The ceasefire plan for the Gaza Strip is reportedly stalling over when and how Hamas will be disarmed, throwing into question how the Board of Peace can create an environment for a postwar stabilization force—much less the promised “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.” A new book by veterans of the Palestine-Israel negotiations, reviewed in Middle East Policy, analyzes the failures of the process and argues that resolution requires ending the fixation on the two-state solution and engaging a wider range of local actors to develop creative solutions for both sides’ autonomy and security.
Our Winter 2025–26 issue is still available, featuring analyses of Washington’s new model for rebuilding failed states (open access); US-Saudi relations in light of China’s increasing influence; the new order in the Red Sea (open access); and the roiling Israel-Turkey conflict in Syria, among many other vital issues. Please follow us on the social media platforms X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
The new examination of the Israel-Palestine peace process, Tomorrow Is Yesterday by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, is a corrective to the authors’ previously optimistic takes on the potential for a two-state solution. Agha, formerly an adviser to Yasser Arafat, and the American negotiator Malley draw on their experiences to grapple with the repeated failures since the Oslo Accords, Hamas’s devastating October 7 attacks, and Israel’s brutal Gaza war. Their gorgeous prose, provocative interpretations of the historical record, and daring arguments for where to go from here make it a must read.
Agha and Malley show that Arafat’s aversion to cost-benefit analysis ceded the initiative to US presidents. Once Bill Clinton’s last-gasp talks in 2000 failed, George W. Bush demanded elections in the occupied territories, then punished Palestinians for Hamas’s victory. The next American leader, Barack Obama, warned Israel that without a two-state deal, “you end up having one state in which millions of people are disenfranchised and operate as second class residents.” From the Palestinian perspective, Agha and Malley lament, these interventions—even those intended to get to a final status—betrayed “condescension and disdain for a national movement that had lost self-respect [and] lived at the mercy of its foreign backers.”
These hard-won insights allow Agha and Malley some leverage to analyze the October 7 attacks. The planners, they argue, wanted to show Israel the cost of the occupation and the price of besieging Gaza; remind the world of the Palestinian cause at a time of drifting attention; hinder Arab-Israeli normalization; and grab the mantle of leadership of the Palestinian movement. Hamas may have even assumed that its allies would immediately join the fight and spark a regional war. It was simultaneously rational and delusional.
If tomorrow is yesterday, what is the likelihood that the US 20-point plan, issued after the book’s release, will succeed? The authors make clear that the central mediator, the United States, is structurally incapable of truth telling and reaching, much less enforcing, a workable deal for two states side by side. Other outcomes are more likely: The status quo is one, given its endurance. There could also be unilateral moves to manage the conflict, as with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s pullback from the Gaza Strip. A one-state solution or Jordanian-Palestinian confederation or forcible transfer of Palestinians are all possible, though with differing likelihoods and palatability.
More urgent is the authors’ call for “unconventional ideas and alternative concepts.” They do not present any of these as an enduring solution, but they include schemes for sharing the land while maintaining distinct cultures. Under one creative scenario, Agha and Malley relate, the land could be shared as “a type of Israeli-Palestinian condominium in which the relevant connection would cease to be between state and territory; it would be between state and individual, wherever they live.”
Here lies the vital importance of the book. Agha and Malley argue that the American insistence on the two-state solution does not simply limit the outcomes but dramatically reduces the diversity of viewpoints. Islamists and the Israeli right have historically been excluded from talks given their stances against living in peace, despite their influence and the need for their buy-in. The US-led process also privileges formal negotiations toward an endgame over informal dialogue that could lead to small gains, fluidity of previously hardened lines, and trust building. To break the cycle, it is not just the outcomes that need to change; the preconceived notions of how to exchange ideas and build a future of mutual respect and autonomy must be overhauled, as well. “Going down this path may not resolve everything, forever,” they write, “but it may at least bring about some relief, for now.”
Middle East Policy, Winter 2025
THE REGIONAL REORDERING
From Rebuilding to Restoring Political Order: A New Agenda for Failed Arab States
Guilain Denoeux | Robert Springborg—open access!
Saudi Arabia’s US-China Hedging Strategy and Its Regional Impact
Xiaoyu Wang | Salman K. Al-Dhafeeire | Degang Sun
Maritime Disruption in Yemen: The Making of a Hybrid Red Sea Order
Federico Donelli—open access!
The Struggle for Syria: Strategic Rivalry and the Risks of Escalation
Buğra Sari | Avnihan Kirişik
THE STRUGGLE FOR PALESTINE
The Israeli Peace Movement in a Time of Crisis
Natalya Philippova—free to read!
The Role of Postage Stamps in Palestinian National Identity and History
Ido Zelkovitz | Yehiel Limor—open access!
TURKISH NATIONALISM AND DOMESTIC POLITICS
Why the New Turkey-PKK Peace Process Is Likely to Fail
Michael M. Gunter
Turkey’s March 19 Protests: An End to Competitive Authoritarianism?
Göktürk Tüysüzoğlu
Athlete Queens of Modern Turkey: Beauty Pageants and Modernization
Muhammet Nurullah Çakmak
Countering Extremism in Iraq: The Influence of Ali Sistani
Hogr Tarkhani | Isaac Andakian
BOOK REVIEWS
Sareta Ashraph, Carmen Cheung Ka-Man, and Joana Cook, Holding ISIL Accountable: Prosecuting Crimes in Iraq and Syria
Reviewed by Usman Anwar | Muhammad Atif
Samer Bakkour, The End of the Middle East Peace Process: The Failure of US Diplomacy
Reviewed by Hamdullah Baycar