This is the final part of the Middle East Program’s series on postwar governance in Gaza. Read the previous parts on perspectives from Israel, Palestine, and the region.
Humanitarian Complicity
By Ilana Feldman
Concerns about doing harm are central to humanitarian considerations, as aid workers and agencies worry that the provision of aid in conflict situations could contribute to prolonged violence. Despite these worries, humanitarian actors have determined that, in most instances, the help their presence offers outweighs these harms. In Gaza, international donors—such as governments, foundations, and individuals—will likely be asked to carry the financial burden of repairing the damage caused by the Israeli bombardment. But their willingness to repeatedly pick up the tab for rebuilding after destruction—all the while knowing that buildings and lives are likely to be shattered again—could contribute, once again, to pushing a resolution of the conflict further down the road.
Humanitarians will participate in this rebuilding while also knowing that their response is almost certainly not going to be adequate to meet the many needs of Palestinians in Gaza. Nonetheless, these organizations will undoubtedly feel that their imperative to save lives and ease suffering demands that they continue to participate in the cycles of destruction and incomplete rebuilding and devastation and inadequate assistance.
The scale of the current carnage, both in loss of life (leading to charges of genocide) and in the destruction of public buildings and homes (named by some as domicide), has produced dramatically new humanitarian problems in a territory that is long familiar with humanitarian crises. Starvation is now a widespread problem in Gaza. One of the first acts in Israel’s offensive against Gaza was to cut off access to food, water, and fuel. This total blockade has only been partially, and inadequately, ameliorated in the months since.
The healthcare system has been utterly devastated. Hospitals have been frequent targets of attack. As of February, only twelve of the thirty-six hospitals in the Gaza Strip are reported to be “partially functional,” and none are fully operational. Children are being victimized in remarkably high numbers: more than 12,000 have been killed, according to some estimates, and more than 1,000 have lost limbs. All children (and adults) in Gaza are being traumatized. The far too many children who fall under the acronym WCNSF—wounded child, no surviving family—face additional challenges.
Humanitarian organizations often hesitate to publicly evaluate the causes of suffering they witness in their work, as doing so could challenge their neutrality. Yet conditions in Gaza have made keeping quiet about culpability increasingly untenable. Humanitarian voices describing Israeli responsibility for Palestinian suffering will probably grow louder.
As they confront new levels and new forms of suffering in Gaza, humanitarian organizations will continue to face significant impediments to providing meaningful assistance to Gazans. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recently announced plan for the future of Gaza envisions a severely constrained future. His call to dismantle the vitally important UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), presents a serious, long-term threat to humanitarian capacity. UNRWA is already strained by the hasty suspension of funding by the United States and other donor countries in response to Israeli accusations that a few of its employees participated in the October 7 attacks.
The international community’s previous significant effort at rebuilding—under the framework of the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM), put in place after the 2014 war—offers some clear warnings about predictable limits to the next effort. The GRM—an agreement between the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Israeli government, and the United Nations—privileged Israeli security concerns and maintained Israeli control over the entrance of goods to Gaza. Rebuilding did happen through this mechanism, but not enough to repair the damage of 2014 before the next round of violence in 2021. The securitization of aid delivery is likely to be even greater in a future reconstruction system. And the frustrations of organizations involved in supporting whatever rebuilding is permitted will probably be greater as well.
Displacement, both inside Gaza and potentially beyond it, is liable to pose a significant practical and ethical challenge for humanitarian actors. While Israel’s intentions are not always clear, the state’s military actions and political statements indicate that permanent population movement is an outcome it seeks. Within Gaza, Israel has begun to create a depopulated buffer zone, demolishing buildings that it had not already destroyed, presumably with the intention to prohibit rebuilding and return. Indefinitely squeezing Gaza’s 2.2 million people into an even smaller territory than the Gaza Strip would cause considerable long-term damage.
