Late Tuesday, the Israeli government and Hamas reached a deal that will bring the first pause in hostilities in over six weeks — and bring at least some Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners home.

Qatar, which brokered the deal over the last month, confirmed it on Tuesday night, after its rough outline had been reported throughout the day. Now, Hamas and Israel are working out the final details. Hamas would exchange 50 hostages — women and children who are Israeli and dual-national — with Israel for about 150 Palestinian prisoners currently held in custody, mostly women. The swap will happen in four phases, and the corridor and exact procedure are still being negotiated, including the lists of those who would be exchanged.

If all goes to plan, Israel would commence a four-day ceasefire in Gaza and would also stop drone overflights for six hours a day. After those days, the ceasefire could be extended a day with each additional 10 hostages Hamas releases. During this period, Israel would not allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza, but would allow some 300 trucks of aid in daily, including fuel.

This is a deal that has essentially been on the table for about a month, and according to the Guardian, negotiations were already happening before Israel launched its ground attacks on Gaza. Israel had defined its twin objectives as eliminating Hamas and bringing the hostages back, but experts noted that the former had been the priority until political dynamics led to an increased willingness among Israeli leadership to accept a truce to bring some hostages home. “Public pressure led Netanyahu to agree to a deal that he refused until now,” journalist Yossi Verter wrote in Haaretz’s Hebrew edition.

The deal itself would be neither a resolution to the war nor to the roots of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. It’s a significant development that’s better than nothing, but it’s not a long-term solution. In a statement, President Joe Biden thanked Qatari, Egyptian, and Israeli leaders and described the deal — “a testament to the tireless diplomacy and determination” — as a hostage release. The focus, as the White House put it, is bringing home more American hostages, rather than a bigger truce.

When Hamas conducted its October 7 attack and took about 240 Israeli, dual-national, and international people hostage, Israel’s security outlook changed. Its drive to pursue a destructive military campaign in Gaza is based in a desire to “destroy Hamas.” But, as US and Arab officials acknowledged at an international summit over the weekend, there is no plan for Gaza the day after, or even now. Israel’s lack of strategy or goals in its response to the Hamas attack has led to a situation where Israel’s ongoing military operations risk becoming a forever war just like America’s over the last two decades.

At the same time, Palestinians in Gaza are suffering most. Al Jazeera has reported that there are no functioning hospitals in the northern part of the occupied territory, in large part due to Israeli military incursions and a lack of fuel, and that the remaining 21 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals are “completely out of service.” In the lead-up to the announcement of a ceasefire, Israel’s attacks on Gaza continued. 

The deal is a diplomatic achievement, to be sure, but it’s only the beginning of a set of complex negotiations that will be needed to address the ongoing war, the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians in Gaza, and the potential for the war to extend to the broader Middle East. 

Why is there a deal now?

For weeks, Qatar, with US buy-in, has been helping facilitate negotiations between Israel and Hamas over a deal somewhat along the lines of today’s. But the experts I’ve spoken to in recent weeks had reservations. The skepticism was not around the need for the talks or their import, but more about their fragility; these deals are only real once they’re announced, and even then they are tenuous. (At least once over the last week, media reports indicated a deal was imminent, only for those assertions to be walked back.)

But on Tuesday evening, Netanyahu endorsed the deal and pushed his government’s ministers to accept it during a meeting that lasted over five hours before they finally voted to approve the deal. “Tonight we stand before a difficult decision, but it is the right decision. All security organizations support it fully,” he told Israeli television. In recent days, the White House has maintained that the deal was “close” but President Joe Biden wouldn’t go into further detail.

A combination of Qatar’s orchestration of the deal, Israeli internal political pressure on Netanyahu, and Hamas’s commitment to getting the release of Palestinian prisoners has contributed to this truce and exchange.

Some secrecy is required for such a deal to work, but that can also work to its detriment. Analysts speculate, for example, that Hamas would treat the exchange of Israeli civilians differently than it would Israeli soldiers.

In the past, Israel has been willing to exchange many Palestinians for its soldiers: Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, was released from an Israeli prison as part of the 2011 deal for an Israeli soldier that released 1,000 Palestinians, for example. “We will not forget our prisoners who we left behind,” Sinwar said upon his release. 

The terms are not likely to be made public in full, and there aren’t really any enforcement mechanisms. “It’s hard to tell when an agreement was violated, who violated it, and then how we can kind of get back to some sort of ceasefire agreement,” Yousef Munayyer, a researcher at the Arab Center in Washington, DC, told me. “This is something that’s played out between Israel and Hamas a lot, going back to 2008. So one of my concerns is like, what are the exact terms of this agreement? And are both sides publicly committing to the same terms?”

Israelis will have 24 hours to appeal any deal to the Supreme Court, and the Almagor Terror Victims Association has said it will. This is one of several potential hiccups as Israel and Hamas work to implement the deal over the coming days; Israeli attacks on Gaza continued Wednesday before the likely cessation of hostilities at 10 am Thursday local time.

One reason Israel has agreed to the deal now is the growing advocacy from the families of hostages. “The government is in complete disarray,” Mairav Zonszein, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, told me. “In the first few weeks of this, the hostages were like an afterthought, they were not the priority. That’s a huge shift that happened in the last few weeks, where the families after the initial shock started to organize themselves and they basically put it on the agenda.”

As the families became more organized and more agitated, they became more convinced that the Israeli government was avoiding doing the deal. Their slogan became “Deal Now!” These demands didn’t just exert pressure on Netanyahu’s government, but on him individually — calling into question his longtime framing of himself as Mr. Security, at a moment when he’s extremely politically vulnerable. 

Israel has perhaps also made a strategic calculation that its military campaign of 46 days had shown it was serious about its objective of eliminating Hamas. However impossible experts say that it might be to decimate a militant group that’s part of a broader social and political organization, Israel didn’t want to look as though they were compromising from a position of weakness. “For the Israelis, politically, I don’t think they were going to be prepared to accept any sort of exchange on October 8,” Munayyer explained. “They first wanted to do some damage. They first wanted to make it feel like they were imposing a price on Hamas before they made any sort of agreement, even though it was likely that an agreement was inevitable at some point.”

Though Israel still sees negotiations as a defeat or a concession, it’s really the only path to future peace and security for the region.

The future of Gaza is unclear

Whatever the shape of the deal, the question looms of what happens next to Gaza. 

In the short term, more suffering seems clear. Netanyahu has pledged to continue military operations in Gaza after the five-day pause. “The war has its stages, and the release of the hostages has its stages as well. But we won’t rest until we achieve total victory, and until we bring everyone back,” he said in the televised remarks.

There also is no ceasefire or pause negotiated on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where Hezbollah and Israel have been trading strikes.

And longer-term, what came out of last week’s summit of Middle East leaders in Manama, Bahrain, is that there is no plan, no commitment, no interest. “After two days of talking to officials about the plan for post-war Gaza, the inescapable conclusion is that there is no plan. The shattered enclave will need external help to provide security, reconstruction and basic services,” the Economist reported. “But no one—not Israel, not America, not Arab states or Palestinian leaders—wants to take responsibility for it.”

And it’s easy for Biden’s people to talk about a two-state solution, as we’ve seen in their talking points in recent days. The Israeli military operation will only go so far in achieving its goals. There will need to be a bigger political agreement to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Its core concerns won’t be solved militarily, as the hostage exchange deal makes clear. “You need a political path,” Ezzedine Choukri Fishere, a former Egyptian diplomat now at Dartmouth College, told me recently. “If this is only talk as it has been over the last few decades, then the outcome will be the same”: a frozen peace process that has gone nowhere.

Like this exchange, such an over-the-horizon conversation about what happens to Gaza and the future of Palestinians is going to require engaging indirectly with Hamas. “The stated goal of destroying Hamas is not achievable,” Khaled Elgindy, a researcher with the Middle East Institute, told me last month. “So how do you even know when you’ve gotten to the day after?” That’s not exactly popular to hear. 

One thing to watch is whether more Western countries and organizations call for a ceasefire. Though the French president, the United Nations, and leading humanitarian groups have urged one, other countries have rejected these calls. This pause may lead others to join the group. And that may ultimately put pressure on the Biden administration and other leaders. “The idea is that you need to stop the killing in order to figure out how you can build on that, how you can try to figure out alternatives to the fighting,” Zonszein told me.

Right now, Gaza needs aid. The 300 trucks that US humanitarian envoy David Satterfield briefed journalists about this week won’t be enough, and Israel has restricted movement within Gaza. The UN notes that there still isn’t electricity in Gaza, hospitals face severe shortages, and Israel has not allowed food shipments to enter northern Gaza. According to the latest data from the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 14,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, over half of whom are women and children, and 1.7 million people have been internally displaced. The situation in Gaza is beyond dire, with 53 journalists reportedly killed in Israeli strikes and more than 100 United Nations officials killed. The World Health Organization described al-Shifa Hospital as a “death zone.”

At the same time, militant groups with links to Iran are attacking US military installations in Iraq, Syria, and off the coast of Yemen. The risks of this war expanding and drawing the US into a more direct role endure. 

The truce represents a major breakthrough after six weeks of war between Israel and Hamas, but the bigger takeaway is clear: More diplomacy is needed now. Four days of pause isn’t enough.

Update, November 22, 11:15 am: This story, originally published November 21, has been updated with news of the deal’s confirmation and details about how its likely implementation will play out.

