What exactly ARE the goals / demands of every side. Both what they say in public, and what's generally accepted as the rational real goals each side requests / demands / etc via peace talks as well as through violence.
The breakdown could even focus on factions within the nebulous term of 'sides'. An average citizen is likely to have looser criteria than a government / terrorist.
Let's not forget Israel's domestic orthodox/right-wing Jewish terrorism and Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.
Ergo, there's even more incentive for leaders to continually espouse positions they know will never happen, but which play well at home.
As a violence in poli sci professor of mine once quipped, this is a 'the only solution is killing the grandmothers' conflict. Because generational narratives of victimization are so ingrained in large parts of both societies that there is no room for compromise.
Silence extremist voices forcefully, wait a generation, and then there might be a path to peace. :(
The individual Gazans almost certainly have one in mind, likely some variant of the two state solution. But Hamas is in charge, and there is nobody else to talk to about it. Ordinary Gazans don't much like Hamas but they are the only thing standing between them and Israel, who as you know is attacking with impunity.
Israel's nominal goal is to remove Hamas and engage such a negotiation, though there is significant doubt that this tactic is going to lead there. And they know that.
Israelis are roughly equally divided on what they want. About half want to wipe out Gaza and have control of (but not responsibility for) the West Bank. They are the ones in government.
The other half is much more amenable to a two state solution, but they are extremely skeptical of finding it. Long before the October 7 attacks, Israelis routinely have to shelter from rocket attacks. We hear little about them because they are largely ineffective, but it does not give Israelis a lot of confidence in any kind of negotiated settlement. That side is also happy to have Gaza walled off.
And all of these sides are backed by powerful outside forces for whom the conflict itself is their goal.
That is an extremely high level breakdown, as neutral as I can be.
Israel stated goals of war:
1. Return the hostages
2. Remove Hamas regime from Gaza
3. (arguably done) bring north-Israel communities safely back home
Unstated goals:
1. Open Egypt-Gaza border. This had failed.
2. Create safe zone on the Gaza-Israeli border. This is mostly done in practice. This goal cannot be stated (though it'll save many lives)
Hamas goals:
Read Hamas chapter, or see interviews with captured Hamas militants post 7/10 attack (if you believe it's not scripted)
Gazan who are not part of Hamas regime goals: survive
Maybe there are some parallels in this situation and late 1800’s-mid 1900’s Western Europe. The civil war on the European continent between Germanic states on one hand and French/British ended when two powerful outsiders (US and Soviet Russia) invaded and split the continent. During this occupation west Europeans nations learned how to live with themselves and to atone for their mistakes and to not repeat these mistakes. But they only learned this because they were under military occupation.
This scenario will most likely not happen in the Middle East and so I think there will not be peace there for generations.
As a colleague from Bahrain once quipped, 'the countries of the Arab world love to use Palestinians as propaganda for domestic purposes, but none of them actually give enough of a shit to make hard choices to solve the problem.'
If not a genocide, at the very least an ethnocide.
Next step: Riviera Gaza!
Half the cabinet of the current Israeli government has made public statements to the effect of wanting to starve everyone or kill all the kids.
We've seen the videos and, with !gt, we can read the translations.
There's a database tracking those: https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-databas...
It found that 82% of Israelis want to expel Gazans, and 47% of support killing all Palestinians in Gaza.
Article was featured in Haaretz - linked to here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/poll-82-of-israelis-wan...
They also murdered the Gazan opposition after they were voted into power and have not really allowed voting since. They are pretty much not interested in increasing the situation for the people in Gaza. That's also why they are a terror organization.