Israeli politicians, and not only the most right-wing, have expressed a clear desire to “thin out” Gaza, with many suggesting that Egypt and others could absorb much of Gaza’s population to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe. Although Egypt, the United States, and other countries have so far refused this idea, it could yet happen. That Egypt is building a walled enclosure in the Sinai to contain a possible flood of refugees indicates the seriousness of this possibility. Humanitarians would then find themselves compelled to assist people who have been forcibly displaced from Gaza—and thus would be, in violation of their own ethical principles, complicit in ethnic cleansing.
Ilana Feldman is a cultural and historical anthropologist who works in the Middle East. Her research has focused on the Palestinian experience, both inside and outside of historic Palestine. Her most recent book is Life Lived in Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics.
Expanding U.S. Security Priorities
By Frederic Wehrey and Andrew Bonney
The Gaza war has been drawing U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration back into a region it had sought to disengage itself from. In the wake of the Hamas attack and Israeli reprisal, America’s regional priorities—all of which have been influenced by the upcoming presidential election—include doubling down on military aid to Israel while increasingly pressuring it to minimize civilian deaths; refocusing on Hamas as a formidable terrorist group; enlisting Arab partners in support of a Palestinian state; and confronting Iran through a calibrated military response to its proxies.
Despite international condemnation of Israel’s handling of the Gaza war, U.S. military support to Israel has only increased. On January 4, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said that “we have not seen anything that would convince us that we need to take a different approach in terms of trying to help Israel defend itself.” A few days earlier, the Pentagon announced the sale “of 155 mm artillery shells and related equipment without congressional review.” As for Congress, both the House and Senate are preparing to pass a $14.5 billion military aid package to Israel—an addition to the annual $3.8 billion already supplied. And although the Biden administration’s overall support for Israel remains ironclad, cracks are emerging over the conduct of the campaign and the high levels of civilian casualties; both have spurred widespread criticism of the White House, especially from Black and Arab American groups—important constituencies for the president’s reelection—as well as damaged U.S. credibility abroad. As a result, the administration has enacted sanctions on four West Bank settlers, stepped up its backchannel pressuring of Israeli officials to curtail and end the Gaza operation, and voiced opposition to the Israeli offensive on Rafah.
Eradicating Hamas as both a political and military entity has taken on a heightened priority for the Biden administration. Prior to Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, the United States believed the group’s terrorist threat to U.S. interests had diminished and consequently devoted fewer intelligence resources to monitoring it. Since October, U.S. officials have repeatedly called for the removal of Hamas from power. Stronger sanctions along with intelligence, logistical, and military support to Israel have been implemented to this end. Washington prioritizes neutralizing Hamas to prevent future incursions into Israel, and it hopes to fill Gaza’s resulting power vacuum with a civilian-based government.
Hamas’s 2023 attack put secure governance in Gaza back on the agenda, a contrast to Washington’s prewar dealings with Palestinian statehood as a hurdle to Israeli-Arab normalization. Eager to avoid entanglement in a postbellum state-building project, the U.S. seeks to involve its Middle Eastern partners—particularly Jordan, Qatar, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—in postwar governance plans for the Gaza Strip. The Biden administration hopes to couple this political cooperation with its highly sought-after Israel-Saudi normalization deal. However, while potentially allowing the United States to refocus on Asia-Pacific priorities, this governance scheme may inadvertently deepen U.S. military involvement in the region. Namely, Saudi-Israeli normalization presumably entails Saudi Arabia being granted U.S. security guarantees similar to those given to South Korea and Japan.
As for the United States’ regional adversaries, the challenge of effectively deterring Iran’s network of proxies in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen has assumed a greater priority for Washington since the Gaza war’s inception. In mid-2023, the Biden administration believed it had contained these actors through an unspoken modus vivendi with Tehran, but the uptick in attacks by these groups following October 7 has prompted the United States to more directly respond to Iran and its proxies while hoping to avoid a large-scale military conflict. These tasks are made more daunting by the fact that these groups coordinate among themselves and receive Iranian financial aid, intelligence, and arms but their actions are highly independent of Tehran.
