For the ceasefire to survive, Israel must confront West Bank settler violence just as the Palestinian Authority must confront Hamas. 

Ever since the US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza began on October 10, it has been under attack. Hamas has vowed not to disarm, which undercuts the very central premise of the ceasefire. Meanwhile, radical fringe groups among the Israeli settlers in the West Bank have rampaged through Palestinian villages, which only inflames the situation in Gaza. Spoilers, each with its own incentives, seek to wreck the nascent effort to establish stability in Gaza. For any chance at progress toward peace, each side must stand up to its own spoilers—unambiguously, firmly, and publicly. 

Arab governments, including the Palestinian Authority, are uniquely positioned to insist to Hamas that its armed rejectionism must end. Similarly, Israeli leaders must confront the ongoing settler violence, which deeply undermines Israel’s own governance and foreign relations. Outsiders cannot effectively police a community’s radicals. Only insiders can. Responsible leadership on both sides is essential to marginalizing the extremes. 

History shows that domestic extremist movements can only be discredited by voices from within their own political or national family. In France, the great Charles de Gaulle was the only leader powerful enough to confront militancy from a faction of French army officers. Only a major Arab leader, Egypt’s Anwar al-Sadat, could break the grip of rejectionism and open a new path toward peace with Israel. Yitzhak Rabin, a former general with unmatched security credibility, was the only Israeli leader who could break the taboo on direct talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization while reassuring Israel’s security-focused population.

Only a similar spirit can anticipate and counteract the damage from those who want to wreck the Gaza ceasefire. Leaders will, of course, always find it more politically convenient to call out the spoilers of the other side. But for the ceasefire to last, real leaders will discredit their own spoilers. 

To be sure, Hamas and the extremist fringe among the settlers are not the same. Hamas has long functioned as an organized mass movement dedicated to killing Israelis. Meanwhile, a small subset of settlers, largely called the “Hilltop Youth,” has in recent years engaged in arson and the uprooting of olive trees in the West Bank. Estimates of the group’s size indicate that they represent only a marginal fraction of the West Bank settler population. Yet, both are spoilers.

Hamas refuses to fully disarm and relinquish control of Gaza. It seeks to recover and reconstitute. In the West Bank, certain settlers use violence as a prelude to unilateral Israeli annexation. Both Hamas and these radical settlers seek to further destabilize the situation on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank. They must be marginalized, not coddled, if there is to be any hope for a better future in Gaza.

Gaza is now divided into two zones: 53 percent of Gaza under Israeli control, slated for the International Stabilization Force, where reconstruction can commence, and 47 percent of Gaza, where Hamas maintains control and is effectively stagnant until disarmament takes place. 

Arab states have already made clear they will not militarily confront the core of Hamas in that 47 percent, but they should at least be forceful in discrediting it. America’s Arab partners should loudly and repeatedly say the truth that they acknowledge behind closed doors: so long as Hamas uses terror as a weapon and maintains its arms in Gaza, a two-state solution has no chance.

Similarly, Israel must discredit the violent fringe of settlers in the West Bank. That means going beyond the obvious need for moral condemnation, to mitigating the consequences of the settler rampages which inflame tensions and harm Israel’s international standing. Between October 1 and November 10, some 100 Palestinians were injured by settlers in 167 olive-harvest-related attacks, many of which also caused property damage. An estimated 87 West Bank villages and towns have been attacked by these mobs in this period alone.

Under the far-right Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s leadership of the Israeli police, the number of investigations into these attacks opened by the Police Ministry has declined by 73 percent even as the number of attacks has risen, according to a report by Israel’s Channel 12. Worse, 94 percent of cases end without an indictment, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization. That just encourages extremist settlers to launch more attacks.

Recently, Israeli officials belatedly stepped up their condemnations. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now pledged that Israel will act with force to confront “the riots…against Palestinians and against IDF soldiers.” This is too little and too late. Israel must take tangible steps to enforce the law, and Israel’s police in the West Bank must arrest and prosecute perpetrators.

To secure the Gaza ceasefire, the United States held both sides’ feet to the fire. To keep the fragile cease-fire alive, the Trump administration must push each side to discredit its own in-group spoilers. But Washington can only prod. For any hope of progress, responsible Arab, Palestinian, and Israeli leaders must summon the resolve to stand up to their own spoilers—publicly and emphatically. Nobody can do it for them.