surely you don’t want this to happen again, do you?
Tablet News Editor Tony Badran asked six experts a series of questions on these issues. Michael Doran’s responses are excerpted below.
Tony Badran: What should “the Day After” look like in Gaza? What do you think it will actually look like?
Michael Doran: The day after what? Obviously, we are discussing the day after the war ends, but what exactly is the nature of this war? Who are the belligerents? What are they fighting over? What constitutes victory? And how will we ever know that the conflict has ended and that, indeed, we have arrived at “the Day After”?
These questions don’t have clear-cut answers. From the outset, the Biden administration has presented the conflict as a Palestinian-Israeli war, but that framing is objectively false. Because Iran and its proxies are clearly a party to this war, one might be tempted to say it is an Iranian-Israeli war. Tehran-backed forces, however, have repeatedly hit American targets. Properly understood, the Iranian-led Resistance Axis is making war against the U.S.-led regional order.
Only when Iran is defeated, therefore, do we arrive at “the Day After.” Until that time comes, the question that should be at the forefront of our minds is whether the diplomatic initiatives that Washington is taking are likely to foil Iran’s plans.
All the talk that the Biden administration has generated about “the Day After” fails to perform that service. Just weeks after Oct. 7, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a Senate hearing that the most sensible political goal of the war “would be for an effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority to have governance and ultimately security responsibility for Gaza.”
First, there is no such thing as an “effective” Palestinian Authority. The Biden administration is trying to organize a cavalry charge while mounted on a donkey. Second, the donkey is unwelcome in Gaza. Hamas emasculated the Palestinian Authority a decade and a half ago, and there is no sign that the Gazans are eager to “revitalize” it. Finally, and most important, the effort to resurrect the failed two-state solution sets the United States at odds with the Israelis—all Israelis. From the center-left to the far-right, voters reject the idea of a reformed Palestinian Authority taking control of Gaza. No major party endorses the plan.
The Biden administration is also helping, with its voice, to advance the objectives of Iranian political warfare. By sparking “the Day After” debate, Washington is doing Tehran’s work for it, creating the impression, globally, that the issue of Palestinian sovereignty is the core problem to be solved and that, moreover, the Israelis are the primary impediment to the achievement of that sovereignty.
We would be much wiser to talk about what we need to see on the day before “the Day After”—namely, the total demise of Hamas. Let’s postpone all talk of a new political order until the hard military work is done.
In addition to involving the Saudis and Emiratis in “Day After” plans for Gaza, the administration is also still pushing some sort of three-way deal with Israel and Saudi Arabia, which the administration has made contingent on some Israeli commitments to the Palestinians. With the U.S. regional posture being what it is—appeasement of Iran and elevation of the Palestinians—is the prospect of a peace deal with the Saudis a trap for Israel?
Mike Doran: Yes, it is certainly a trap. Remember, the administration came into office so hostile to the Abraham Accords that it prohibited State Department officials from using the term.
The necessity of achieving a two-state solution before brokering closer relations between Israel and the Arab world is the dogma of Democratic national security circles, and it remained so even after the Abraham Accords. The pursuit of the two-state solution had gained the status of a sacrosanct mission, a quest that justified itself, as opposed to a pragmatic tool for achieving a clearly defined goal.
But there’s another reason for the hostility: The accords were organically connected to the Trump administration’s rejection of President Obama’s Iran policy, which we have called in Tablet “.” The nuclear deal served as the flagship of the Realignment, but Obama sought nothing less than to change the role of the United States in the Middle East, to build a regional order on an entirely new basis. He transformed the United States from the leader of a coalition to contain Iranian conventional power and to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon into a mediator between America’s traditional allies and Iran.
The administration’s about-face on supporting normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel allowed it to escape the ridicule it faced over its to the accords. But the administration has carefully crafted the initiative so as to force Israel to promote the rise of a Palestinian state. Whereas the Abraham Accords ended the Palestinian veto on peace agreements between Israel and Arab states, Biden’s normalization push reinstalls it.