One area where the Biden administration has set itself apart is in sending weapons to partner countries, and now we’re getting a more complete picture of what the US is sending Israel in the weeks since October 7.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the US has ramped up its previously minimal military aid to the country to an unparalleled $46.7 billion. Ukraine towers over the other major recipients in bar charts of US security assistance for 2022 and ’23. The US is sending so many munitions there that it has apparently strained American factories and led to a whole-of-government effort to revive military supply chains.

The US is also accelerating arms transfers to Israel in response to Hamas’s October 7 attacks that killed 1,200 people and resulted in the kidnapping of more than 200. Last month, President Joe Biden announced from the Oval Office that he would seek “an unprecedented support package for Israel’s defense” of $14.3 billion. “We’re surging additional military assistance,” he added.

But while Ukraine has never been a traditional recipient of heavy military aid, the US’s most recent support of the Israeli military builds on a long bipartisan American practice. Israel has received about $3 billion annually, adjusted for inflation, for the last 50 years, and is the largest historical recipient of US security aid. The Obama administration in 2016 announced the biggest security assistance package to the country ever, pledging $38 billion for Israel over the next decade. US support has ensured that Israel maintains its qualitative military edge over neighboring Arab countries by having more advanced weapons systems, something Congress wrote into law in 2008.

Israel would not be able to conduct this war without the US, which over time has provided Israel with about 80 percent of the country’s weapons imports. Israel is using them as part of its large-scale military operation that has so far killed over 11,000 Palestinians and destroyed hospitals and civilian infrastructure. While it is the Israeli Defense Forces doing the killing, the extent of US aid has raised serious questions about American culpability. “Providing weapons that knowingly and significantly would contribute to unlawful attacks can make those providing them complicit in war crimes,” Human Rights Watch said.

Which weapons, exactly, the US is sending to fill Israel’s requests since October 7 has been hitherto kept secret — in contrast to how the US publicizes the weapons it delivers to Ukraine. But Bloomberg this week published a leaked Pentagon document that showed the US has delivered 2,000 Hellfire missiles that can be launched from Apache helicopters, as well as an array of other mortars and ammo, including “36,000 rounds of 30mm cannon ammunition, 1,800 of the requested M141 bunker-buster munitions and at least 3,500 night-vision devices.”

This year, military budgets around the world hit all-time highs. Israel in recent years has been growing its arms export business. It also imports significant weapons from the UK, Italy, Canada, and Germany, but 92 percent of what Israel gets comes from the United States. As researcher William Hartung wrote recently in The Nation, “Israel’s arsenal, and its arms industry, are by and large made in, and financed by, the USA.”

Why Biden’s team is so effective at getting weapons to Israel

The Biden administration has a robust understanding of weapons systems and the business behind them. While any mainstream US administration, Republican or Democrat, would likely be rushing weapons orders to Israel, this administration is uniquely qualified to do so, bringing to bear their successes on Ukraine arms transfer and experience advising weapons-makers. In the second year of his presidency, Biden’s arms sales overtook President Donald Trump’s, who himself had already overseen a big increase.

The House voted in favor of new military assistance to Israel but cut out the Ukraine aid component, so the Senate will likely not pass it. In the meantime, the Biden administration has been efficient and quiet about transfers, using creative tools to jump-start deliveries to Israel that include direct commercial sales from arms-makers (meaning the US isn’t financing the purchases but does allow American weapons manufacturers to sell to Israel), governmental financing vehicles that don’t require congressional approval, and hurrying up orders that were placed before October. Stockpiles meant for US use are also being diverted to Israel. As a senior Pentagon official put it, “expediting security assistance” to Israel has been task number one.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is a former board member of Raytheon, the major military contractor that co-produces Iron Dome receptors with the Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. RTX, as Raytheon has been renamed, is one of the most significant providers to Israel. Austin and many other senior appointees to the Pentagon bring a depth of experience working for the arms industry. Even if they aren’t directly involved in the day-to-day — Austin has had to recuse himself from the Department of Defense’s dealings with Raytheon — the heft these appointments bring shows the seriousness with which the Biden administration takes the defense industrial base. 

As Austin told the Senate, “We are flowing security assistance to Israel at the speed of war.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken co-founded WestExec Advisors in 2017, which has worked for military contractors, new military-tech startups, and Israeli companies. Blinken, for his part, advised the defense contractor Boeing, according to his financial disclosure. Last month, Boeing rushed the transfer of 1,000 smart bombs and 1,800 GPS-guidance bomb kits to Israel.

Much of the team that worked to get Israel the $38 billion Obama package over 10 years is leading the way. Other key State Department officials include Daniel Shapiro, who also worked for the Israel spyware maker NSO Group when he was out of government. Intelligence leaders, too, bring vast experience. Avril Haines, the director of the Office of National Intelligence, has worked as an adviser to the data-processing powerhouse Palantir, which has been a staunch supporter of Israel and apparently provides advanced tech to the Israeli military.

The foundation of relationships between the defense industries in the US, Israel, and its other partners in the region also helps. When the world’s biggest aerospace and defense companies gathered at the Dubai Airshow this week, for example, Israeli defense firms and officials kept a low profile — but the big deals continued. Take the US-Israel-UAE triangle, which benefits each country. Boeing, an American company, signed a $52 billion airliner contract with a UAE carrier. On the sidelines of the fair, business people discussed “the impact of the demand for equipment stemming from the conflicts in Gaza” and “Close U.S.-U.A.E. alignment on the Israel-Gaza conflict,” according to the US-UAE Business Council. At the same time, Elbit Systems’ Emirati subsidiary is selling $53 million of military tech to the UAE.

The US has promoted the long lists of weapons it is sending to Ukraine, publishing one-pagers and tallies that go into great detail. But as the Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein noted, the Biden administration has kept the list of weapons it’s sending to Israel secret. The administration has also “sought permission to unilaterally blanket-approve the future sale of military equipment and weapons — like ballistic missiles and artillery ammunition  —  to Israel without notifying Congress,” according to the watchdog group Women for Weapons Trade Transparency. That would remove a key mechanism for oversight from lawmakers — and scrutiny from the public.

Who’s concerned about arms to Israel?

Many of these weapons are now being used in Gaza, with catastrophic humanitarian results. That has led the United Nations, French President Emmanuel Macron, and a number of international organizations to urge an immediate ceasefire. Human Rights Watch has called for war crimes investigations into the Israeli bombardment of the health care system. 

“The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy,” Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said last month. That heavy bombardment and death toll prompted the UN’s high commissioner for human rights to say Thursday that “the killing of so many civilians cannot be dismissed as collateral damage.” 

Given this, some activists are protesting US military aid to Israel and are calling for a ceasefire. One group called Palestine Action has been staging actions in the US and the United Kingdom at the facilities of Elbit Systems, an Israeli military contractor. About 150 protesters picketed Raytheon Technologies in El Segundo, California, for its arms trade with Israel. 

Josh Paul, a former senior State Department official overseeing arms sales who resigned in protest last month, has been straightforward in saying that Israel is in violation of international law. “It is my opinion that Israel is committing war crimes in its actions in Gaza right now,” he said. “And it’s not just my opinion. I’ve actually heard from officials across government, including elected officials at a very senior level, who share that opinion but aren’t willing to say it in public.”

This may be setting up Israel for a collision with the Biden administration. 

In February 2022, Biden strengthened the human rights component of US arms transfers. The administration put a new emphasis on human rights in the Conventional Arms Transfer policy that added safeguards for “elevating the importance of protecting civilians.” The policy specifically restricted the transfer of weapons that are “more likely than not” to be used in atrocities, including violations of the Geneva Convention or of international humanitarian law. 

The Biden administration may be “violating its own conventional arms transfer policy” by sending arms to Israel, as Seth Binder of the Project on Middle East Democracy recently told Jacobin. 

But senior Biden officials insist the administration is upholding its commitments. “All of our arms transfers, including arms transfers to Israel, are rooted in the basic proposition that they will be used consistent with [the] law of armed conflict,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said last month. “There is no exception here and no difference here from any of our other arms transfers.” The administration regularly conveys to Israel the importance of humanitarian laws, that “innocent civilians must be taken [in]to account for any operation,” according to Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh.

Some of the concerns relate specifically to the kinds of weapons the US delivers. The document that Bloomberg obtained showed that the US is sending Israel 57,000 of the 155mm shells that are used in artillery guns. A group of humanitarian aid groups and security experts had sent a letter to the secretary of defense earlier in the week urging the Biden administration not to send these shells to Israel, saying they are “inherently indiscriminate” and “have a high error radius, often landing 25 meters away from the intended target,” which would be particularly destructive in a place as densely populated as Gaza.

As arms trade accelerates and scrutiny on Israel’s operations heightens, the reason for the strengthening of the arms transfer policy’s human rights component seems more relevant than ever. “It is not in the US national interest to engage in arms transfers where we assess that they are likely to be used in human rights violations,” Christopher Le Mon, a senior State Department official, said in March. “It does not advance our national interests, it does not advance our national security.”

As President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in San Francisco today, the two leaders find themselves in different positions than when they met last year in Bali, Indonesia. 

Back then, each was in a position of strength — Biden coming out of a triumphant midterm election and Xi a well-orchestrated party conference that solidified his rule — and both used that first in-person meeting as an occasion to soothe tensions.

