Moving from fragile truce to long-term settlement will require Netanyahu to summon sincerity and vision.
Every renewal of the cycle of violence involving Israel and the two Palestinian territories of Gaza and West Bank brings on a dispiriting deja vu. The current chapter began with the killing of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank, allegedly by members of Hamas, that led to the arrest of several Palestinians and the murder of a young Palestinian. This triggered the barrage of rockets that Hamas and the Islamic Jihad have been launching at Israel from Gaza, which in turn brought on extensive strikes by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) that have left more than 200 dead in the Gaza Strip, most of them civilians. The collapse of the Egypt-brokered ceasefire on Tuesday — which the Israeli cabinet accepted but Hamas didn’t — has made a speedy return to at least the uneasy truce that ended the “mini-war” of 2012 now look difficult.
Israel cannot solve this conundrum without going the extra mile to resume direct talks with the Palestinian leadership. Israel’s hard-won peace and economic growth once more look vulnerable. And the IDF’s overwhelming force doesn’t help Israel’s diplomatic case. Netanyahu has a narrow window before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s position is completely untenable. The ball is in his court. He must move from this sequence of fragile truces to a settlement that lasts.
