A Close Read of the Israeli Peace Plan Brought Me to a Grim Conclusion

There’s some confusion over the Israeli peace proposal, which President Joe Biden publicized, the U.N. Security Council endorsed, and Hamas has now rejected. First, if Israel proposed it, why has Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to endorse it more than faintly? Are there differences between the proposal and Biden’s recitation of its terms? Finally, is there anything new about Hamas’ rejection and counteroffer—or are the U.S., Egyptian, and Qatari diplomats who have been trying to negotiate a cease-fire and hostage exchange simply disgorging the same arguments over and over and over?

On May 31, Biden gave a speech revealing that Israel had drafted and submitted “a comprehensive new proposal … a roadmap to an enduring ceasefire and the release of all hostages.” He outlined a three-phase, six-week plan, with very detailed terms and timing on a cease-fire, hostages-for-prisoners exchange, boost in humanitarian aid, reconstruction, and settlement of the ancient Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hopes fluttered that peace in Gaza might be at hand.

A close reading of the speech should have dashed such hopes. “Now I’ll be straight with you,” Biden said at one point. “There are a number of details to negotiate to move from Phase 1 to Phase 2”—i.e., from the initial pause in fighting to an actual end of the war. “Israel,” he added, “will want to make sure its interests are protected.” As for Phase 3 (the political and physical reconstruction of Gaza), no details were set whatsoever.

To the extent that Biden’s caveat was reported at all, it was taken as fine print. In fact, it should have been highlighted in italicized boldface. Doing so might have preempted much of the confusion that followed—and would have signaled that the “roadmap to an enduring ceasefire” wasn’t quite shovel-ready for a real road.

In some ways, the proposal is a remarkable document—the most detailed to date, outlining precisely how many Israeli hostages to release for how many Palestinian prisoners, on what timetable, and precisely how far from populated areas (even citing street names) Israeli troops should pull back while moving toward a complete withdrawal.

However, paragraph 15 (of the proposal’s 18 paragraphs) is where the obstacles come into clear view. Up to this point (paragraphs 1–14), the terms are pretty straightforward: the temporary cessation of fighting, the return of Gaza’s residents to their homes, the partial pullback of Israeli troops. Then comes the beginning of Phase 2, or as paragraph 15 dictates:

When I first read this, I was puzzled. “Sustainable calm” and “cessation of military operations and hostilities permanently” are not synonymous. Then I realized: The parentheses surrounding the latter phrase indicated a disagreement over the terms. Israel agreed to “a sustainable calm”—a phrase coined by the U.S. negotiator, CIA Director William Burns. Hamas was insisting on an end to all military operations “permanently.” Burns’ phrase was an attempt to finesse the dispute; Hamas’ phrase was a dismissal of the effort.

And that is where the dispute lies: Israelis (not just Netanyahu but many Israeli officials, even some opposition leaders, and a large segment of the population) want to resume the fighting after the deal is complete, should Hamas remain in control of Gaza. Hamas wants the war to end, period, in the hopes that it can remain in control.

Shortly after Biden’s speech, Netanyahu said that Israel’s war aim remains “the destruction of Hamas’ military and governing capabilities.” Some took this as a pushback against Biden’s reading of the proposal. But it was not. Israel’s version (“sustainable calm”) was not inconsistent with its long-term goal of destroying Hamas. Biden’s speech (if you read the whole thing) indicated that “a number of details” still needed to be negotiated in order “to move from Phase 1 to Phase 2” and that “Israel will want to make sure its interests are protected.”

Biden did depart from the text in one crucial way: He urged the combatants to go ahead with Phase 1 even before the rest of the deal is fully negotiated. David Horovitz of the Times of Israel summed it up succinctly back on June 2: Biden’s “game plan,” he wrote, seemed to be “Let’s get phase one moving,” with a “hope that the start of the process could itself yield further benefits.”

This hope is, in fact, worked into the proposal. Paragraph 14 notes that the results of Phase 1—the “temporary cessation of military operations by both sides,” the stepped-up humanitarian aid, and the partial withdrawal of forces—“will continue … so long as the negotiations on the conditions for implementing Stage 2 of the agreement are ongoing.”

In other words, the cease-fire and the rest of it will continue for as long as negotiations go on. Even if the negotiations aren’t resolved, the cease-fire will continue. This is Biden’s goal, above all: to end the war.

The problem—and this has been the problem all along—is that the war’s combatants, Israel and Hamas, don’t want it to end, not on these terms anyway. Neither wants to proceed with Phase 1 until the details of Phases 2 and 3 are worked out. And since they disagree fundamentally on those details (Israel wants the right to resume the war after the hostages are released, Hamas wants a permanent end to the war), Stage 1 is not likely to get underway.

In other words, the two sides have irreconcilable interests and aims. Conflicting interests and aims are what often start wars—and keep them going, even after much brutality has ensued. (See also Russia versus Ukraine.) Until those disputes are somehow settled, clever efforts at finessing (e.g., Burns’ “sustainable calm”) won’t work.

As I noted in a column last month, the war will end in one of three ways: One side will win; both sides, exhausted, will come to the table; or a peace will be imposed on one or both sides by outside powers.

The problem at the moment is that the leaders of both Israel and Hamas think they have a chance of winning. In a speech leaked to the Wall Street Journal, Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, said the deaths of Palestinian civilians work to Hamas’ favor—they are “necessary sacrifices” to defeating Israel, if not on the battlefield, then in the arena of world opinion. On the other side of the conflict, the more Israel alienates world opinion, the more many Israelis are determined to ignore that opinion. (“If they can’t sympathize with us after the attack of Oct. 7,” this line of thinking goes, “then screw ’em.” The recent pro-Palestinian protests in the U.S. and Canada that included masked radicals waving Hezbollah flags and chanting Hamas slogans probably harden both Sinwar and the Israelis in their views.)

Many have hoped Qatar would pressure Hamas into accepting various peace proposals that have been advanced the past few months. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also racked up millions of flight-miles trying to convince Qatari leaders, as well as those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to apply this pressure. The hope seemed plausible. The tiny Gulf emirate is an official “major non-NATO ally” to the United States, mainly because it is host to the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East—but it is also one of Hamas’ main suppliers, the host of several Hamas political leaders, and the intermediary between Hamas and the rest of the world. (The last role was long ago approved by U.S. Central Command and other Westerners, who wanted some way of communicating with Hamas.)

Nonetheless, the Qataris have been unable to exert that much leverage—perhaps, in part, because they agree with Hamas’ position in the talks and with its hostility to Israel.

In any case, there is an Israeli peace proposal; Biden’s description of it is accurate; and Hamas has rejected it. But the dispute is not over language. It’s over the interests and aims the language reflects. Until those are somehow reconciled—through military defeat or diplomatic pressure—the war is likely to go on.