In confronting these groups, Washington has used a spectrum of policy tools. Initially, the Biden administration rushed U.S. military assets into the region, including aircraft carriers, air defense batteries, fighter planes, and additional personnel, which carried the risk of inadvertently provoking an escalation by giving hard-liners in Iran and its proxies a pretext to respond in kind. More recently, in response to the killing of three American soldiers stationed in Jordan, the U.S. has conducted air strikes against targets in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. These attacks marked a dramatic escalation of military engagement beyond America’s fixed-wing air strikes and lethal drone strike against Iranian-backed militia facilities and leaders in Syria and Iraq. While Washington’s retaliatory measures are intended to discourage Iran and its proxies from further attacks—a message that has been underscored by reported track 2 diplomacy with Tehran—the strikes also have the aim of “degrading” their military capabilities.
The rise of the Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen as a maritime force capable of disrupting global supply chains by conducting well over two-dozen attacks on transiting commercial ships has made Red Sea security a newfound priority for U.S. policymakers. For weeks, Washington limited its response to the protection of shipping through a multinational naval force and not directly striking the militia. But that changed on January 12 when American and British warplanes conducted strikes on sixty Houthi targets inside Yemen. The strikes have continued with the Pentagon’s stated aim, again, being to “degrade their capabilities.” The United States hopes to limit, if not eradicate, disruptions to global maritime traffic while protecting vital undersea cables. However, due to Saudi Arabia’s yearslong bombing campaign in Yemen, the battle-hardened Houthis are experienced at dispersing their assets, arms, and personnel—abilities that may frustrate U.S. objectives.
In Lebanon, the U.S. response has been more discrete and indirect, with U.S. officials foremost concerned about restraining Israel, rather than the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, from escalating the conflict. That said, Washington has long attempted, with limited success, to diminish Hezbollah’s power through security assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces and more targeted special operations forces training. Such initiatives are likely to assume greater prominence moving forward, along with the maintenance of an offshore military presence in the eastern Mediterranean.
Frederic Wehrey is a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where his research focuses on governance, conflict, and security in Libya, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf.
Andrew Bonney is a James C. Gaither Junior Fellow in the Carnegie Middle East Program.
Biden’s Goals in Postconflict Gaza
By Aaron David Miller
Three weeks after the Hamas terror attack against Israel, Biden averred that “there’s no going back to the status quo as it stood on October the 6th.” Biden then spelled out what he meant: a new postconflict Gaza where Hamas cannot terrorize Israel and an effort by all parties to work toward a two-state solution.
Whether the line was a throwaway or a reflection of Biden’s determination to use this crisis to build a better future is unclear. But by any standard, a commitment to such goals would involve a heroic lift by a president whose precrisis view of the Israeli-Palestinian issue had been focused more on management than on resolution.
As we enter the fourth month of the Israel-Hamas war, Biden’s vision seems far out of reach. Its attainment is complicated by galactic security and political challenges on the ground and by a looming U.S. presidential election—certain to be among the most consequential in American history—where bold policy toward the Israel-Palestinian issue will come into conflict with much safer politics.
Analysts need to divide what the United States can and cannot do into two phases: the period in the runup to the November election, and then its aftermath. Should Biden gain a second term and be willing to put real resolve into the issue, combined with leadership changes in Israel and on the Palestinian side, he might be able to expand the limits of what is possible and put Israelis and Palestinians on a better pathway. But the year ahead will be the year of Gaza and incremental change—and it is not going to be an easy one. The current situation may well improve, but a stable, secure, and prosperous Gaza will likely remain out of reach.
By the looks of things now, progress will have two speeds: slow and slower. First, Israel is only now starting to wind down its ground campaign in northern Gaza, where it claims to have broken Hamas’s command and control but has not yet secured the area and destroyed the tunnels in which several thousand Hamas fighters may be hiding. In southern and central Gaza, intense Israeli operations continue, specifically in and around the city of Khan Younis, where the Israel Defense Forces believe Hamas’s senior leadership and the remaining 100-plus hostages are likely ensconced. Israel is sure to remain operating in Gaza for months to come.