Then came the Chinese balloon floating over the United States that tore at the already tenuous condition of US-China relations. The incident bolstered hawks in America gunning for a more assertive US policy toward China (though, under Biden, like Trump, the policy has already been pretty hawkish). Since then, each country’s leader has been tested. Biden has faced troubling poll numbers and gets flack from House Republicans who argue that even meeting with Chinese leaders is a form of capitulation. And now, Israel’s war on Gaza threatens American power globally and possibly Biden’s reelection. 

In China, mass protests against Xi’s zero-Covid policies significantly undermined him and forced the country to open up in a somewhat haphazard fashion. His weakness has been exposed as he’s grappled with an economic slowdown and reshuffled ministers.

Now, just sitting down together is considered a success. Wednesday’s meeting on the sides of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit will be the first time in a year the leaders of the world’s two largest economies have talked. This isn’t a big-picture realignment but a tactical cooling, with the hope that presidential diplomacy can yield more diplomatic breakthroughs in the distant future and mitigate the risk of outright conflict in the nearer one. 

So, the achievement likely to come out of this year’s Biden-Xi summit is, simply, the meeting itself. If there are policy announcements that emerge from the conversation, experts told me, they are likely to be minor. “It’s been a rough few years in US-Chinese relations,” Sharon Burke, a former senior Defense official, told me. “So the prospect of potentially getting back to a more normal pace, where we’re going to remain contentious, but that we can actually meet and talk about, especially mutual interests, is important — even if it doesn’t result in headline-grabbing agreements or compromises.”

This builds on several months of Biden seeking calm, often saying that the administration doesn’t want a new cold war with China even as some of its policies suggest otherwise. His national security cabinet has shuttled to Beijing and in the process built confidence that diplomacy remains the best path forward with China. The Biden administration has sought this entente but doesn’t always get its calls returned (like during the balloon crisis). China, for what it’s worth, has cooled its rhetoric toward the US recently, putting out official statements ahead of today’s meeting that focus on stabilizing relations.

Though war in the Middle East is draining the Biden administration’s foreign policy attention, the issue of China endures as the most significant globally. The president’s entire foreign policy is organized around countering China. 

“Both sides have probed at the bottom line of the other side,” Yun Sun, an analyst at the Stimson Center, told me. “Both sides have pushed, have bullied, have screamed, and have offered enticement. And so basically, all the different approaches have been tried. Now, people are at a much more sober understanding as for what is possible and what is viable.”

When Biden and Xi meet in San Francisco

This is likely the last time the two leaders will meet for some time. “Historically speaking, sitting presidents running for reelection don’t see it as advantageous to their reelection campaigns to meet with their Chinese counterparts during election years,” Ryan Hass, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, told me. 

Biden has kept in place many of Trump’s policies toward China. Still, Biden’s emphasis on diplomatic engagement is a contrast to Republicans who have flaunted a militaristic approach to China, as seen at recent presidential debates. Trump, for his part, said nice things about Xi recently (“He’s like Central Casting”), but a second Trump term would almost certainly strain US-China relations further.

So what will the Chinese hope to get out of this summit? “They’re looking for an opportunity to show the Chinese people that President Xi was treated with dignity and respect on the world stage, that he was viewed as a world leader of stature and significance,” Hass, who served in the Obama White House, explained. “And I think that they’re probably going to try to use the meeting to set down markers around their expectations around Taiwan, given that Taiwan has an election upcoming in January of next year.”

Analysts will also be watching whether there will be some resumption of military-to-military relations between the two countries. The Chinese balloon further tested the prospect of communication, which China had largely suspended after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022. The two sides are working on that, Sun explained, but each country has different expectations. The US wants to resume both high-level and working-level contacts, while the Chinese are taking an incremental approach and are using this all as a point of leverage.

There may also be some movement on climate change. Biden’s envoy John Kerry said “some agreements” are in the works. “We cannot make progress in the world on climate change without the United States and China,” Burke, who is now president of the advisory firm Ecospherics, told me. 

The US and China don’t currently have much by way of arms control agreements, so news that the two countries have even started talking arms control, as my colleague Jen Kirby recently reported, is major. So are feelers the US has put out about a new dialogue on limitations around AI and autonomy when it comes to nuclear weapons.

The small stuff may prove important, like an increase in the number of flights between the US and China, which plummeted since the pandemic. The two leaders will also discuss how to clamp down on the export of fentanyl.

The two countries also share an interest in a more stable situation in the Middle East. The US has leverage over Israel, and China over Iran, from which it buys much oil and with which it maintains diplomatic relations, unlike the US. 

It would be difficult to imagine Biden and Xi putting out a Middle East peace plan. But any overlap between the interests of these two superpowers at this moment may prove crucial. “The Gaza crisis is seen as a potential area for collaboration or cooperation between the US and China,” Sun told me. And though that isn’t much, it’s a major departure from the extremely tense Alaska talks in March 2021. 

Together, it represents something that has been largely absent in the first three years of the Biden administration: cooperation with China. It’s less about the substance coming out of today’s meeting and more about whether a structure will be in place the next time there’s a surprise (like the balloon) or a high-level US delegation in Taiwan.

For Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, the meeting is about the “continued importance of strengthening open lines of communication and managing competition responsibly so that it does not veer into conflict.”

The forward-looking, over-the-horizon question: Can the relationship continue on this route without spiraling into conflict? “Both sides have an innate desire to manage the competition,” Sun, who had just returned from Beijing, told me. “Xi Jinping needs a more stable external environment so that he can focus on his domestic problems. I suspect Biden is thinking the same way.”

A quiet meeting between Biden and Xi is a good start.

The last time that Israel and Hamas engaged in hostilities that had the potential to ignite a larger war was in May 2021. At the time, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan flew to Cairo and worked with Egyptian officials to negotiate a ceasefire. He drew from his own experience: In November 2012, as an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he and his Egyptian counterparts had locked in a ceasefire after a different outburst of conflict. 

So I found it revealing about where this war currently stands, and how different it is from the past, when Clinton dismissed any possibility of a ceasefire while speaking last week at Rice University’s Baker Institute. “People who are calling for a ceasefire now do not understand Hamas. That is not possible,” she said. “It would be such a gift to Hamas, because they would spend whatever time there was a ceasefire in effect rebuilding their armaments, creating stronger positions to be able to fend off an eventual assault by the Israelis.” 

Historically, these ceasefires have worked for both Israel and Hamas, until they haven’t.

But the previous logic of Israel-Hamas wars no longer holds after the October 7 attacks on Israel, in which 1,400 people were killed and 242 people were taken hostage. That has fundamentally altered Israel’s security thinking: It now wants to eliminate Hamas entirely. Israel’s existential catastrophe has changed its approach to security, as we’re seeing through its intensive bombardment of Gaza and its ongoing ground incursion, with more than 9,000 Palestinians killed, including 3,000 children. 

“The technique before was to convince the Israelis that Hamas can be under control,” Nabeel Khoury, a career US diplomat focused on the Middle East who retired as a minister-counselor, told me. “Israelis are way beyond that. They want something much more radical than what happened in the past.” 

The fact that nearly everyone powerful in the US is also rejecting a ceasefire now doesn’t mean one is impossible. What it shows is that Israel just doesn’t want one, period, and the US has largely followed Israel’s lead. 

The old paradigm of ceasefires between Israel and Hamas appears to have been broken, but that doesn’t mean that the many examples of the two parties engaging in talks and upholding agreements are not relevant. Even with Israel locked in what it sees as an existential battle with Hamas, the door isn’t, and can’t be, totally closed to diplomacy.

There are lessons about who can exert pressure; who has the expertise to work with Hamas; how these talks happen behind closed doors; and, crucially, how the US can play a key role in Israel’s decision-making. 

With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisting Friday that Israel will continue its military operations in Gaza “with full force,” it seems that a ceasefire will only come from a US initiative. Biden hinted as much and discussed the need for a humanitarian “pause” and the release of hostages when interrupted by a protester at a Minnesota event on Wednesday, and the next day Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to the Middle East. As the death toll among Palestinians has grown, the Biden administration has continually readjusted its language with a recognition of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the need for a political process that would culminate in a Palestinian state. 

But perhaps the most important lesson to take from those ceasefires past is that they were, in a certain sense, failures: They couldn’t hold in the long-term because they were not tied to a bigger political framework that could lead to a Palestinian state alongside Israel. They ultimately proved unsatisfactory both for the situation of Palestinians in Gaza, and throughout the occupied territories, and for Israel’s own sense of security. That they were ceasefires alone meant they wouldn’t lead to anything that could secure the future for Israelis and Palestinians.

However this immediate violence ends — Israel declaring victory, a ceasefire, or something else — ultimately the war will only be resolved by difficult diplomacy and US leadership toward a Palestinian state. 

How previous Israel-Hamas wars have ended, briefly explained

Since 2007, Hamas and the state of Israel have existed in a “violent equilibrium,” as Tareq Baconi of the Palestinian research network Al-Shabaka describes it. That year, Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip after winning the 2006 Palestinian elections; Israel then imposed a crippling blockade on the territory. That led to extreme rates of poverty in Gaza; over 60 percent of people need food assistance, and access to health care is extremely limited. About a quarter of Palestinians in Gaza, and nearly 80 percent of youth, are unemployed.

“What we see is every few years, or really every few months, a situation occurs where Hamas fires rockets at Israel, when the restrictions of the blockade become too stifling, and essentially force an escalation where a ceasefire is eventually negotiated, and Israel is forced to ease restrictions into the blockade,” Baconi said recently on The Dig podcast. 

