No shared endgame for Gaza in sight

In addition, the Biden team has outlined what it sees as key principles that should guide the endgame discussion on Gaza.

These include no forcible displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, no moves to reduce the territory of Gaza, no reoccupation by Israeli military forces, and no allowing Gaza to be used as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks. 

Israel's view on the endgame is quite unclear. 

Some of this is due to the multiplicity of voices coming out of the current Israeli government.  But a good bit of the reason for this lack of clarity is related to the lack of consensus inside Israeli society and a national identity crisis that has been ongoing for decades. 

For decades, Israel has not been able to come to terms with how it seeks to define itself in relation to its neighbours, including its most immediate neighbours — the Palestinian people.  

Since this war began, Israel's government has voiced positions on the endgame for Gaza and, more broadly, with the Palestinians overall that are directly at odds with what the United States supports. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a governing coalition that includes ministers who favour outright annexation of occupied territories and oppose a two-state solution.

Netanyahu has argued that Israel will not allow the Palestinian Authority to return to Gaza, and he spent years undermining the Palestinian Authority while also facilitating a funding mechanism for Gaza under Hamas control in coordination with Qatar.

Israel has reportedly started making plans to create a "buffer zone" inside of Gaza, which would reduce the amount of land available to Palestinians. Some Israeli officials have talked about a longer-term Israeli military presence in parts of Gaza, while others have argued that broader national economic strains combined with other regional security threats might make it difficult for Israel to deploy a significant number of troops to reoccupy Gaza. 

In recent days, some Israeli security officials have floated vague notions of Israel working with Palestinian clans or large families in Gaza to help govern and administer the impoverished territory with more than 2 million people. 

This possible arrangement seems highly improbable given the scale of the destruction in just three months and the likely shifts in internal Palestinian social and political dynamics as a result of this war – war changes political realities in unpredictable ways. 

The bottom line: three months into the Gaza war, the United States and Israel have fundamentally different visions about what should happen after the war ends.  This lack of consensus about the desired political end state could, in fact, prolong the conflict. 

Read more: Why Israel has no good options in Gaza

Recipe for disaster

No clear destination is a recipe for a quagmire and conflict with no end in sight.

One of the big lessons America tells itself that it has learned from its two decades of post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that not having strategic goals with a clearly defined end state can produce long, costly wars. 

During this post-9/11 period, the United States too often defined its goals in places like Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of what it wanted to defeat rather than what it wanted to produce, build, and leave behind. 

When President Barack Obama announced his "surge" of additional military forces to Afghanistan early in his first term, he defined the strategic goal as disrupting, dismantling, and defeating Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

The United States never clearly articulated what it wanted to leave behind as a result of the costly military and reconstruction efforts. 

Similarly, when the Arab coalition began military operations in Yemen in 2015 to address threats, it did so in a way that failed to provide much clarity about the desired end state, which is the main reason why it got bogged down and sought a diplomatic exit. 

Israel starts 2024 in the middle of a military campaign in Gaza that is aimed at eliminating Hamas, and this campaign looks like it might be quite prolonged. 

In recent weeks, there are worrisome signs that it could spread to other parts of the broader Middle East.  Not having a clear political end state in mind or one that is shared with its chief security and diplomatic backer, the United States, Israel risks creating a situation that ends up undermining its efforts to protect its citizens and reestablish deterrence. 

Again, this failure to define with much clarity what it seeks to produce could end up destroying more than just people's lives and buildings in Gaza – it could cut off the pathways towards a sustainable political settlement to the conflict. 

Writing in the early 19th century, the Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz argued, "War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.  We see, therefore, that war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means." 

Without a clearly stated political end goal for its military actions, Israel may be producing bigger challenges for itself in the long term. 

By prosecuting a war against Hamas and the threats it poses but doing so without a clear, realistic vision of the end state for Palestinians, Israel finds itself trapped in a prison of its own making — one in which it can't find a way out of a prolonged occupation, either directly or indirectly, of millions of Palestinians. 

Read more: The Israeli view on the 'day after' in Gaza

Palestinian voices missing

At this critical juncture in the Middle East, one element is central to defining a viable end state and a second supporting element. 

The key element in defining an end state that's missing from the scene is the voice of the Palestinian people, the millions who have lived in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and voices in the diaspora who want a more hopeful future, rather than some nihilistic agenda or a status quo agenda that wants to hold onto power. 

For years, the Palestinian people have been lower on the policy agendas of not just Washington D.C. but also many governments in the Middle East.

The second supporting element in defining an endgame can come from the Arab states themselves — the ones who recently actively campaigned for an immediate ceasefire around the world and expended much time and energy at the United Nations in debates over various resolutions that have not done much strategically in the short term. 

Instead, key leaders in the Arab world should consider putting forth a bold plan that defines its desired endgame to the conflict and present it to the world and Israel. 

In so doing, these countries would likely find that the Biden administration would be sympathetic to their ideas, particularly if they are in the same general area as the template provided by the Arab Peace Initiative, now more than two decades old. 

No simple solutions exist to this current complicated conflict, and military actions alone won't produce a lasting peace. What's required are political leaders with a vision to define the future in ways that respond to the concerns of Palestinians and Israelis alike.