Second, Israel’s presence—and the general security situation—will almost certainly constrain the delivery of humanitarian assistance and reconstruction. World Health Organization officials are already arguing that they cannot deliver assistance to northern Gaza because of the lack of security. Sensitive to the import of anything that could be construed as dual use to feed a Hamas insurgency, Israel will insist on some sort of inspection regime.
Third, there is no government-in-a-box that can be installed in Gaza right now. The PA lacks credibility, and Arab states are unwilling to play that role (though Egypt will have a stake in border security). Elections to legitimize the goal of Palestinian self-governance in Gaza are a long way off. The current PA, whose credibility is undermined by its own fecklessness and Israeli policies on the West Bank, cannot simply return to governing Gaza amid the death and destruction wrought by Israel’s efforts to crush Hamas. Local leadership—mayors, judges, technocrats, and former employees paid by both the PA and Hamas—can operate at some level, but it’s hard to see any effective municipal or regional governance emerging quickly. And what or who is going to provide basic security and policing function, as well as mediate the disputes, conflicts, and controversies that occur in everyday life?
Fourth, Gaza first cannot be Gaza only. Key Arab states will be hard-pressed to provide financial and political support for Gaza without a clear vision and political horizon that points the way to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the Biden administration has set an ambitious goal for itself: a comprehensive and integrated regional approach whose centerpiece is an Israeli-Saudi normalization agreement tethered to Israel’s willingness to take steps toward the creation of a Palestinian state. Traumatized by war, the countries’ leaders may not be able to take the mutually reinforcing actions that such a pathway would require. The current Israeli government will adamantly oppose such an effort, and a successor government may be equally unwilling, especially in the wake of October 7. In any event, before such an initiative could gain traction, a deal to free hostages and de-escalate the situation in Gaza would be essential.
Without strong, credible, and risk-ready leadership by Israelis and Palestinians, the Biden administration will struggle, and it will need to compensate with leadership of its own. More than likely in 2024, the administration will find itself falling back and focusing on the following:
- Assessing and facilitating humanitarian assistance in Gaza and helping to coordinate reconstruction. The UN Secretary-General has already appointed a senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza. Biden will do the same and perhaps create a regional and international contact group to coordinate. To make this work, Biden will need to press the Israelis to expedite the delivery of assistance into Gaza.
- Working to release the hostages. It is hard to imagine full Israeli cooperation on Gaza without their release.
- Protecting the Tokyo principles, as laid out by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. These include no forcible displacement of Palestinians, no use of Gaza as a platform for violence and terror, no blockade or siege of Gaza, no reduction of territory, and a unified Gaza and West Bank under the PA.
- Defusing Israel-Lebanon tensions and dealing with the Houthis. A diplomatic pathway is required to de-escalate the friction between Israel and Hezbollah and to defuse the situation in the Red Sea, short of striking Houthi targets in Yemen (yet it may well come to that).
- Working for restraint on the West Bank. The Biden administration will need to coordinate with the PA on controlling violence and terror, as well as pressing Israel on provocative policies, settlements, land confiscation, house demolitions, settler violence, and intimidation.
- Reforming the PA and retraining Palestinian security forces for a prospective security role in Gaza.
- Enhancing regional integration. This will entail engaging key Arab states, especially in the Gulf, on ways to address Israeli security concerns through prospective bilateral and regional cooperation.
- Introducing the “Biden parameters.” Sooner rather than later, Biden will need to lay out a plan for Gaza that includes a vision for the future and the choices Israelis, Palestinians, Arab states, and the international community must make, as well as lay out the terms of reference to guide negotiations for a two-state solution.
If the Biden administration can be successful in these areas—and in containing the conflict from erupting into a true regional war—it will have a very productive year.
Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, focusing on U.S. foreign policy.
