Editorial-11/10/2026
Three Years Later, in West Asia, a Peace Still Out of Reach
Three years after the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, West Asia stands at a familiar and painful juncture: ceasefires have been signed, hostages and prisoners have moved across lines, and the most intense fighting has subsided—yet peace remains as distant as ever. The anniversary is not merely a commemoration of a single day of terror; it is an audit of a region’s failure to convert military pause into political settlement.
The October 7 attacks killed about 1,200 people in Israel and saw 251 taken hostage. Israel’s response unleashed a war in Gaza that has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, displaced much of the population, and reduced cities, hospitals, schools and basic infrastructure to rubble. A US-brokered ceasefire that took effect on October 10, 2025 halted the heaviest combat and secured the release of the remaining living Israeli hostages, but it has not produced security, reconstruction, self-determination or a durable political order.
That is the central contradiction of West Asia today: the region has learned how to stop wars temporarily, but not how to end them.
A ceasefire without peace
The 2025 Gaza agreement was presented as a turning point. It envisaged an Israeli withdrawal to roughly half of the Strip, an end to aerial and artillery bombardment, the release of Palestinian prisoners, humanitarian access, and eventually a “credible pathway” to Palestinian statehood. One year later, many of those commitments remain unfulfilled.
Israeli forces still control about two-thirds of Gaza, well beyond the territorial arrangements contemplated by the agreement, while Hamas retains effective control of security in the remaining coastal strip. Israel has not begun the full withdrawal expected under the deal; Hamas has not disarmed. Israeli strikes continue almost daily, and Gaza’s health ministry reports that more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire took effect.
This is not peace. It is a lower-intensity version of the same conflict, conducted under the language of ceasefire. The United Nations Secretary-General has said the truce has brought “some relief” but has yet to deliver security, adequate humanitarian assistance or a credible path to recovery. Aid restrictions persist; cargo entry into Gaza has repeatedly been suspended; and civilians continue to live among rubble, in tents and in damaged buildings.
The lesson is stark: a ceasefire can reduce the scale of violence, but it cannot substitute for a political settlement. Where one side retains military control, the other retains armed capacity, and neither accepts the other’s core demands, a truce becomes a waiting room for the next escalation.
Gaza: the human cost of failure
The human ledger of three years is devastating. More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed, with thousands more missing and presumed dead beneath the rubble. Gaza’s economy, healthcare system, education and public services have been shattered. Children continue to face violence, displacement and severe restrictions on humanitarian access.
For Israelis, too, the war has not delivered the security it was meant to restore. The October 7 attacks were the deadliest day in Israel’s history, and the ensuing Gaza campaign has become Israel’s longest war. The return of hostages brought relief to families, but it did not resolve the underlying question: how can Israel live securely beside a Palestinian population whose political future remains unresolved?
Security achieved through destruction is inherently temporary. Every demolished neighbourhood, every displaced family and every unresolved death becomes part of the political terrain on which the next generation of militants, grieving relatives and hardline leaders will stand. The ceasefire may have quieted rocket fire from Gaza, but it has not removed the grievances, fear and desperation that make renewed war plausible.
The regionalisation of conflict
What began as an Israel-Hamas war has become a West Asian crisis. The conflict has reshaped alliances, emboldened armed actors and drawn in states far beyond Gaza. The war’s aftershocks have been felt in Lebanon, Syria, the Red Sea, the Gulf and, most dangerously, in the confrontation with Iran.
In 2026, the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran, which after more than five weeks of fighting produced a ceasefire agreed on April 7–8. That ceasefire may have prevented a wider regional conflagration, but it did not remove the structural causes of confrontation: nuclear anxieties, proxy networks, Israeli security doctrine, Iranian regional influence and the absence of a credible diplomatic architecture.
Lebanon, too, illustrates the pattern. Ceasefires have reduced fighting there, but violence has not ended. ACLED notes that, three years after October 7, ceasefires in both Gaza and Lebanon lowered the level of conflict without ending it; violence in Gaza fell by 61 per cent compared with the war’s second year, but continued at a dangerous level.
