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A Palestinian child holds a rifle while standing on a vehicle during the celebration of a ceasefire agreement between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. (Mohammed Talatene/picture alliance via Getty Images)

After nearly two weeks of violence, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas provides a temporary reprieve—but as Hudson's Walter Russell Mead [[link removed]] argues in his latest Wall Street Journal column [[link removed]], “The fact of Israeli-Palestinian hostility isn’t changing.” What has changed is the regional and geopolitical context informing Israeli-Palestinian competition—a fact that seems to have escaped Washington.

The recent strategic alignment between Israel and a number of Arab states undercut Arab support for radical Palestinian groups, while situating Iran and Turkey as their most important partners. Meanwhile, the U.S. military's dwindling footprint means that American diplomats have far less leverage in the region, further emboldening the Islamic Republic to pursue its proxy war against Israel along the borders of Gaza and Lebanon.

See key takeaways from Walter's column below, and be sure to catch Mike Doran's discussion of the conflict with former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Derme [[link removed]]r.

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Key Takeaways

Featured quotes from Walter Russell Mead's Wall Street Journal column, " The US Is Less Relevant Than Ever in Gaza [[link removed]]."

1. The reality of Israeli-Palestinian hostility isn't changing:

The first large-scale violence between Palestinian Arabs and Jews took place in 1920, and intervals of quiet have since alternated with episodes of violence and fruitless peace negotiations...

A century of Israeli-Palestinian violence has also been a century of endless peace talks. Negotiators have come up with a range of approaches. Two-state solutions, one-state solutions, confederal arrangements with Jordan or even Jordan and Syria—nothing has worked. Yasser Arafat accepted the principle of a two-state solution with the 1993 Oslo I Accord, but Palestinian public opinion is divided and Hamas remains formally committed to merging Israel, the West Bank and Gaza into a single state under Islamist governance. Support for the two-state solution continues to decline among Israelis and Palestinians alike, but no realistic alternative has emerged.

2. Israeli-Palestinian competition remains asymmetrical in nature:

The power of the Palestinians is rooted in their endurance. Even in exile and defeat, the Palestinians have refused to disappear. The will to resist and the ability to mobilize international opinion are key Palestinian strengths, and Hamas deployed them effectively in this latest round of violence.

Israel’s core strengths—state building combined with technological, military and intelligence prowess—are also on full display. Israelis can make Palestinian resistance futile, but they cannot make it disappear. Palestinians can prolong the conflict indefinitely, but they cannot achieve their political objectives.

3. The Abraham Accords undercut Arab support for the Palestinian movement:

Iran and Turkey have replaced the Arab world as the most important allies of the Palestinian resistance movement. The current Gaza war is, among other things, a proxy war between Israel and Iran. Hamas’s rocket barrage attempted to test the Iron Dome, helping Iran figure out whether Hezbollah’s 100,000-plus missile arsenal can overpower Israeli missile defenses. The war also tests whether Israeli actions in Gaza will so anger Arab public opinion that Arab governments will be forced to back off their developing anti-Iran alliance with Jerusalem.

Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

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Go Deeper

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A Conversation with Former Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer [[link removed]]

The latest outbreak of hostilities in Gaza is an early test of the U.S.-Israeli relations in the Biden era. How has the Biden administration handled this foreign policy test? Former Ambassador of Israel to the U.S. Ron Dermer joined Hudson's Mike Doran to discuss the strategy and motivations behind Hamas' escalation of Israeli-Palestinian tensions.

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Counterbalance Ep. 12 | War in Gaza: A Pessoptimistic Assessment [[link removed]]

Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, joins Mike Doran [[link removed]] and Marshall Kosloff [[link removed]] to give his take on Hamas' military tactics and what U.S. policymakers continue to get wrong about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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The Key to Understanding Hamas [[link removed]]

When journalists and policymakers use the term “violence” to refer both to Hamas terrorism and Israeli self-defense operations, they ignore a crucial distinction between the two sides, writes Hudson's Doug Feith [[link removed]] in the Times of Israel. Whereas Hamas purposefully kills its enemies’ civilians and endangers its own, Israel exerts itself to avoid hurting Palestinian civilians while protecting its own civilians.

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