For the United States, Enduring Stability in Gaza Is Key
By Sarah Yerkes
As the United States seeks to plan for “the day after” the Gaza conflict, questions about the shape of the Palestinian polity have been prominent in discussions between U.S. and Arab leaders and U.S. and Israeli leaders. Ideally, from a U.S. perspective, the plan will involve a unified and strengthened but demilitarized Palestinian government capable of governing both Gaza and the West Bank simultaneously. One item that is not likely to be on the United States’ agenda is how to bring about democracy in the West Bank and Gaza.
The last time Palestine had a democratic election, it backfired miserably for the United States. In 2005, as a cornerstone of former U.S. president George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda, the United States pushed the Palestinian Territories to hold presidential and legislative elections as a way to unite the territories politically and as a step toward spreading democracy throughout the Arab world. Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas handily won the presidential race and was due to face reelection in 2009 (Hamas did not participate in the presidential contest). But Abbas is now nineteen years into a four-year term, having extended his term indefinitely, and is no longer recognized as legitimate by Hamas. The 2006 Palestinian legislative elections failed to net the result the United States wanted: Hamas, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, won seventy-four out of 132 seats in the legislature. The short-lived unity government fell apart in 2007, and Hamas took over the Gaza Strip by force.
The majority of the Palestinian public does not support Hamas today, according to a December 2023 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. However, support for Hamas has more than tripled in the West Bank since October 2023, and more than 90 percent of Palestinians support the resignation of Abbas. More than 60 percent support the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority. Given this background and historical context, the United States is not likely to push for elections or democracy in Gaza anytime soon.
Furthermore, over the past several administrations, the United States has largely prioritized short-term stability over democracy and good governance in the Arab world. The 2010–2011 Arab uprisings forced a reluctant former president Barack Obama and his administration to shift toward a more democracy- and governance-forward agenda in the countries engaged in political reform, but the Arab Spring quickly receded (except in Tunisia), and with it U.S. enthusiasm for democracy promotion in the region.
Even under Biden, who came to office committed to revitalizing a values-based foreign policy with a “commitment to democratic renewal at home and abroad,” the United States has done little to rein in Tunisian President Kais Saied as he dismantles the Arab world’s sole democracy. And the top recipients of U.S. foreign aid globally (after Israel) are Jordan and Egypt—hardly shining examples of democracy and good governance.
While democracy is not on the table, the White House has been open about its desire to see a “revamped and revitalized” Palestinian Authority play a key role in governing Gaza. That will not be easy: Hamas removed the PA from Gaza in 2007, and few Palestinians may be interested in relocating to Gaza to fill in the numerous gaps left by a defeated Hamas political administration. The United States may, therefore, push Israel to accept some Hamas-affiliated civil servants within the new Palestinian government in Gaza as long as Hamas is defeated militarily.
However, significant gaps between U.S. and Israeli positions on Gaza governance remain. For instance, the Israeli government is still reticent to accept the PA as the post-Hamas governing entity. The Biden administration is continuing to try to sway Israel on this point. Following his January tour of the region, Blinken publicly stated that the Palestinian Authority is committed to “meaningful reform,” although what that means in practice is not clear. Bringing in new, younger leadership to replace 88-year-old Abbas is likely the first step.
The administration’s biggest hurdle in bringing about lasting security and stability may be the need to continually push the Israeli government to make concessions that allow the civilian Palestinian administration to govern effectively and efficiently. But it is, after all, in Israel’s interest that the demilitarized government in Gaza can build trust among the Palestinian people; deliver on essential goods and services such as education, healthcare, and infrastructure; and operate transparently.
Sarah Yerkes is a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Middle East Program, where her research focuses on Tunisia’s political, economic, and security developments as well as state-society relations in the Middle East and North Africa.
The U.S. Assistance Program for Palestinians
By Larry Garber
The principles underlying U.S. assistance to the West Bank and Gaza have remained constant since the Oslo Accords were signed in the early 1990s. First, the assistance is consciously designed to achieve political outcomes, although the emphasis may vary from facilitating peace, to promoting internal reforms, to enhancing U.S. standing in the region. Second, the proposed assistance must convince often skeptical members of Congress that the investments are achieving objectives consistent with U.S. interests and are not undermining the Unites States’ special relationship with Israel.