A review of the recent Israel-Hamas wars shows that after each conflict stopped, that violent equilibrium was restored. At times there were peace talks, but they were not really tied to a bigger political process that could lead to a larger settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009 lasted 22 days. In the conflict, 1,400 Palestinians, among them at least 759 civilians, were killed, as well as 10 Israeli soldiers and three civilians. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice worked to secure a ceasefire. “We need urgently to conclude a ceasefire that can endure and that can bring real security,” she told the UN on January 6, 2009. “This would begin a period of true calm that includes an end to rocket, mortar, and other attacks on Israelis, and allows for the cessation of Israel’s military offensive.” 

This all came on the eve of President Barack Obama coming into the White House. He initially prioritized talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and put limited pressure on Israel to halt the construction of new settlements in the occupied West Bank. Despite that, little progress was made.

That ceasefire held until November 2012, with an eight-day conflict between Israel and Hamas; 167 Palestinians and six Israelis died. Clinton was secretary of state, and Sullivan played a key role in negotiating a ceasefire.

That truce broke in the summer of 2014, when a 50-day war between Israel and Hamas left 2,251 Palestinians dead, among them 1,462 civilians, and 67 Israeli soldiers and six civilians. Talks between Israelis and Palestinians had collapsed the spring before and have not relaunched since. 

Each time, the US and Egypt have played important roles in cementing these ceasefires, even as Egypt and Israel restricted movement in and out of the occupied territory of Gaza. Since the US designates Hamas a terrorist group, it depends on third parties for talks with the militant group. “Negotiating between Israel and Hamas has been one of the niche kind of activities that Egypt specialized in,” Ezzedine Choukri Fishere, a former Egyptian diplomat, told me. “For the last 16 years, the Egyptian policy on Gaza has been a stopgap — de-escalate.” In more recent years, Turkey and Qatar have also held indirect talks with Hamas. 

When the Biden White House faced another Israel-Hamas conflict in May 2021, US officials followed the playbook from the two wars that happened under Obama — prevent UN Security Council resolutions and work the backchannel with Hamas. The war lasted 11 days in May 2021, killing 230 Palestinians and 12 Israelis. The lesson Biden took from the Obama years was that all clashes with Israel must happen in private if at all, that there should be no daylight between the countries, and that conflict between allies is detrimental to the point of being unbearable.

So Biden’s method to ending the May 2021 conflict was quiet diplomacy with Prime Minister Netanyahu. The US blocked United Nations resolutions and stood by Israel, to a point. Biden “held his tongue” when he learned that Netanyahu’s military operation had “no defined objective,” as journalist Franklin Foer recounts in his book The Last Politician. After four phone calls between the two leaders, Biden was blunt to Netanyahu: “Hey man, we’re out of runway here … It’s over.” And then it was.

What’s different this time

This Middle East war could last longer than any recent previous conflict between Israel and Hamas. The scope of Hamas’s attack, the ensuing Israeli bombardment and ground incursion, and the level of the death toll is already much more drastic than previous rounds of violence. 

The understandable focus on the destruction of Gaza and the tremendous loss of human life there perhaps obscures what has really happened from an Israeli point of view. “I don’t think there’s enough appreciation of the impact of October 7,” Fishere, who is now a visiting professor at Dartmouth College, told me. “For Israel, this is a new moment. This is not a repetition.”

Netanyahu says Israel’s goals are the elimination of Hamas and the return of hostages. 

But it’s not at all clear how Hamas could be removed with force alone — and should it be, what party would govern Gaza. US and Israeli officials have floated trial balloons in unattributed quotes to the press that include a new Palestinian Authority, Egypt stepping in, or a multinational force, and Biden has urged Israel not to take over the territory. 

None of those would be good options. Any day-after plan for Gaza would require some buy-in from Hamas leadership — an agreement that its military wing and affiliated forces like Islamic Jihad would drop their weapons. 

This is the paradox: The ferocity of October 7 has convinced Israeli leadership that it must utterly destroy Hamas, yet there is little evidence it can achieve that goal. In the past, Israel was satisfied with damaging the militant group before settling into a ceasefire state. But this time, Israel is not seeking the kind of cessation of hostilities that defined the end to four previous rounds of conflict. “The only possible ceasefire would be a ceasefire that disarmed Hamas,” Fishere says. “And I don’t think anybody can offer that.”

But there is another difference to this war: Hamas is holding 242 hostages, a number that dwarfs previous instances of hostage-taking. That gives Hamas leverage, and pretty much precludes Israel from agreeing to unilaterally stop its assault on Gaza.

In public, there seems to be no path forward: Hamas has said that it won’t negotiate over the hostages until there is a ceasefire, and Israel seems to say it would only go for a ceasefire with unconditional release of hostages. 

What has been floated is a temporary ceasefire — a situation where Hamas’s hostages are exchanged, in essence, for a respite from the fighting and, likely, the release of Palestinian prisoners.

The exact mechanics of such exchanges are closely held secrets. The Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin worked directly with a Hamas interlocutor to secure the release of Gilad Shalit, who in 2011 was exchanged for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners and Hamas members. “Negotiating for the release of hostages may also be less popular this time around,” Baskin wrote in an opinion column for the New York Times earlier this month. The price for the hostages would be just as high as before.

Netanyahu says the Israeli military incursion will press Hamas to release the hostages. But for now, Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza has seemingly not encouraged Hamas to release hostages. “My analysis is that this Israeli government has in the most cynical way simultaneously written off the lives of the hostages, while using them as political capital in convincing the world that no one can tell them what they can or can’t do in Gaza,” Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, told me. “The hostages will be released despite the government of Israel, not because of it.”

A ceasefire — or more war

The Financial Times was the first international editorial page to call for a ceasefire. UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the World Food Program, the United Nations secretary general, and the Pope now have, too.

Israel categorically rejects these calls. Yet the composite picture is of dwindling international support for Israel’s military campaign, which appears to be putting some pressure on Biden. You can see it in the very gradual shift in action and tone from the administration. Vice President Kamala Harris called for “the urgent need to increase humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza.” Blinken arrived in the Middle East and pushed Netanyahu to temporarily pause its military campaign to allow in humanitarian aid. 

There is no easy way to secure a ceasefire. One is only likely to happen if the US and Israel together felt like enough Hamas leaders have been taken out and their military capabilities sufficiently immobilized, and that there is a chance to negotiate some kind of hostage exchange. 

While the previously negotiated ceasefires have limited applicability, they do offer faint lessons. One: Third parties like Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey will be integral to the process.

Khoury, the former American diplomat who is now at the Arab Center Washington DC, says Qatar may have more power to influence Hamas than Egypt. Earlier this week, the head of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence services, traveled to Doha. “If Israel and the US would give the Qataris a carte blanche, they can come up with something,” Khoury told me. “But the US and Israel will have to be ready to accept a continued role for Hamas in some capacity. They could say disarm Hamas. But if they wish to obliterate Hamas, Qatar cannot help with that.”

Two: The US has to play a major role behind the scenes. At some point, Biden’s team is going to spell out more clearly to the Israelis that the US is not going to countenance this anymore.

And, perhaps most importantly, three: There must be a clearer picture of what happens after any ceasefire.

“If there’s no political path to deal with the question of occupation, then whatever Israel will do now, regardless of how long it’s gonna take and how many people gonna kill, is not gonna resolve the issue,” Fishere told me. “It will come back and hit us again, at some point in the future, probably not too far.”

Even before Israel began its heavier ground incursion into Gaza on October 27, accompanied by accelerated bombings of the occupied territory, the situation on the ground was already severe.

According to the Gaza-based Ministry of Health, as of Saturday midday, there were 7,703 fatalities, 1.4 million internally displaced people, and more than 19,700 injuries. At least 29 journalists have died, along with at least 53 United Nations employees. The “complete siege” Israel declared on the already blockaded territory after Hamas’s October 7 attacks has resulted in three weeks rationing of food, water, medicine, and fuel for a population of 2.2 million people. As a Mercy Corps staffer in Gaza said earlier this week, “know that we are dying here; if we are not dead physically, we are dead on the inside.” 

The toll from what Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called the war’s “new phase” is only starting to become clear. Israel appeared to have shut off communications in Gaza. International aid groups and press organizations lost contact with their staff, creating an information vacuum. 

Beyond the numbers of the dead and wounded, the extent of the bombardment and the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza are best expressed so far by a handful of firsthand accounts that were able to reach outside the territory. “The amount of explosions is massive. Endless explosions. We’re talking about an explosion every single minute. The sky is orange,” journalist Hind Khoury said in a voice note from Gaza City shared with Vox via the nonprofit Institute for Middle East Understanding. 

Israel suffered tremendous atrocities at the hands of Hamas, with more than 1,400 people killed, while the militant group holds 229 hostages in Gaza. Rocket fire from the territory continues to target Israel. But the degree of Israel’s shelling of Gaza and the first indications of what may become a lengthy, intensive ground operation pose critical risks for the Middle East and the world. And among those dangers is a political one for the White House: It’s becoming clear that while the Israeli military is carrying out this attack, much of the world views Israel’s assault on Gaza as enabled by the United States — as President Joe Biden’s war.

