I suspect Biden had a bold proposal to bring to the Middle East, but before he got there, the hospital explosion and the reaction to it ruined all chances. I can imagine what it was--something like a revitalized Palestine in the West Bank, with major humanitarian involvement on an international basis for Gaza. As it was, he wasn't even able to meet with Palestine Authority head Mohammed Abbas. It would have been great. I'm sure that Israeli PM Netanyahu (I guess he still is--we'll see soon) made it clear to Biden that it's not time yet.
It is not too soon, though, for a pause in the attacks for a release of hostages. The airstrikes are for the targets they know about, and I imagine they will run out of those soon. As for the ones they don't know about, they will need to occupy Gaza City and go house-to-house. They will do so, even if the hostages are released. I'd say a three-day pause would be enough.
My thinking, when I heard of the hospital explosion and fire, was that, however the initial explosion came, there may have been something (weapons, explosives) underground that had triggered the huge fire that killed so many. It would be just like Hamas to figure that under a hospital would be the very last place Israel would attack. Maybe that's just rank speculation, and I don't encourage the thought, but I'm not convinced otherwise.
Israel is right now not in a position to do anything more than apply its full effort to defeat of Hamas and release of hostages. Netanyahu had a weak Cabinet before October 7, built around building more Israeli settlements in the West Bank and defeating the criminal case against Netanyahu. That phase is over; the military technocrats who headed Israel's government before Netanyahu's latest capture of the Knesset have returned and are focused on that single priority. Netanyahu very much deserves to lose his job, but he can stay for a long time unless his own party deserts him. (Part of it has deserted in the past, but then Likud maintained its number of seats anyway. Before October 7.)
We must prevent that the paranoid response takes over in the time after the Hamas War. I think the security assistance Israel will need will be more of a direct defense and diplomatic support to Israel than through the nascent Israel-Saudi accord Biden was trying to facilitate. US support provides Israel the means to deal with Hamas, and with broken Gaza that they will be breaking once again.
No doubt Israel knows what Gaza needs--pretty much everything, but with less crowding. It would make sense to settle some peaceful Gazans in the West Bank alongside Palestinians living there already. It is important not to create new refugee floods, as happened in Syria when we stayed out. That's a point Egypt has been making quite clearly.
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It took a month, but finally a four-day truce to release hostages.
I forgot to suggest an innovation: employ Palestinian Israelis to screen Gazans who voluntarily choose to settle in the West Bank. Of course, this implies ending lawless behavior by Israeli settlers, and West Bank Palestinians helping with the new arrivals, and Israel supporting the infrastructure development. All of those.
It does not require a tunnel, bridge or some other nonsense to connect Gaza and the West Bank. It does require reinforcement of the PA. or the emergence of something that supersedes it.
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