This is the regional signature of the present moment: not one war, but an ecosystem of unresolved conflicts. Each ceasefire lowers the temperature without addressing the fuel. Each diplomatic initiative manages symptoms while leaving the disease intact.
Why diplomacy has failed?
The failure of peace in West Asia is not simply a failure of goodwill. It is a failure of political design.
First, the parties have been asked to accept outcomes they regard as existential threats. Israel demands the disarmament and political marginalisation of Hamas; Hamas and many Palestinians demand an end to occupation, siege and displacement, along with a viable path to statehood. A ceasefire can defer these demands; it cannot dissolve them.
Second, external mediators have often prioritised de-escalation over justice. Stopping the shooting is essential, but if a truce freezes inequality in place, it merely preserves the conditions for the next round. The Board of Peace established to oversee the Gaza arrangement has been criticised for failing to secure a lasting peace, even as it continues to work on post-war arrangements.
Third, regional actors have pursued competing visions of order. Some Arab states seek stability, investment and normalisation; others face domestic publics deeply angered by Gaza’s destruction. Iran and its allies view the conflict through the lens of resistance to Israeli and American power. The United States seeks to prevent regional war while protecting Israeli security interests. These objectives are not automatically incompatible, but they have not yet been reconciled into a shared regional framework.
Fourth, the absence of accountability has weakened deterrence against violations. When ceasefires are breached without meaningful consequence, when humanitarian access is used as leverage, and when civilian suffering does not alter strategic calculations, agreements lose their moral and practical force.
What peace would require?
Peace in West Asia will not emerge from another round of declarations. It requires a sequence of mutually reinforcing steps.
- A genuinely enforced ceasefire. This means independent monitoring, clear consequences for violations, protection of civilians, and unrestricted humanitarian access. A ceasefire that permits daily strikes is not a ceasefire in any meaningful sense.
- A political horizon for Palestinians. Without a credible, time-bound pathway to Palestinian self-determination, Gaza’s reconstruction will become an administrative project rather than a foundation for peace. The original ceasefire framework itself recognised the need for such a pathway.
- Security guarantees for Israelis. Peace cannot be built on denial of Israeli trauma or vulnerability. Any settlement must address Israel’s legitimate security concerns, including the disarmament or demilitarisation of armed groups under agreed, verifiable arrangements.
- Reconstruction tied to governance. Gaza needs shelter, hospitals, schools, water, power and functioning institutions. But reconstruction without legitimate, representative governance will recreate the vacuum in which armed politics thrives.
- Regional diplomacy. West Asia needs a broader framework that links Gaza to Lebanon, Syria, Iran and the Gulf. Isolated agreements will continue to unravel because the conflicts are interconnected.
- Accountability and dignity. The victims of October 7 and the victims of Gaza’s destruction deserve recognition, justice and an end to impunity. Peace that treats one side’s grief as more legitimate than the other’s will not last.
The cost of waiting
There is a temptation to treat the current calm as progress. In one sense, it is: fewer rockets, fewer major offensives, and the return of hostages represent real changes from the worst months of the war. But stability without justice is brittle. It teaches all parties that violence produces results, ceasefires can be bent, and international attention eventually moves on.
Three years after October 7, the region’s central question remains unanswered: can Palestinians and Israelis live in security and dignity, or must one people’s security be built on the other’s dispossession? The answer offered by the past three years has been devastatingly clear. Military dominance has not produced safety; ceasefires have not produced reconciliation; external mediation has not produced a settlement.
The danger now is normalisation of the abnormal. If daily strikes, restricted aid, mass displacement and political paralysis become the accepted baseline, then “peace” will come to mean merely the absence of full-scale war. That is not peace. It is the management of misery.
West Asia does not lack maps, plans or mediators. It lacks the political courage to insist that security for one people cannot be permanently separated from freedom and security for another. Until that principle shapes policy, anniversaries will continue to arrive with the same grim refrain: ceasefires signed, promises postponed, and peace still out of reach.