Biden has reportedly counseled Israel behind the scenes to delay a ground assault, and in recent days the administration has been more forward in its warnings that an open-ended full-scale invasion would be disastrous. America doesn’t have boots on the ground in Israel, and it’s not clear under what, if any, conditions the US would get involved. US Marine Gen. James Glynn had been advising Israel’s operations and departed the country on the 27th. “Make no mistake: what is, has, or will unfold in Gaza is purely an Israeli decision,” he told reporters.

But that is clearly not how the Middle East, and much of the world, sees it. The focus instead is on the decades of US backing for Israel, across administrations. It’s on the US-provided weaponry that Israel is using, much of it purchased with the $3.8 billion of annual aid Washington provides; on the symbolism of two US aircraft carriers being dispatched to the Middle East; on how the US has used its veto to shield Israel from United Nations resolutions. Most striking is the image of the giant bear hug, both actual and metaphorical, that President Biden gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited Israel on October 18.

The perception of Biden’s ownership of this war will only grow as Israel expands and extends its siege of Gaza. That’s bad for Biden’s electability with so many young American voters increasingly critical of his unfettered backing of Israel. It’s bad for US influence when it comes to other hot and cold wars where the US seeks the support of traditional allies, including Ukraine. And it’s especially bad for Arab and Muslim states, as well as countries across the Global South, where massive protests against Israel’s military campaign have also singled out the president. 

“From the US point of view, I think the real dilemma is, the Biden administration is effectively backing a partner state, an ally, who is facing this no-win situation,” Emma Ashford of the Stimson Center think tank said recently. “Whatever the Israeli government ends up doing, the US government is going to be tied to that.”

Why the world sees this as Biden’s war

The perception of US support for Israel has been built over a half-century of substantial American military and diplomatic backing.

The United States has given Israel about $243.9 billion over time, adjusted for inflation. The advanced weaponry that the US has given Israel, and that it’s the single biggest beneficiary of US foreign aid, contributes to the idea of the two countries being in lockstep. 

The US arms industry that enables the ongoing siege of Gaza is particularly close to Israel. On quarterly earnings calls this week, executives from the military contracting giants RTX, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman acknowledged the heinous attacks on Israel and obliquely mentioned how geopolitical developments would contribute to bigger Pentagon budgets and product orders, but made no mention of the situation in Gaza other than anodyne calls for peace or vague concerns about the humanitarian situation. Wes Kremer, the president of RTX subsidiary Raytheon, announced this week the construction of a new facility in Arkansas to build missiles for Israel’s Iron Dome system. 

It’s also the years of largely unquestioned US support for Israel, across administrations from both parties, while the country has engaged in policies in the occupied West Bank that human rights organizations describe as apartheid and has squeezed Gaza with severe limits on aid. The US-led process toward a Palestinian state has been in formaldehyde since 2014.  

A prime example of how the US has supported Israel has played out at the UN Security Council. Numerous presidential administrations have used their veto over the years to protect Israel from resolutions that condemn its policies. Most recently, on October 18, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield vetoed a Brazil-led resolution that called for a humanitarian pause. 

On Friday, as Israel held Gaza in the dark, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding resolution that called for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities.” There were 120 countries voting in favor of the measure led by Arab states, while the US was among the 14 votes against. (Others included Hungary, Austria, Czechia, and several Pacific Island countries.) The Biden administration said it was because the resolution did not condemn Hamas’s initial attack or mention the ongoing hostage situation. 

Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi of Jordan, one of the US’s closest Middle East partners, put it bluntly: that voting against the resolution “means approving this senseless war.”

Massive protests against Israel’s actions — 3,000 people marching to the US Embassy in Jakarta, tens of thousands in London on Saturday, and widespread protests in the Arab world and in the occupied West Bank — don’t typically separate Israel from the US role. Arab leaders may say they support Israel’s destruction of Hamas behind closed doors but are less likely to make such declarations aloud, because public attitudes count in undemocratic countries, too. 

The US is seen above and beyond as Israel’s most crucial backer. Jordanian cartoonist Emad Hajjaj drew Netanyahu as a fighter jet dropping bombs on mosques, hospitals, and civilians in Gaza, with Biden in aviators spreading his arms as if he were the plane’s wings. 

Could the US policy approach change from within or without?

While Biden’s core team of advisers appear in alignment, signs of dissent within the Biden administration grow each day Israel’s intensive bombardment of Gaza continues. Josh Paul, a senior State Department official in the bureau that signs off on arms sales, resigned in protest on October 18. He acknowledged Biden’s efforts to deescalate Israel’s response and expressed frustration with “rushing more arms to one side of the conflict, that I believe to be shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.”

Other senior State Department employees reportedly plan to convey their concerns through the dissent channel. The White House has hosted listening sessions, and senior administration leaders have started to adjust their rhetoric. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is tweeting about Palestinian rights. “As hard as it is, we cannot give up on peace,” President Biden posted. “We cannot give up on a two-state solution.”

But how the administration is actually handling the situation in Gaza — not calling for a ceasefire and largely unable to ensure that even the basic minimum of humanitarian aid enters the territory — offers a more accurate display of its policy. The US may have pushed for a narrower ground assault, but it’s not opposed to one in general. Biden, for example, has said Israel has a right and an obligation to respond to Hamas’s October 7 attack. And the current policy has been criticized by the UN, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, Save the Children, and other groups, which have urged a ceasefire. 

Even leaders of loyal Democratic Party institutions in Washington have criticized Biden’s approach. “There’s nothing complicated about being able to say killing innocent people is wrong and needs to stop,” Patrick Gaspard, the president of the Center for American Progress, posted. “We said it when it was Hamas. We can say it now that it’s Israel. This is wrong. This needs to stop.”

In foreign policy, perception can be reality, and at some point, US support for Israel will be seen as active participation. It may not matter that the US is not directly involved, or that Biden has taken steps to try to reduce the toll, or that a President Donald Trump would likely be putting no restraints on Israel, much as current Republican candidates have called for. There’s something different now that transcends US support for Israel over decades and several Gaza wars, with longtime US negotiator Aaron David Miller having famously called Washington “Israel’s lawyer.” The scale of this invasion will almost certainly be lethal beyond the scope of previous wars, and many critics will say that the US has not done enough to stop the killing.

The billions of dollars of high-tech weaponry has been thought to have bought the US some leverage over Israel. Now the limits of that influence are apparent. “If such leverage exists, yet isn’t employed to halt civilian bombings, it signals complicity, demanding accountability from those responsible,” Nancy Okail, the executive director of the Center for International Policy, a progressive foreign policy think tank, posted.

Of course, the Biden administration does not want to be drawn into a larger war. The president has repeatedly warned the militant group Hezbollah and countries like Iran to stay out of it, and much of his focus in the moment is likely in employing US power in the region to ensure that remains the case. 

Last week, the US’s military bases in Iraq and Syria, and its aircraft carrier passing by Yemen, came under rocket fire from militants. In response, Biden authorized “narrowly tailored” strikes on Iran-backed militias in Syria. Such tit-for-tats have happened with some frequency in recent years, but the context of Israel’s Gaza incursion raises the stakes considerably. 

As Sarah Leah Whitson, a human rights lawyer who directs Democracy for the Arab World Now, put it, “This is now Biden’s war.”

Correction, 9:15 pm ET: An earlier version of this story misstated Ukraine’s response on the UN General Assembly resolution. The country abstained from the vote.

Israel has launched what appears to be a growing ground invasion of Gaza, after the worst outbreak of violence between it and Hamas in decades. The weeks-old conflict has already claimed over 9,000 lives as of Sunday, and likely will claim many more.

“The second stage of the war” has begun, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in a press conference Saturday. “[Its] objectives are clear: to destroy the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home.”

[Related: Everything you need to know about Israel-Palestine]

Over the previous 24 hours, Israel had expanded its air, sea, and ground assault on Gaza, amid a near-total internet and phone blackout in the territory. Israel has not yet explicitly called this an invasion, and the effort, while growing overnight into Sunday, appears more limited than the full-scale one some experts expected. But Israel repeatedly signaled this weekend that this is a significant ground operation, and troops are actively fighting in northern Gaza. Netanyahu told Israelis to prepare for a “long and difficult” war.

The first night of the ground assault, according to one Palestinian who was able to post online, was “the worst night in the history of Gaza.”

This flare-up of the conflict began on October 7, when the armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas launched a massive, complex, and well-coordinated attack on Israel early on October 7 from the territory it controls in Gaza. Militants killed more than 1,400 people, including at least 31 US citizens; wounded 4,500; kidnapped over 220 people, including US citizens and many civilians; and fired rockets on Israeli civilians. 

It was the most devastating and brutal assault Israel had suffered in decades; Israeli officials described it as their country’s 9/11. The horror of the attack only became clearer in the days after, as reports of some — if not all — of the worst atrocities were confirmed. In recent days, the Israeli military shared videos and information with a select group of journalists about the extent of Hamas’s violence. It included grueling stories and imagery about families and children being targeted.

In response to the October 7 attack, Israel officially declared war against Hamas one day later. In the weeks since, the country has launched over 8,000 missiles on Gaza, declared a “full siege” of the territory it has blockaded for 16 years, and told Palestinians in the north of Gaza — where approximately 1.1 million people live — that they should relocate to the south. Only after US and international pressure did Israel allow a trickle of trucks with humanitarian aid to enter the country.

Thus far, over 8,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and over more than twice as many have been injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Though it’s not clear how many of those killed are combatants, at least 3,342 are children. An estimated 1.4 million people are displaced, with about half of them sheltering in United Nations-run facilities. Protests around the world calling for a ceasefire intensified Friday night, and world leaders like UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the EU’s top diplomat made similar calls on Saturday.