The implementation of specific programs has been affected by legal constraints imposed by Congress, political developments in the region, and security considerations. Nonetheless, a major U.S. asset is the competence and resilience of the professional staff working for the U.S. Agency for Development (USAID) in the West Bank and Gaza. Many local staff—citizens of both Israel and Palestine—have worked for USAID during the past thirty years in a variety of challenging circumstances. They have proven themselves capable of complying with the demands of U.S. legislation while achieving significant development results.
Given an anticipated continued low-intensity conflict and extended period of unsettled governance in Gaza, the United States will encourage Western and Arab donors to support Gaza reconstruction. An initial step in this direction is the damage assessment being led by Sigrid Kaag, the newly appointed UN senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza. She is tasked with improving humanitarian access to Gaza but must also examine the damage to critical infrastructure, such as medical facilities, power plants, and water carriers. In addition, she must identify solutions to the existing impediments to reconstruction, such as removing rubble and eliminating the dangers of unexploded ordinance. She has received Blinken’s strong backing.
In planning for reconstruction, the United States will advocate within the donor community to take Israeli security considerations into account. As a starting point, a comprehensive review must determine how Hamas managed to build an extensive tunnel network under Gaza and a multifaceted armament industry. While the installation of new technologies may enhance the quality and speed of the inspection process at Gaza’s border crossings, the categorization of potentially dual-use items necessary for the reconstruction process will require difficult negotiations between Israel and the international community. Washington must be prepared to play a significant mediating role.
At the same time, the United States will continue to press the Palestinian leadership to comply with the provisions of the Taylor Force Act, which precludes U.S. direct assistance to the PA so long as it is making payments to Palestinian prisoners who have committed acts of terrorism or to the families of deceased terrorists. Significant progress had been made on this front prior to October 7, but whether PA leadership will still move forward remains to be seen.
U.S. assistance, in the immediate term, will rightfully be directed toward meeting priority humanitarian needs. The dire shortages of food, medicine, water, and other essentials will not abate merely because the conflict becomes less intense. Moreover, meeting humanitarian needs will require accounting for the consequences of the conflict to date—massive numbers of displaced people, large numbers of orphans, severely malnourished children and adults, individuals suffering from loss of limbs and other physical injuries, and a psychologically traumatized population. An initial priority will involve providing much needed temporary shelter for the million-plus displaced Palestinians whose homes have been damaged or destroyed, while simultaneously encouraging the rapid reconstruction of homes, schools, and medical facilities.
The provision of relief must also project the prospects of a better future for those living in Gaza. Reviving the capabilities of Palestinian financial institutions, including banks and microcredit facilities, to supply financing initially for small-scale infrastructure will inject much needed cash into the economy and will stimulate a demand-driven recovery. Jump-starting this effort will entail the fair and expeditious adjudication of property claims by a neutral and professional body, whose formation would benefit from external funding and technical assistance.
The United States also should work with Gaza municipalities so long as their leaders are not associated with Hamas. The determination of who qualifies, in the current circumstances, will require a careful vetting process. However, it would be a serious mistake to apply criteria that precludes anyone who has interacted with Hamas during the past seventeen years.
While the specifics of PA revitalization remain vague, the United States has experience from previous exercises, most notably in 2002, of incentivizing Palestinian leadership to adopt meaningful political reforms. At the very least, Washington should ensure that institutions such as the Palestine Monetary Authority and the Central Election Commission continue to operate at a high level of competence and integrity and can effectively undertake the responsibilities associated with their mandates.
The timing of elections will be a particularly contentious issue. Palestinians living in Gaza have not participated in any elections since 2006, and those Palestinians born after 1990, who comprise nearly 50 percent of the population, have never participated in national or municipal elections. Hence, there will be considerable pressure to schedule elections that can provide legitimacy to a revitalized Palestinian leadership covering both the West Bank and Gaza and that can ensure effective ownership and oversight of the reconstruction process. At the same time, most experts agree that elections are not feasible during the next eighteen months.
