The ruling party in Gaza hasn’t had a popular mandate for decades until Israel decided on collective punishment for the whole area. So step one would be stop that.

A majority support a two state solution, which means Israel would be fine. It just requires negotiating with the PLO or the official government of Palestine and giving them support instead of undermining them at every turn like Israel and the international community has done. Hamas has received support from Israel in order to set up an enemy that they can use a scapegoat to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state and to split the power from the PLO and weaken them. So step two is give the PLO that kind of support instead of Hamas.

A plausible suggestion I’ve seen is the cantonization of Gaza: Divide it into at least four clearly separated zones, each with a different civilian administration staffed by Palestinians, with an outside force (either Israel, which is most likely, or some external coalition, which is less likely) being responsible for security. This division makes control easier and would prevent a single group like Hamas from easily taking over the entire strip. Unlike what the the Biden administration is suggesting, I do not think that the PA is suited for this job. They are extremely unpopular among Palestinians, corrupt and incompetent, but they also stoke the flames of this conflict through, among other things, their martyr’s fund, which is paying out hundreds of millions per year to terrorists and their families. The civilian administration - at least their leadership - should ideally be recruited from those who have already been critical of Hamas and violent action in the past. They will need to be protected by the IDF in order to be able to safely do their jobs, there is no way around this. This would be an occupation regime and most certainly not a gentle one, at least in the beginning.

That’s the basic administrative part. The next step is critical: Reeducation, which means kicking out UNRWA for good, as it has become nothing but an internationally financed arm of Hamas. New school curricula that encourage peaceful coexistence and humanitarian values for kids (instead of having sixth graders calculate the trajectories of unguided rockets or learn about past terrorist “heroes”), combined with strict media control and censorship to limit the proliferation of Islamofascist ideology for everyone else. That’s the stick and it will be extremely unpopular at first, both in Gaza itself and internationally, but I see no way around either. The Allied powers did the same in Nazi Germany after the war and without it, the democratic West German republic would not have been possible. I fear it would take many more years until there can be democratic elections in Gaza again however.

The carrot is investment and jobs as the strip is being rebuilt. Special economic zones with opportunities for foreign investors, initially most likely from the Arab world, would be one way of accomplishing it. We can not have the situation of huge numbers of unemployed young men again, which are always a source of trouble and instability in every poor part of the world. Gaza has this huge untapped and reasonably well educated labor pool. Give these people jobs and opportunities, starting with light industry and simple manufacturing, work your way up from there, if possible. Encourage the creation of locally-run and -owned suppliers through cheap loans and other measures so that Gazans can start forging their own economic success stories. We’ve seen this model work in a number of places already. The long term dream would be that at one point in the coming decades, there is so much stability and such a highly qualified labor pool that firms like Intel, who have a significant presence in Israel, would open a subsidiary there, forming the nucleus of a Gazan high-tech industry, further accelerating development through well-paying jobs that require higher education, which can be used to help create a strong civil society, which is always the bedrock democracies are built upon. Probably a pipe dream, but a man can dream.

Certain aspects from this could also be applied in the West Bank, but that’s another far more complicated can of worms. For as horrible as the destruction in Gaza is, this “reset” can be an opportunity to build a lasting solution for peace in the region.

I do not think any of this can be achieved under the current far-right Israeli administration (whose days are numbered anyway, looking at any poll, given how spectacularly it has failed to protect Israel). Their only interest in Gaza at the moment is squashing Hamas. Nothing could be less important to them than building a future for the very people that overwhelmingly want Israel eradicated.

What needs to happen within Israel across the entire political spectrum is the realization that it is in Israel’s best interest for Palestinians to live happy, safe and prosperous lives instead of being trapped between a rock (extremists like Hamas) and a hard place (IDF and settler violence). This was attempted with economic opportunities for Palestinians in the past (tens of thousands worked in Israel prior to October 7), but it failed, because radicals were allowed to govern Gaza and settlers were allowed to steal land. Israel, with its wealth, political stability and success in every area was more than happy with living next to Gaza and leaving it mostly alone. We need for Palestinians to feel the same about Israel. Only then can we even start to think about a two-state solution. It has to come as the last step after serious developments and changes, all of them starting in Gaza.