“Without a fundamental change, the people of Gaza will face an unprecedented avalanche of human suffering,” Guterres’s office said in online statement Friday.

Several countries, including Egypt and Jordan, have volunteered to try to defuse the situation diplomatically, and Qatar has been helping lead negotiations to secure the release of Hamas-held hostages and potentially deliver a temporary ceasefire.

The Biden administration stood immediately behind Israel after Hamas’s terrorist attack, promising additional military support, sending several US warships and aircraft squadrons into the Eastern Mediterranean, speaking vociferously on Israel’s behalf, and repeatedly visiting the country. The US has also reportedly pushed Israel in private to consider avoiding a full-scale ground invasion that would lead to high casualties and could draw in other regional actors.

While telecommunications in Gaza were beginning to be restored Sunday, the lingering effects of the blackout — and the Israeli military’s circumspection about its operations — makes it hard to know the full extent of what’s currently happening in Gaza.

We do know there were factors that likely contributed more immediately to this outbreak of violence — months of simmering conflict in Jerusalem and the West Bank over increased Israeli settlements, a far-right Israeli government that has been conducting a de facto annexation of the West Bank, and Arab states normalizing relations with Israel (including a new potential deal with Saudi Arabia) — but also that it is a war decades in the making.

Most Gazans are either refugees from the 1948 Nakba, when mass numbers of Palestinians were displaced during the Arab-Israeli War, or descendants of those refugees, said Zaha Hassan, a human rights lawyer and fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. They’ve lived under a strict blockade by Israel and Egypt since Hamas assumed control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, relying on foreign aid to access basic necessities. About one-third of Gazans live in extreme poverty, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. 

The international community has largely abandoned efforts to find a political solution to this crisis. Now there is likely to be a long, bloody battle causing significant deaths on both sides, with Palestinians set to bear the brunt of the casualties and destruction going forward.

Here’s what else you need to know.

1. Where does the Israel-Hamas conflict currently stand?

After a couple of days of fighting to secure its borders after the Hamas attack, and then weeks of heavy bombardment of Gaza, Israel recently ramped up its military operations against Hamas. First, it conducted small, hours-long raids into Gaza with tanks, and then on Friday night began its largest ground assault since October 7.

Troops and tanks entered Gaza alongside heavy sea and air attacks. Palestinian journalist Hind Khoudary told Tahrir Podcast that bombardment was continuous throughout the first night.

Israel has continued to expand its ground operations. Per analysis from the New York Times, troops have entered Gaza in at least three areas as part of this seeming invasion — two in the north of Gaza and one spot from the east, just north of the evacuation line Israel had set.

“We are progressing through the stages of the war according to plan,” Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari told reporters Sunday. “We are gradually expanding the ground activity and the scope of our forces in the Gaza Strip.”

These operations have turned Gaza into a “ball of fire,” Ashraf al-Qudra, a Gaza health ministry spokesperson, told reporters Saturday. Over 300 people have been killed in designated safe zones, he added, and destruction is widespread. Already, Gaza was suffering a humanitarian crisis because of the siege; hospitals were on the brink of collapse and people were drinking saline groundwater, according to a UN update.

Around the same time Israel launched its assault, landline, cellular, and internet communications out of Gaza went largely dark. While a few people with Israeli or international SIM cards, or those with satellite connections, were able to communicate or post online, most were not. That caused not just extreme anxiety for Palestinians inside Gaza weathering the bombardment and those outside trying unsuccessfully to confirm the safety of their family members, but also undermined emergency and humanitarian efforts. Groups like the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Health Organization said they had lost contact with teams on the ground. The WHO said on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, that lack of telecommunications was “making it impossible for ambulances to reach the injured.”

Communications were partially restored Sunday. As more information and images started to reach global audiences, the humanitarian toll of the ramped-up assault became clearer.

Israel has not explicitly framed this as a full-scale ground invasion, nor is it clear whether the IDF is attempting to seize and control territory or not. Such an operation would be highly fraught for the Israel Defense Forces, which will have to contend with chaotic fighting on Gaza’s dense streets. (So far, the IDF has announced two soldiers have been injured. Netanyahu has been reluctant to put boots on the ground in Gaza since Israel formally withdrew troops in 2005 after 38 years of occupation. 

But there are indications — like Netanyahu’s press conference, where he framed the war as an existential one, and a video Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi posted Saturday afternoon to X — that the weekend’s assault might not be the extent of things.

“This is a war with multiple stages; today we move on to the next one,” Halevi said in the video.

To those ends, Saturday, the IDF posted a video on X urging “all residents of northern Gaza and Gaza City to relocate south immediately” to avoid “intense hostilities” — a message in English to an Arabic-speaking population it seemed unlikely they’d be able to even receive, given the extremely limited telecommunications at the time.

It’s unclear what this means for the fate of the over 200 Israeli civilian and military hostages that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants are holding. There had been hope earlier Friday that the Qatari-led negotiations were progressing well, and some analysts argue that Israel’s current operation could be designed to put pressure on Hamas to make concessions in those negotiations. But much remains in flux.

—Ellen Ioanes

2. What do I need to understand about Gaza and Israel’s relationship to understand today?

Palestinians living in Gaza and Israelis have always been deeply connected.

With Israel’s victory in the 1967 War, it conquered Gaza and became an occupying power overseeing the Palestinians living there. (Egypt had controlled the territory from 1948 to 1967.) Israel had not always so severely fenced off Gaza from the rest of the world or blockaded flows in and out of it. For several decades, Palestinians from Gaza worked in the Israeli economy. Starting in 1970, Israel established settlements in the territory and military installations. Israel restricted most Palestinians’ movement in and out of Gaza from the onset of the Second Intifada, or uprising, in 2000.

Israel withdrew its security forces and settlements from Gaza in 2005, but the territory nevertheless has remained effectively under Israeli occupation. Hamas won legislative elections in 2006, and amid a violent split with the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, the Islamist movement assumed control of the territory the next year. Israel has blockaded the territory since. The more than 2 million people in Gaza live in what human rights groups have called an “open-air prison.” The territory’s airspace, borders, and sea are under Israeli control, and neighboring Egypt to the south has also imposed severe restrictions on movement.

The United Nations describes the occupied territory as a “chronic humanitarian crisis.” 

“This pressure being put on Palestinians — it just assumes that they’re insignificant and they will tolerate any degree of humiliation, and that’s just not true,” said Rashid Khalidi, the Columbia University historian.

Israel has launched intense military operations on the densely populated territory many times over the past decade and a half in response to rocket attacks from Palestinian militants. The Israeli military has called it “mowing the grass”: a tactic of conducting semi-regular attacks on alleged terrorist cells to take out leaders and new militant groups, which also kill noncombatants and destroy civilian infrastructure in the process. But mowing the lawn almost by definition does not address the root causes of terrorism but only reduces the level of Hamas’s violence temporarily and perpetuates an escalating cycle of violence. Experts say that there is no military solution to the political problem posed by Hamas. 

Hamas’s wanton violence does not by any means represent the views of all Palestinians. A survey of Palestinians from this summer showed that if legislative elections were held for the first time since 2006, about 44 percent of Gazan voters would choose Hamas. But there has been no opportunity for elections, and so in addition to Israeli military action, Palestinians living in Gaza must endure an unrepresentative government that imposes some Islamic tenets, implements repressive policies against LGBTQ people, and uses abusive policies against detainees.

Even as the situation for Palestinians living in Gaza has gotten worse in the past 15 years, less and less attention from world leaders and US administrations has been paid to it. Yet the cause of Palestine — to secure an independent, sovereign, and viable state — continues to galvanize grassroots support in the Arab Middle East and the Muslim world.

—Jonathan Guyer

3. But why did Hamas launch such a huge attack on October 7?

According to Hamas itself, the attack was provoked by recent events surrounding the Temple Mount, a site in Jerusalem holy to Jews and Muslims alike. Earlier this month, Israeli settlers had been entering the al-Aqsa Mosque atop the mount and praying, which Hamas termed “desecration” in a statement on their offensive (which they’ve named Operation Al-Aqsa Storm).

It’s implausible, to put it mildly, that Hamas was simply outraged by these events and is acting accordingly. This kind of complex operation had to be months in the making; Hamas sources have confirmed as much to Reuters.

But at the same time, Hamas’s choice of casus belli does tell us something important.

Palestinian politics is defined, in large part, by how its leadership responds to Israel’s continued occupation — both its physical presence in the West Bank and its economically devastating blockade of the Gaza Strip. Hamas’s strategy to outcompete its rivals, including the Fatah faction currently in charge of the West Bank, is to channel Palestinian rage at their suffering: to be the authentic voice of resistance to Israel and the occupation. 

And the past few months have seen plenty of outrages, ones even more significant than events in Jerusalem. Israel’s current hard-right government, dominated by factions that oppose a peace agreement with the Palestinians, has been conducting a de facto annexation of the West Bank. It has ignored settler violence against West Bank civilians, including a February rampage in the town of Huwara.

Israel’s focus on the West Bank may also have created an operational opportunity for Hamas. According to Uzi Ben Yitzhak, a retired Israeli general, the Israeli government had deployed most of the regular IDF forces to the West Bank to manage the situation there — leaving only a skeleton force at the Gaza border and creating conditions where a Hamas surprise attack could succeed.

