The war in Gaza needs to end

Palestinians make their way south in the darkness along the coastal al-Rashid road after fleeing Gaza City, Sept. 25, 2025. (Saher Alghorra/The New York Times)

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

The war in the Gaza Strip, now approaching its second anniversary, needs to end.

It needs to end for the people of Gaza, more than 60,000 of whom — roughly 3% of the population — have been killed. The victims include entire families and thousands of children. Neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. Most Palestinians have been displaced from their homes. Starvation and illness haunt the strip.

The war needs to end for the nearly 50 Israeli hostages whom Hamas is still holding in Gaza. Those who remain alive are being held in brutal conditions, often underground, without adequate food. They have been held captive for more than 700 days, since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed about 1,200 Israelis and others.

The war needs to end for the sake of Israel and its security. The horrors that it has inflicted in Gaza have contributed to a sharp decline of support for Israel in the United States and elsewhere. Any additional military gains against Hamas pale in comparison to the long-term strategic threats from global isolation.

How, though, can this terrible war finally end? The most obvious answers appear to be the least likely ones. Hamas’ leaders could release the hostages, admit defeat in a war that they started and prioritize the well-being of the Palestinians whom Hamas claims to represent. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel could stop catering to far-right members of his government and instead recognize the costs of continuing war to Israel’s national interests, as well as to its exhausted soldiers, reservists and their families.

Absent such epiphanies, the task will fall to the rest of the world, particularly to the United States — Israel’s most important ally — and to the Arab nations that express solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The peace plan that President Donald Trump unveiled Monday is promising. It includes typical bluster (such as a “‘Board of Peace,’ which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump”). Yet it also contains the pillars of a just ceasefire, including an end to military attacks, the return of all hostages and a Gaza free of Israeli occupation and Hamas governance. Notably, the governments of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates praised the plan.

Many obstacles to peace remain, as is the norm in the Middle East. Trump would need to show more follow-through than he often does. Hamas would need to accept the plan or something similar to it. Netanyahu would need to face down the extremists in his government, some of whom criticized the plan. All that is possible, however, if the Trump administration and leading Arab governments demand it. Both have more leverage than they have used so far, and both have good reasons to insist on the war’s conclusion.

Israel’s military successes against Hamas since 2023 mean that the group has lost the ability to conduct a major operation. More than 10,000 Hamas fighters and much of its leadership have been killed. After the war ends, Israel will be able to monitor Hamas and strike it if necessary.

The harder postwar question is who will govern Gaza. The calls for Israeli annexation from far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition are outrageous; they favor expelling roughly 2 million Palestinians, which meets any reasonable definition of ethnic cleansing. Hamas also should not have any governing role, given its record of violence, economic incompetence and authoritarian repression. The Palestinian Authority, which once governed Gaza, appears too corrupt and unpopular to do the job without major reforms.

Hamas and Netanyahu’s government deserve most of the blame for the war’s continuation, but the uncertainty about what comes next is a legitimately thorny issue that complicates any peace plan.

Arab governments can help fill this void. For years, their leaders have claimed solidarity with the Palestinian cause while doing too little to advance it. They have prioritized short-term stability over the governance reforms necessary to build a viable state. They have failed to cultivate moderate politicians who could command legitimacy among Palestinians and represent their interests on the international stage.

In recent months, Arab governments have shown signs of playing a more constructive role. This summer, all 22 members of the Arab League signed a declaration condemning the Oct. 7 attack for the first time. The statement called for the release of all hostages, the disarming of Hamas and the barring of Hamas from Gaza’s future governance. In its place should be a “a temporary international stabilization mission” invited into Gaza by the Palestinian Authority, the signers said. The 27 nations of the European Union and 17 other countries also joined the declaration. The plan that Trump announced this week is similar in many ways.

For any plan to succeed, Arab countries will need to form the crux of the security forces and civilian administration. If Europe and the United States dominate the mission, it will smack of a Western takeover of Gaza. If the Palestinian Authority alone is in charge, the risk of failure will be high.

The biggest risk in the wake of Trump’s proposal is that Israel and Hamas will claim they want peace while failing to take difficult steps to get there. Netanyahu might slow-walk Israel’s departure from Gaza, and Hamas might attempt to retain a behind-the-scenes role in running Gaza — with each side blaming the other all the while. In that scenario, Arab and U.S. leaders will need to display more courage than they have so far. Arab leaders will need to tell Hamas that it is finished as a political force in Gaza and then back up that declaration with troops. Trump will need to require Netanyahu to choose between his domestic alliance with Israeli extremists and Israel’s international alliance with the United States.

Regardless, many other intractable problems would remain, including how to halt the growing crisis in the West Bank, whether future Palestinian leaders accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and whether Israel’s current leaders will accept Palestinians’ right to statehood.

But the Palestinian people should not have to wait for those answers to stop burying their relatives and neighbors, to have enough food to eat and to begin rebuilding their lives. Nor should the Israeli hostages have to wait to return home to their desperate families. For everybody’s sake, this war needs to end.