What should come next: two states, and who runs Gaza?

What should come next is the conflict’s one genuinely open question, and it should be treated as one. The record underneath it is not open: partition and statehood have been formally offered to the Palestinians and refused in 1937, 1947, 2000, 2001 and 2008; Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 produced Hamas rule and repeated wars, not a state in waiting; and every serious day-after plan begins from the same premise, that Hamas can be no part of any endgame. Past those fixed points, honest people disagree about everything that matters: borders, sequencing, guarantors, and who holds the keys in Gaza City.

The offer record, because the future starts from it

Any answer to “what should come next” has to reckon with what was already offered. The Peel Commission proposed partition in 1937; the Arab leadership refused. The UN partition plan of 1947 offered a second state again; the answer was war. In July 2000 at Camp David, Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat Gaza and roughly 92 percent of the West Bank with a capital in East Jerusalem; Arafat refused without a counter-offer. The Clinton Parameters of 23 December 2000 went further: a Palestinian state on 94 to 96 percent of the West Bank with land swaps and a divided Jerusalem. Israel accepted with reservations; Arafat let it die, and talks at Taba in January 2001 ran out of clock under the bombs of the Second Intifada.

The high-water mark came on 16 September 2008, after 36 negotiating sessions: Ehud Olmert offered Mahmoud Abbas roughly 94 percent of the West Bank with swaps, Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem as a capital, an international five-party trusteeship over the holy basin, and a symbolic admission of refugees, 1,000 a year for five years, instead of a right of return that would end Israel demographically. Condoleezza Rice called the offer amazing. Abbas asked to study the map and never came back. John Kerry’s nine-month framework effort in 2013 and 2014 met the same wall. That is the settled part: the rejection record is history, not opinion.

What changed since 2008

Three things moved, all in the wrong direction. First, Gaza: Israel withdrew every soldier and settler in 2005, Hamas seized the Strip in 2007, and the result was rocket war after rocket war capped by October 7, 2023. Every Israeli argument against West Bank withdrawal now begins with the sentence “we tried exactly that in Gaza.” Second, the settlements grew, which narrows the map and is a genuine, fair argument inside Israeli democracy, though final borders were always meant to be negotiated with swaps. Third, Palestinian governance rotted: Abbas is two decades past the end of his elected term, the Palestinian Authority pays salaries scaled to the severity of terror convictions under its pay-for-slay system, and no leadership has prepared its public to accept a Jewish state as permanent.

The serious positions on two states

The classic case for two states is demographic and moral: between the river and the sea live roughly seven million Jews and roughly seven million Arabs. Permanent rule over millions of non-citizens corrodes a democracy; enfranchising them ends the Jewish state. Two states is the only geometry that keeps Israel both Jewish and democratic, which is why Israel’s own security establishment produced many of its advocates.

The serious case against is not ideology, it is the Gaza precedent plus terrain: the West Bank hills overlook Israel’s airport and its coastal population, and a state that turned out like Gaza would put October 7 on the doorstep of Tel Aviv. So the live variants are all “two states minus” or “two states plus”: a demilitarized state with Israeli security control of the Jordan Valley and airspace for a defined period, as the Clinton Parameters already envisioned; confederation models with two sovereignties and open borders, which poll around 20 to 35 percent on each side; and regionalization, in which Arab states underwrite and guarantee the deal. The Abraham Accords of 15 September 2020, when the UAE and Bahrain normalized with Israel followed by Morocco and Sudan, proved that peace no longer waits on a Palestinian yes, and the Saudi track ties the biggest prize to a credible Palestinian pathway, which is exactly what makes it leverage.

The one-state answers, in both directions, are formulas for permanent civil war rather than plans: annexation without votes fails the democracy test, and “from the river to the sea” is the program of the people who carried out October 7, not a constitutional proposal.

Who runs Gaza: every option, honestly

Three day-after models get serious discussion, and none is clean. A reformed, “revitalized” Palestinian Authority is the stated American destination, but the PA could not hold Gaza in 2007 and has not held an election since 2006. An Arab consortium, Egyptian and Gulf money with Arab or international forces, has the resources but no Arab state wants to police Gaza against Hamas remnants and be called an occupier in Arabic media. A technocratic administration is the version actually being attempted: as of 2026, under the twenty-point framework, a US-chaired international Board of Peace oversees a National Committee for the Administration of Gaza staffed by Palestinian technocrats, with a transition to a reformed PA as the endpoint. Its weaknesses are real, thin international buy-in and the absence of the conflict’s main parties from its founding ceremony among them.

What is not open is the premise all three share: Hamas rule is incompatible with any endgame. Its charter is genocidal, its leaders promised on television to repeat October 7 “again and again,” and every reconstruction dollar it touches becomes a tunnel. Distinguish here, as the honest analysis always must, between Hamas and the Palestinians: the day-after question is precisely how to give the latter a future without the former.

What the publics actually say

Gallup’s June to August 2025 surveys found 21 percent of Israelis and 23 percent of West Bank Palestinians believe permanent peace will ever be achieved. Two-state support stood at 27 percent in Israel, down from 61 percent in 2012, and 33 percent in the West Bank. The joint Palestinian-Israeli Pulse polling (PCPSR with Tel Aviv University) has found the same collapse, with one telling exception: when the alternative offered is regional war, majorities on both sides prefer a regional package of two states plus normalization. The numbers track events, not eternal attitudes. Israelis abandoned two states after buses exploded and after October 7; the 2012 figure shows the support returns when withdrawal stops meaning rockets.

What would settle it

The propaganda on this question runs both ways. “Israel never offered anything real” requires erasing 1937, 1947, 2000, 2001 and 2008, which is why the offer record is the first thing its tellers bury. “There is never a partner, so keep everything” erases Egypt and Jordan, who signed and kept peace, and Sadat got every inch of Sinai back for it. The honest tests are observable: a Palestinian leadership that says two states for two peoples in Arabic and holds elections; an end to pay-for-slay and to the demand for return to Israel proper rather than to Palestine; a Gaza administration that survives a year without becoming Hamas with a new letterhead; demilitarization that holds under pressure; Arab guarantees with money and enforcement attached. Until those tests are met or failed, this page stays in the open pile, which is where an honest reference keeps it.

Two-state / one-state · 2000 Camp David Summit · Was the pre-October 7 policy toward Hamas defensible? · Hamas vs the Palestinians · Was Gaza occupied when this war began? · The History They Skip · Israel’s allies and the Accords

Sources

From Asked & answered on the main site.