Finally, U.S. assistance must be designed to support the vision articulated by successive administrations of a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace with Israel. Too often during the post-Oslo period, the ambitions of U.S. assistance programs have outpaced the political realities associated with the facts on the ground. Thus, plans for a Gaza seaport or a dedicated corridor for Palestinian movement between the West Bank and Gaza have never come to fruition. These projects and others essential for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state must be revived, but with a recognition that their implementation requires more than just a financial commitment.
Larry Garber, a former senior USAID policy official during the Clinton and Obama administrations, served as the USAID mission director to the West Bank and Gaza from 1999 to 2004 and observed the 2005 presidential, 2006 legislative, and 2022 municipal Palestinian elections.
Europe and the War in Gaza
By Muriel Asseburg
The dynamics set off by the October 7 attacks have shown the inability of the EU to live up to its values and to play an effective role in conflict mitigation. This dynamic is even more striking when considering the conflict directly affects its interest in a stable and peaceful neighborhood. And it is in contrast with the EU taking pride in having played a crucial role in shaping international language on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for providing significant donor assistance—all aimed at peaceful conflict resolution.
After October 7, high-level EU representatives and member states’ officials made a frenzy of visits to Israel to show solidarity and engaged in regional shuttle diplomacy to prevent further escalation. In early and mid-November, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell stressed the need for a political solution, as well as what must not happen in Gaza: forced displacement, territorial changes, a “reoccupation” of Gaza by Israel, Gaza being a safe haven to Hamas, and a dissociation of Gaza from the Palestine question. He also emphasized that the PA would need to play a role in Gaza, that Arab states would need to step up their involvement, and that the EU would need to engage in support for Palestinian state building. In early 2024, Borrell went a step further, saying that the international community must impose a solution to the Gaza conflict to prevent further escalation.
Yet Borrell’s clear declarations could not conceal the lack of agreement between EU institutions and among member states—with Austria, the Czech Republic, and Germany on one end of the spectrum and Belgium, Ireland, and Spain on the other. This lack of unity came to the fore in officials’ statements on issues such as the limits of Israel’s right to self-defense, accountability for war crimes, breaches of international humanitarian law, the demand for humanitarian access, and the necessity of an immediate ceasefire. In reaction to the Hamas attacks, EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Olivér Várhelyi unilaterally announced the suspension and review of all EU development aid to Palestinians—thus increasing the pressure on an already cash-strapped PA—but the suspension was quickly reversed amid protests from some member states and the EU’s External Action Service.
This disunity was also visible in European voting behavior on two UN General Assembly resolutions demanding a cessation of violence, as well as in European statements on South Africa’s legal action at the International Court of Justice against Israel on accusations of genocide. And it was reflected in the EU’s inability to quickly develop a concrete plan on how to help Israelis and Palestinians exit the cycle of violence, terror, and retaliation and move toward more sustainable arrangements for Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—as well as its inability to clearly define its role in that endeavor. In December and February meetings, European heads of states and governments discussed the issue but were unable to agree on concrete steps.
It’s not surprising that Europe has not had any discernible influence on current conflict dynamics. In January, in cooperation with Qatar, France was able to make at least a small difference by forging a deal on the delivery of medicine to hostages and Gaza’s population. In February, Paris has also hosted talks about a humanitarian pause. But the EU has played no role in mediation, nor has it led preparations for an exit from the war or the building of Gaza’s future. In January 2024, Borrell presented a peace plan aimed at a two-state solution as well as Israel’s integration in the region. But it’s not clear whether EU member states—or a lead group of states—will actively work to prevent worst-case scenarios and support sustainable stabilization by building on the Borrell principles and translating the peace plan into concrete approaches and European contributions. Another open question is whether EU member states can live up to their proclaimed interest in a rules-based international order and their obligations under international humanitarian law, particularly with regard to the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice.
Muriel Asseburg is a senior fellow in the Africa and Middle East division of Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.
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