There are also geopolitical concerns at work, with some experts arguing this was intended to fundamentally shift how the world approaches Israeli-Palestinian relations. 

Israel is currently in the midst of a US-brokered negotiation to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia, a major follow-up to the Abraham Accord agreements struck with several Arab countries during the Trump administration. Normalization is widely seen among Palestinians as the Arab world giving up on them, agreeing to treat Israel like a normal country even as the occupation deepens. Hamas could well be trying to torpedo the Saudi deal and even trying to undo the existing Abraham Accords. Indeed, a Hamas spokesperson said that the attack was “a message” to Arab countries, calling on them to cut ties with Israel. (It’s worth noting that planning for an attack this complex very likely began well before the Saudi negotiations heated up.)

Together, these are all conditions in which it makes more strategic sense for Hamas to take such a huge risk.

To be clear: Saying it makes strategic sense for Hamas to engage in atrocities is not to justify their killing of civilians. There is a difference between explanation and justification: The reasoning behind Hamas’s attack may be explicable even as it is morally indefensible.

We’ll find out more in the coming weeks and months about which, if any, of these conditions proved decisive in Hamas’s calculus. But they’re the necessary background context to even try to begin making sense of this week’s horrific events.

—Zack Beauchamp

4. How did this become an outright war, worse than we’ve seen in decades?

Hamas’s attack was well-coordinated, massive in scale, included an unprecedented incursion into Israeli territory, and managed to evade the Israeli security apparatus, which is why it was so surprising — and able to inflict so much carnage.

“The Israelis pride themselves on having world-class intelligence, with the Mossad, with Shin Bet, with Israeli military intelligence,” Colin Clarke, director of research at the Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consultancy, told Vox. “They do — from the most exquisite human sources to the most capable technical intelligence gathering capabilities [including] cyber and signals intelligence.”

As explained above, there are both longstanding and immediate reasons a conflict of some sort was likely.

“The message has been clear to Palestinians,” Hassan said. “They can’t wait on some Arab savior and they can’t wait on the US government to act as peace broker — that they’re going to have to take matters into their own hands, whatever that looks like.”

But the sheer brutality and devastation has been a shock to Israeli society. Rhetoric from Netanyahu and the IDF has reflected the “vengeance,” as Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, characterized it, that Israeli society is feeling in the wake of the devastating attack. 

“In a way, this is our 9/11,” IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said in a video statement posted to the social network X on October 8. Videos have circulated showing dead Israelis, as well as Israeli civilians being captured by Hamas militants, presumably to be held in Gaza. Israel’s briefing to journalists earlier this week included videos that showed what the Atlantic’s Graeme Wood described as “an eagerness to kill nearly matched by eagerness to disfigure the bodies of the victims.” Though Israeli towns near the Gaza border are now under IDF control, the full understanding of the horror of the Hamas attack continues to grow, with all but a few of the hostages remaining in captivity and some presumed dead. Hamas had previously threatened to execute captive Israelis if IDF operations strike civilian targets in Gaza without warning, the Associated Press reported. 

Netanyahu formally declared war on Hamas one day after the attack. That war effort will be governed by a small “war management cabinet” composed of Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Benny Gantz, the leader of the opposition National Unity party who joined Netanyahu in an emergency unity government Wednesday. Gadi Eizenkot, another former army chief, will join the broader security cabinet, potentially an attempt to instill more trust in a government that has widely been seen to have failed at its most important task: to keep Israelis safe.

That trust, one poll found, is at a 20-year low. And Israelis’ frustration with Netanyahu seems unlikely to cool: In a post on X Sunday that he’s since deleted, the prime minister blamed the October 7 attack on the security and intelligence services.

—EI

5. What will declared war mean?

No one knows how this war will play out. But given Israel’s highly advanced military, its response to Hamas’s attack will be massive and devastating in turn.

That’s what Israel has been indicating since the beginning: On October 9, Netanyahu vowed to attack Hamas with a force “like never before” and has vowed to kill every member of the group. The same day, Israel said it would place Gaza under a “complete siege,” and announced it called up 300,000 military reservists, a number that’s now grown by 60,000.

“I ordered a complete siege on Gaza. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly,” Gallant said. “As of now, no electricity, no food, no fuel for Gaza.”

Israel on Sunday said it would allow the flow of aid trucks into the territory to “increase significantly” in the coming week; just 94 trucks had arrived since the siege was announced, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. But it’s also important to understand that Gaza has been described as effectively living under siege since 2007, as documented by United Nations experts, journalists, and human rights researchers.

What will change is the scale of violence: It has already exceeded the most recent severe conflict between Israel and Hamas in 2021, and is likely to get much worse. 

Already, Israel has launched what it describes as one of its largest aerial bombardments ever on Gaza. Now, we are beginning to see ground operations, which will likely lead to many more deaths, including fighters on each side. Hamas has an extensive tunnel network that will complicate any Israeli ground effort.

The largest number of casualties, though, will likely be Palestinian civilians. Thousands more could die, according to a warning from the UN human rights chief.

In 2014, after Hamas conducted a major rocket offensive into Israel, the country responded with a 19-day ground invasion before a ceasefire was reached. During that time, 2,251 Palestinians — including 1,462 civilians — and 73 Israelis were killed in the fighting, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Relations between Israel and Palestinians have always been asymmetrical: Israel, an undeclared nuclear power, has received tens of billions of dollars of US military aid. On October 7, Hamas ruptured Israeli society with wanton violence and mass killing. But it is the Israeli state that retains the capacity to perpetuate an all-out war on the Gaza Strip. Israel has often responded disproportionately to suicide bombings and rocket attacks from Hamas, partially as a deterrent strategy. The result, however, is an intensity of violence in an occupied territory where residents have nowhere to run, and where civilians are regularly killed in Israel’s assaults on Hamas targets.

—JG

6. How is the US responding?

Biden and Netanyahu’s relationship had grown strained over the Israeli leader’s rightward drift and recent judicial overhaul — but after the attack, the US is standing firmly behind its closest ally in the Middle East.

“In this moment of tragedy, I want to say to them and to the world and to terrorists everywhere that the United States stands with Israel,” Biden said the day of the attack. Several days later, after his third phone call with Netanyahu, he again denounced the “pure, unadulterated evil” of Hamas’s attack on civilians; he and several high-ranking officials also visited Israel and promised America’s support.

The US pledged to send additional military materiel, “including munitions,” according to a news release from the Department of Defense, with the first tranche of security assistance already landed in Israel.

In addition to the materiel support, two carrier strike groups, each consisting of an aircraft carrier and multiple guided missile destroyers, along with numerous fighter aircraft squadrons have been deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean to deter other actors like Iran or Hezbollah. However, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said in a briefing on October 10, “There’s no intention to put US boots on the ground.”

Some human rights and Middle East experts have criticized US officials for not also prioritizing de-escalation in their public statements, or for not emphasizing the need to avoid further civilian casualties, particularly given the massive civilian casualties Palestinians have endured during previous rounds of violence.

In recent weeks, the US’s comments on this have started to modulate just a little; in Israel Biden said clearly that “we mourn the loss of innocent Palestinian lives” and pledged some humanitarian aid.

In private, US officials have also pushed the Israeli government to slow its planning — particularly to consider its long-term goals and the risks of potential occupation of Gaza. Those efforts reportedly even included advocating for a narrower, targeted offensive, rather than a full-scale ground invasion. It’s not clear how much that has affected Israeli officials. On Friday, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby attempted to implicitly distance the US from Israel’s operations, saying that while the US is offering military advice, Israel is in the lead.

“They have to drive the strategy that they have developed, operationally and then tactically,” he said.

—EI

7. What does this mean for the region — and world?

One of the largest questions going forward is whether this outbreak of violence draws in other countries or groups. 

The US defense posture, for instance, seems to anticipate escalation from Iran and Hezbollah, the Shia militant group based in southern Lebanon. US statements have explicitly warned other countries from “looking at this as a chance to take advantage” of Israel’s vulnerability, Kirby said.

Though there is speculation about Iranian and Hezbollah involvement in the operation, there are no concrete details linking them yet. Generally, “Iran has played a major role in helping Hamas with its rocket and missile programs, and mortar programs,” Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Vox. And Iran and Hezbollah also provide funding, training, and intelligence to Hamas fighters, all of which could have contributed to last week’s attack, both Byman and Clarke said. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Hamas fighters trained in Iran in September.

But so far, there is minimal to no corroborated evidence linking Iran to the planning of this attack. The country is walking a delicate line around the conflict: Reuters reported its leaders are trying to support Hamas and Hezbollah and condemn Israel’s actions — as evidenced by an English-language post on X from the president Sunday — while avoiding being drawn into outright conflict itself.

Hezbollah initially started firing rockets and guided missiles into Shebaa Farms, territory Israel captured from Lebanon during the 1967 War; the militant group and Israel have continued to exchange rocket fire throughout the month. “Our history, our guns, and our rockets are with you,” Hashem Safieddine, a senior Hezbollah official, said at an event outside of Beirut earlier this month, describing Hezbollah as “in solidarity” with the Palestinian people, Reuters reported.

Though there is little indication of a bigger regional conflagration as of yet, it remains a possibility that other Arab nations could become involved — or that efforts to normalize relations between those nations, particularly Saudi Arabia, and Israel could be derailed. 

