A paradox of war is that it can open the way, after tragic suffering, to the kind of fundamental realignment that can bring a durable peace. That was apparent to President Franklin D. Roosevelt at his January 1943 meeting in Casablanca to plan strategy for a conflict whose savage bloodletting was only beginning.
Roosevelt told British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that to eliminate the power of their adversaries, the Allies must seek their unconditional surrender. “It does not mean the destruction of the population of Germany, Italy or Japan”, Roosevelt said, “but it does mean the destruction of [their] philosophies … based on conquest and subjugation”.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is at a similar moment as Israeli tanks roll toward Gaza. He has demanded, in effect, the unconditional surrender of Hamas and the end of its terrorist control of the crowded enclave. “We will crush and destroy it”, he told Israelis Wednesday night. He seeks to make it impossible for Hamas to carry out such horrors again.
But Netanyahu must be wise, as Roosevelt was, to wage war in a way that allows for a stable peace after his adversary’s defeat. If he waits until the conflict is over to think about “the day after”, it might be too late. And if he conducts a war that punishes Palestinian civilians, rather than Hamas, he might lose global support and undermine his mission.
Netanyahu has one wild card that, if he plays it well, could reorder the Middle East. That’s the growing willingness of Saudi Arabia, the dominant Arab power, to form an open partnership with Israel — so long as Israel seeks a stable and lasting peace with the Palestinians.
It’s a historical fact that opportunities for peace in the Middle East follow conflict. The 1973 Yom Kippur war, a strategic shock much like last Saturday’s Hamas attack, was followed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s journey to Jerusalem and, eventually, the Camp David peace accords. The 1993 Oslo Accords that led eventually to creation of the Palestinian Authority were championed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after the carnage of the First Intifada.
“Who will be the Sadat to take the Palestinians under his wing and lead them to peace? My candidate is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman”, said Martin Indyk, who served Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and might be the United States’ wisest veteran of the peace process. Indyk believes that MBS, as the crown prince is known, was working to build a security structure for his massive “Vision 2030” investment in Saudi Arabia based on a defense treaty with the United States and a strategic peace with Israel. “But Hamas, backed by Iran, punched a hole in Israeli deterrence, and it has resurrected the idea of defeating Israel by force”, Indyk said. He thinks this also threatens all the Arab leaders who have made peace with Israel.
Normal Saudi behavior would be to head for the sidelines, but Indyk thinks MBS might have too much at stake this time. He imagines that in the devastation that will follow the Gaza war, the crown prince, in coordination with other pro-Western Arabs, could invite Netanyahu and Palestinian leaders to Riyadh for a “peace summit" that would establish a new path to an Arab-Israeli accord.
This vision of a Saudi-Israeli compact might sound like an unrealistic dream, betting on a Saudi leader with a dark past. Along with my colleagues at The Post, I blame MBS for the murder of contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018. But Saudis who know the crown prince well tell me that he is ready for transformative policy unless Israel pursues a reckless war that shatters any chance for reconciliation.
“We have an opportunity that we haven’t seen in 20 years to create something different”, said Abdulrahman al-Rashed, a Saudi columnist and chairman of the editorial board of Al Arabiya, the kingdom’s flagship television network, in an interview on Wednesday.
Al-Rashed elaborated on how change might evolve: “We have a frame in the Palestinian Authority, which was created by the Oslo Accords. It has legal institutions. The United States, the European Union and the Arab League all recognize the PA”. A revitalized authority, backed by the Saudis and other key Arab states, could purge the corruption and incompetence that have enfeebled it since birth. With Arab money and support — and new leadership — the PA could perhaps gradually rebuild Gaza.
“The Palestinian Authority needs to be restructured. It needs young, dynamic leadership. I believe Saudi Arabia and MBS would support that”, Ali Shihabi, a prominent supporter of MBS, told me during an interview. But he also warned: “If the Israelis want a Palestinian partner that can create a peaceful solution, then they have to empower that partner”.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II had been working closely with the United States since the summer to prepare the Palestinian Authority for the era that will follow President Mahmoud Abbas, who at 87 is widely seen as ineffective. The Jordanian monarch feared that Hamas was gaining ground in Gaza and in the West Bank and urged change, so that extremists wouldn’t exploit popular frustration. But it didn’t come in time. “Now, we have to think of ‘the day after,’ when the guns go silent”, said one senior Jordanian official.
The fear in the region is that, as Arabs watch civilian casualties, they will feel a rage similar to what Israelis felt last week after the slaughter of civilians by Hamas terrorists. “We need to turn this around”, said Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s foreign minister, in an interview on Thursday. “Any new thinking about the region must recognize that unless we solve the Palestinian problem, lasting peace is an illusion”.
Anwar Gargash, the former foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, is focusing on the need to minimize horrific casualties such as those of the past week. “The UAE has stressed that civilians should not be targeted on either side, no matter how you feel about historic rights or injustice”, he told me on Thursday.
The United States has so far managed the difficult trick of keeping faith with both Israel, whose pain President Biden seemed to share viscerally in his televised remarks this week, and with key Arab allies. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been shuttling through the region this week to meet top officials in Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt.
In Israel on Thursday, Blinken offered a shorthand of his vision of the Middle East, post-conflict: “A region that comes together, integrated, normalized relations among its countries, people working in common purpose to common benefit. More peaceful, more stable”.
Shihabi cites an Arab proverb to illustrate how much depends on good judgment by Israel and the United States in managing this darkening crisis: “The mistake of a smart person is equivalent to the mistakes of 10 idiots”.
As Israel pursues the destruction of Hamas, the coming days will bring more shattering scenes of violence and suffering. Many Arabs would like to see Hamas vanquished, too, but they hope Netanyahu will be wise in how he uses force — with an eye, always, on what will follow.
David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. His latest novel is “The Paladin”.