Prior to the war in Gaza, Israel and Saudi Arabia were on their way to normalizing ties. Although now on hold, that warming positions Riyadh to play a vital role in restoring peace. All the more curious then – as Saudi expert Aziz Alghashian wrote Monday in Foreign Policy – that as the conflict has deepened, the Saudis are “using an overlooked diplomatic tool: silence.”
What they may be listening for is evidence of shifting attitudes among Israelis and Palestinians about their shared future. Hints are coming from both sides. In a meeting with families of Israeli hostages last weekend, Benny Gantz, a minister in Israel’s war Cabinet, said that eliminating individual leaders of Hamas, the Islamist group whose militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, “is not the point at all. ... We will not erase the idea [of Hamas] except through a different, better idea.”
That tone found an echo. “Isn’t it worth discussing how to manage this conflict with the Israeli occupation?” asked Hussein al-Sheikh, general secretary of the Palestine Liberation Organization, in a weekend interview with Reuters.
The two men may be future partners in peace. Their views underscore how the war in Gaza is moving their societies toward coexistence set on renewed democratic values. Polls show that Israelis and Palestinians hold similar frustrations over corruption, insecurity, economic disruption, and threats to judicial independence.
“To weaken Hamas, I don’t think you’re going to do it by bombs,” Amaney Jamal, an investigator at Arab Barometer who surveys Palestinian views on government and democracy, told Stanford Report earlier this month. “It’s really bolstering and empowering all the other groups, civil society, all the other efforts, and monopolizing on the support for a peaceful resolution to this conflict.”
The war has sharpened demands for new leadership on both sides. When the militants struck in October, Israelis were already roiling over proposals by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to weaken the authority of the Supreme Court. The Hamas attack increased their unease.
“After a dangerous brush with illiberal, authoritarian rule,” wrote Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israeli Democracy Institute, “Israelis ... will demand firm guarantees that a temporary majority cannot overturn democracy and constitutional safeguards that will enshrine its citizens’ individual rights.” A poll taken last month showed that Mr. Gantz, a retired army general and former minister of defense, would trounce Mr. Netanyahu in snap elections.
Mr. Sheikh also represents a potential shift in leadership. Palestinians have lived under divided rule between the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 2006, their last election. That stagnation, wrote Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, in a companion piece in Foreign Affairs, has “become a perpetual source of violence and instability.”
Diplomats are increasingly focused on “the day after” – how postwar Gaza will be governed and rebuilt. “It would compound this tragedy if all that was waiting for the Israeli people and your Palestinian neighbors at the end of this awful war was more insecurity, fury and despair,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during a visit to Israel Monday. As Saudis and others watch for an opening, many Israelis and Palestinians see better democracies and better ideas about each other as better protection than fences and guns.
Mark Sappenfield