Irrespective of its chances for success, the administration pursues the policy because it offers additional incentive to the Israelis to comply with its wishes for a reformed and revitalized Palestinian Authority to rule over Gaza. In addition, the policy distracts the pro-Israeli American electorate from the advances that Iran is making toward building a nuclear weapon and from the expansion of the power of its Resistance Axis.
The more the Israeli government indulges the White House on the issue, the more it deflects from the issue that should be at the center of a joint American-Israeli policy: namely, confronting Iran.
The scenario for Gaza and the West Bank that Jeremy Ben-Ami laid out envisions a set of internationalized “special provinces” whose economy, governance, and security will be managed by the United States, Europe, and regional actors. Also, from what I gather, Iran will be part of the regional managing board, essentially cloning the current arrangement in Lebanon.
Assuming Saudi Arabia et al. agree to bankroll this type of arrangement for Gaza and the West Bank, can you please explain how locking in Iranian dominance under a U.S. umbrella (A) serves the U.S. national interest and (B) serves Israel’s national interest.
Michael Doran: President Biden is pressing the Israelis to refrain from conquering Rafah and, at the same time, to accept a temporary cease-fire that he hopes can be made permanent. In other words, he seeks a negotiated end to the war that will leave Hamas in place.
Meanwhile, Biden is also pressing the Israelis to accept the return of Palestinian Authority security officials in Gaza. How does he square leaving Hamas in place and returning the PA? He hopes the two will arrive at a power-sharing agreement. Indeed, the Turks, Chinese, and others have been working to mediate such a deal between the two Palestinian sides. But the history of such agreements teaches that, even if one emerges, it will soon collapse. Armed clashes will ensue. Biden, therefore, is sowing the seeds of internecine Palestinian conflict.
On a regional level, this PA-Hamas power-sharing works only if Iran is a party to the deal. So long as Hamas, Iran’s proxy, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, its puppet, remain alive, Tehran has veto power over any political deal. In other words, Biden, like Obama, is attempting to create a concert system in the Middle East, one in which the United States and Iran manage the region together.
Biden’s policy consciously preserves Hamas and, through it, Iran as major players. The president is encouraging us to talk about Israeli stubbornness regarding “the Day After” in the hopes that we won’t notice the kisses he is blowing to Tehran.
How long do you imagine this dual parliamentary monarchy—whose population will be overwhelmingly Palestinian—will last as a Hashemite kingdom? Won’t this simply lead to a repeat of the Hamas takeover of Gaza in a much larger territory?
Michael Doran: We tend to define the “viable” arrangement, in this context, as the one that will reconcile the competing and equally legitimate demands of the two sides, as if the United States were a disinterested broker. It is not.
The United States is the leader of a global international system that is under attack by a loose coalition of revisionist powers, led by China, Russia, and Iran. In the Middle East, countering Iran should be a top priority of America’s regional strategy—and the touchstone for determining viability.
The solicitous diplomatic attitude in Washington toward Tehran as well as the supine American military response to Iranian aggression only incentivize further aggression.
U.S. troop levels in the region are at the lowest they have been since 9/11. Meanwhile, Tehran’s drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles have created an “offense dominant” military regime—a balance of power that favors offensive action by Iran. At the same time, the advances in Iran’s nuclear weapons program put it within a hair’s breadth of having a nuclear device and therefore increasing the sense of impunity for offensive action.
A viable arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians will result in Israel expunging Hamas, not just in Gaza but also in the West Bank. Only Israel can do that. The Palestinian Authority will not, and an independent Palestinian state (with an Iranian embassy in Ramallah?) certainly won’t either.
The reach of Hamas and Iran into the Palestinian Authority is not the only challenge that the pursuit of the two-state solution will exacerbate. Seen from Tehran, Jordan looks particularly soft. Since World War I, revisionist powers—the Soviet Union, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and now Ali Khamenei’s Iran—have supported Palestinian nationalism in part to pressure Jordan, America’s ally.