On Friday, October 27, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for “an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce.” While 120 countries voted in favor of it, only the US, Israel, and a dozen other countries actively dissented (45 countries abstained). Though UNGA resolutions hold important political weight, they carry no real enforcement mechanisms.

As the conflict looks set to continue, there is only one sure thing: The suffering will continue without significant international effort behind a political solution.

—EI

Update, October 29, 12:15 pm ET: This story, originally published October 10, has been updated several times, most recently with information about Israel’s ground incursion.

Biden’s team has gone to the Middle East. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Israel, Jordan, and much of the region in a marathon trip. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited Israel to meet with his military counterparts, as has the top US military commander in the Middle East. Two US aircraft carrier groups have been deployed to the eastern Mediterranean to provide further support. 

Now, President Joe Biden is on the way to Israel himself, a rare US presidential trip to what is effectively an active war zone. I asked several Middle East policy experts: What can Biden actually accomplish? 

Just in going to the Middle East, Biden has delayed Israel’s decision to send ground forces into Gaza, a move that had seemed imminent for days, according to a source familiar with the administration’s thinking. That fact alone shows that Biden may be able to cool a war that is already flaring out of control. But the visit also carries the risk that the president will become inextricably linked to the ongoing destruction of Gaza — especially amid accusations that Israel had bombed a Gaza City hospital, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians, the day before the president’s arrival. (The Israeli military claimed that the deadly explosion had been caused by a malfunctioning rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another armed group in Gaza.) 

Herein lies the contradiction of Biden’s approach to Israel right now. Biden is proud of being a staunch advocate for Israel, and his supportive remarks in the wake of Hamas’s deadly October 7 attack have been gratefully received by Israelis. But he is also the one who needs to deliver a hard truth to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s war cabinet: More bombing of Palestinians in Gaza, or a full-scale ground assault, will only make things worse for Israel, for the Middle East, and for America. 

Biden’s approach to the Middle East has long been focused on embracing allies in public — and sending sharper messages behind closed doors. But it’s not clear if those private messages always get through. Earlier this year, for example, Biden reportedly urged Netanyahu privately to scrap parts of his judicial overhaul plan, but the Israeli prime minister dismissed the advice and barreled forward with the controversial policy. 

The Biden administration’s key foreign policy players now realize just how bad this war could get, and how it could spill over into other countries in the region and even beyond. But if Israel can’t commit to an immediate cessation of hostilities so that water, food, medicine, and humanitarian assistance reach Palestinians in Gaza who are in need, then Biden may need to break from his usual approach and speak up publicly. (A ceasefire would require negotiations with Hamas, which Israel is unlikely to pursue right now, but Israel could unilaterally pause the bombardment of Gaza and allow for humanitarian corridors.) That may include communicating directly to the Israeli people, as President Barack Obama once tried to do in going around Netanyahu and make a plea for a two-state solution. And Biden needs to speak directly to the Palestinian people to convey that he sees the photographs of Palestinian suffering and is doing everything he can to stem the violence. If he fails to do all this, the Middle East and much of the world will not only see the US as complicit in Israel’s military campaign — as it already does — but it will be seen as of a piece with it. The larger consequence: the sapping of America’s credibility on the world stage.

No country has more leverage over Israel than the United States, which has extended hundreds of billions of dollars in aid over the decades, along with bipartisan diplomatic support. Biden must turn the “bone-deep” alliance with Israel into a moment where Israel can listen.

Why Biden is going to Israel

Since 2008, there have been five major rounds of conflict between Israel and Hamas, and each time the United States has worked to negotiate ceasefires, both to protect civilian lives on the ground and to ensure that the war does not expand to other parts of the Middle East. This time around, the war is already on a much larger scale: Hamas’s surprise attack has annihilated Israel’s sense of security, and Israel’s response has already left a remarkably high death toll for Palestinians in Gaza. The situation is further complicated because any ceasefire would require negotiations with Hamas, and Israel is unlikely to participate in even backchannel talks with them after the attacks.

Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, understands from experience how negotiations toward such a truce would work. In May 2021, he helped secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas after 11 days of conflict, in which Hamas and militant groups launched rockets into Israel and the Israeli military struck Gaza. 

But the fact that May 2021 wasn’t the first time that Sullivan had worked to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza shows a troubling dynamic in US Middle East policy, which seems to revolve around putting out the occasional fire rather than addressing the root causes of these conflagrations. In a 2019 podcast, he described brokering such ceasefires as “a recurring episode in American foreign policy.”

In the middle of a war of this scale, the root causes of the conflict between Israel and Palestine will not be addressed. But there has been a slight change in the tenor of the Biden administration’s approach over the last week. The main focus has been on opening the Egyptian border crossing of Rafah in Gaza to let in humanitarian aid and allow for people to leave Gaza. Blinken appointed David Satterfield, a career diplomat, as a special envoy to “urgently address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” Sullivan went on the Sunday talk shows this past weekend to talk about the humanitarian situation for Palestinians and said that Israel has “in fact turned the water pipe back on in Southern Gaza.” (Reporting from Business Insider disputes this and quoted a US official saying that water access remains “limited.”) 

This recognition of Palestinian rights and needs, however limited, may stem from Blinken’s shuttling to Arab capitals, where leaders reportedly rebuked him in public and private for a de-emphasis on Palestine. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi condemned the death of Israeli and Palestinian civilians and said, “This is the result of accumulated fury and hatred over four decades, where the Palestinians had no hope to find a solution.” Blinken’s efforts to get Saudi Arabia to denounce Hamas’s attack have not yet been successful, according to the Washington Post. 

The Biden administration requires the support of Arab partners in determining Gaza’s future after the Israeli military campaign. A visit to Tel Aviv in which Biden endorses an Israeli policy that includes ongoing attacks that have resulted in significant civilian deaths in Gaza would backfire. It will be harder and harder to say that what Israel is doing to Gaza is self-defense.

Biden told 60 Minutes this weekend that Israel choosing to invade and actively occupy Gaza would be “a big mistake” and that “there needs to be a Palestinian authority. There needs to be a path to a Palestinian state.” Yet he still expressed full support for Israel. A busy week of diplomacy has alerted the Biden administration of the urgency of playing both sides against the middle, but that can sound like contradictory policies. “Biden has said he supports Israel destroying Hamas, but he doesn’t want a civilian catastrophe, a humanitarian disaster,” Mairav Zonszein, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, told me. “I don’t know if those two things can coexist.”

Israel also faces a contradictory crisis of its own: whether the provision of badly needed water, food, and medicine to Gaza would reinforce Hamas. “Israel — they’ve done this before, and they’re continuing to — use humanitarian aid as a tool, and they’re very, very concerned that Hamas will try to take advantage of those openings and use those materials,” Zonszein explained. “Paradoxically, if Israel wants to have freedom of operation, per se, to continue, then it has to deal with the humanitarian aspect. It can’t just ignore it completely because then it really will lose its ability, I think, to have any legitimacy in acting.”

What could Biden accomplish

Biden may have already achieved something just by going to the Middle East: slowing the ground offensive. But given the stakes of the current war, the depth of US involvement in support of Israel, and the potential risk of a catastrophic regional conflict, that’s not enough. 

Experts I spoke with say he’ll need to convey to Netanyahu that each day the military campaign goes on in Gaza, Israel is raising the potential for militant groups like Hezbollah to join the war; pushing away potential Arab allies like Saudi Arabia, eliminating any prospect of normalization with Arab states like Saudi Arabia; and ending the decades-long stalled peace process once and for all.

Biden could call for clear ground rules for the occupied West Bank, where settler violence against Palestinians, already at unprecedented levels, is rising. And he must emphasize the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, who face a surge of discrimination. 

Experienced Middle East analysts and grassroots activists agree that an immediate truce is needed so that urgent humanitarian aid can reach Gaza. “We strongly urge the Biden administration and US partners to seek, at a minimum, a temporary cessation in fighting to allow for the delivery of direly needed food, water, medical supplies and other critical aid immediately necessary to the preservation of life,” the Center for International Policy, a progressive Washington think tank, said in a statement. 

Biden might also convey the extent to which Israel bombing Gaza won’t work because it hasn’t worked. Eliminating Hamas isn’t really a policy. If it were one, then Israel might have been successful in the previous rounds of intensive conflict since 2008-2009.

At the same time, Biden surely understands that in the wake of the Hamas attacks, Israel needs to establish a sense of security for its citizens. “Israel has to be able to restore its military deterrence superpower because if it doesn’t, then Israel will appear weak; by extension, the US will appear weak,” Zonszein told me. “On the public level and on the leadership level, it’s an existential war — not because the attack itself presented an existential threat, but because the level of success it had in undermining the basic safety and security of Israelis is so deep that they can’t remain there.”  

But he also must know that an Israeli ground incursion into Gaza won’t solve that calculus and will instead cause irreparable damage to Palestinian life, while setting back Israel and the United States for decades in the Middle East. 

On his Substack, Marc Lynch, a political scientist at George Washington University, has detailed how such an invasion would be a “humanitarian, strategic and moral catastrophe” — one that Biden could be in the sole position to prevent.

“And I would beg the White House,” Lynch continues, “to step back and reconsider whether granting Israel blanket immunity in the coming days really serves the interests of either Israel or the United States, or if what Israel really needs right now is an external hand to impose restraint and save it from its own worst impulses.”

“The coming days look likely to be filled with horrific images and a horrific reality. It’s not too late to avoid that… but it’s getting there.”