In order for a peace process to work, both Israeli negotiators and their Palestinian counterparts must genuinely want to be working for a long term peace. It’s not about bargaining and scoring points, but about assurances and guarantees.
An absolute, immediate, ceasefire.
Withdraw all IDF from Gaza.
Release all hostages.
Open Gaza borders
Supply aid
Israel, Hamas, Hezbullah and PA sit down alongside a mediating party (Norway?) and start discussions about how to work out a 2 state solution with a view to making every tomorrow slightly less miserable than every today.
Hamas to remain in government. Palestinians must at least be allowed to retain some dignity. A long term peace will never be achieved through one side crushing the other.
Palestinians guarantee cessation of all violent acts on Israel and Israelis. Hamas disarm and disbands its military arm. The remaining Hamas government will also have to show that it is making a genuine effort to outlaw violence.
There will be splinter groups that carry on violent acts and it will up to the Palestinian people that want peace and the Hamas authority (and also if needed, external bodies) to ensure that anti-Israel acts are neutralised.
Both parties must drop the hate. There will be no revenge for either October 7 or the devastation of Gaza and its population. You cannot insist on punishment for anyone. The terrorists believed what they were doing was right, but they were wrong, just as the Israelis believe themselves to be right but they too are wrong. Retribution and revenge won’t work .
By following up these atrocities, you are carrying forward with you the “shit days”. They are finished. The dead are dead, the only possible thing we can do in their honour is try to do our best to prevent a repeat of what took them away in the first place.
There will be amnesty. For Israel to prove that it genuinely wants peace, it should release the majority of Palestinians detained. Each side has to keep on proving to the other that non-violence is the way forward.
The PR side of this is telling both Palestinian and Israeli populations that it is in both their best interests to go along with the process that happening. It’s a big PR “sell” to each camp.
The line that Hamas takes is “Sorry, we didn’t quite get agreement on article 14 where we can eradicate the Zionist project, but the good news is we’re all going to have a better standard of living, the Israelis have taken their boots off our throats and we’ve got the opportunity to develop. Oh yes, and there’s lot of foreign aid and investment coming in as well. “
The line that Israel takes is “All the time we keep going on about all that we want to do is just live in peace, well now’s the chance.” Israelis can now have that, or at least the chance of that, if they do certain things. Here is the opportunity.
Israel is going to have to live with losing settlements and the West Bank becoming Palestine. In an ideal world a small proportion would remain, deliberately working within and alongside Palestinian communities. Unfortunately what I’ve seen of the settlers, very few would want to do that. So swap settlers for a few Peaceniks that like growing olives and want to get on with their neighbours. See if they can live relatively peacefully together, just like they were doing 150 years ago.
It may seem like Israel is giving far more than the Palestinians in this list, but then they had far more to give in the first place.
Personally, I have always believed that all Israel ever really was to be left alone so that it could just get on with business. Unfortunately, how they have gone about this, especially over the past 50 years, is in a way that has caused continuous; harm, suffering and unfairness to the Palestinians.
Supporters who want a Palestinian state where Israel is today, simply aren’t going to get it. 9 Million Israelis aren’t going anywhere (apart from the settlers).
The reality is that Israel has got enough materiel to successfully defend the Gaza border and another incursion like Oct 7 can pretty easily be defended against. Alternatively a 3 mile buffer zone guarded by UN around Gaza.
That is what, in my opinion needs to happen. To date, Netanyahu has made all the very worst decisions possible. His invasion of Gaza was unnecessary. By far the majority of operations to release hostages involve negotiations and Netanyahu immediately rejected that option in favour of death and destruction, because it suited better his own political survival.
It's frightening how one powerful man's self interest (backed by a few deeply unpleasant extremists) can lead a whole country and its neighbours into an abyss.