The American national interest, including the well-being of Jordan, requires Israel to hold the Jordan Valley in perpetuity not just as the defense perimeter of Israel but also as a guarantee that a Palestinian state will not become a launching pad for efforts to destabilize Jordan. No Palestinian leader will ever formally grant Israel control of the Jordan Valley. There should be no talk in Washington, therefore, of “revitalizing” the Palestinian Authority as long it seeks to assume sovereign rights over the Jordan Valley.
As long as Hamas remains alive, and as long as Hezbollah and Iran are free to shoot rockets, drones, and missiles at Israel in support of Palestinian nationalism, any American initiatives to broker a new set of enduring arrangements between Palestinians and Israelis will simply encourage maximalist agendas that undermine the American order.
From the Basques and Catalans in Spain to the Uighurs and Tibetans in China, to the Walloons in Belgium, to the Druze in Syria and Lebanon, to the Indigenous tribes of Guatemala and Peru and dozens of African nations, the world is full of subnational groupings with their own separate languages and cultures and zero chance of achieving statehood, ever. Why isn’t this also the case for the Palestinians? And if it is, how does it serve the American national interest to spend decade after decade pretending otherwise?
Michael Doran: Since the fall of the Berlin wall, the United States has tested, time and again, whether Palestinian nationalism is prepared to live in peace with Israel within recognized borders. The number of hours that senior American officials and their brightest advisers have devoted to finding the magic formulae that would convince Palestinian leaders to end all conflict and nullify all claims against Israel is incalculable.
The chances that an additional thousand hours of work by American senior leaders will lead to a discovery of the winning formulae are zero. No question in American foreign policy is easier to answer than this one. There is no solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that American policy can reasonably effect.
The United States must manage, not solve, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To what end? Allow me to repeat: The key task for the United States in the Middle East today is blunting the rise of Iranian power. Every other challenge in the region pales in comparison. The stronger Iran grows, the more unmanageable the Israeli-Palestinian conflict becomes.
Pursuing a two-state solution based on empowering a reformed and revitalized Palestinian Authority will not blunt Iran, no matter how many adjectives the Biden administration puts before the “Palestinian Authority.” American officials do not possess the power to make a Palestinian state viable.
If the PA’s collapse is inevitable, and the destruction of Hamas is a sine qua non for “the Day After,” what are the local governance bodies in the West Bank that Israel would work with? Is it possible to proceed with this approach without Washington’s approval?
Michael Doran: Israel is fighting its second War of Independence. The success of Hamas’ surprise attack on Oct. 7 was the result of a catastrophic Israeli intelligence failure, to be sure, but it was also the result of something much deeper: a misappreciation of Israel’s place in the world and of the nature of contemporary warfare.
No one who was making the key decisions imagined the kind of war that Israel is now engaged in. In recent decades, the Israeli national security establishment began developing defensive concepts and strategies that failed to anticipate the following developments:
- That large-scale, high operational tempo warfare involving traditional combat formations optimized for seizing territory over a long period would again become the norm. It built a military that imagined warfare as short, sharp engagements involving air power and special forces, relying on state-of-the-art intelligence collection and innovative high technological wizardry.
- That Iran’s conventional military capabilities would pose as great a threat as its growing nuclear weapons program. Israel failed to anticipate that, thanks to Iranian tutelage, Hamas, the weakest of Tehran’s proxies, could morph into a serious threat. Israel failed to anticipate how much direct and indirect military support Hamas would receive from Iran’s Axis of Resistance.
- That antisemitism in the West would again become a major factor in international politics.
- That the United States might withhold political and diplomatic support in the event of an Israeli war with Iran.
- That the post-Cold War defense industrial capacity of NATO nations might be inadequate to meet the demands of wars fueled by the aggressive intentions of China, Russia, and Iran.
Rebuilding the IDF and formulating new doctrines and defense concepts based on new, correct assumptions will be the work of years. In the short term, if Israel is to safeguard its sovereignty, it must first expunge Hamas; second, break the kneecaps of Hezbollah; and third, deter Iran. These are achievable aims, but they will demand a high price.