In an article in The Hindu last week, veteran diplomat Chinmaya Gharekhan said that the road to peace in West Asia runs through Palestinian statehood. He hit the nail on the head. What appears to be a hugely complicated regional tangle can only be untangled by addressing the Palestinian statehood issue. As he pointed out, all the conflicts of the region – the war in Gaza, the US-Israeli war on Iran, the Hezbollah-Israel war and the Houthi movement – “will not be resolved unless a viable Palestinian state comes into being.”In fact, he points out that UN Security Council Resolution 2803, supported by the US, and whose Annex outlines Trump’s 20-point peace plan, explicitly envisages a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.” The resolution, adopted in November 2025, endorsed the Trump plan and established the framework for a transitional administration and an international stabilisation force in Gaza.As is evident, the issue of Gaza remains a pill stuck in the throats of the US and Israel. The latter does not seem to want to work along the American peace proposal even though Hamas has now agreed to a roadmap for disarmament. The agreement envisages the surrender and storage of weapons under Palestinian and international supervision, linked to the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. But Israel has so far refused to commit to the withdrawal demanded under the plan, insisting that Hamas must first be completely disarmed.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.The Israelis seem to believe they can simply stall the process indefinitely. But there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and the longer the political process remains frozen, the more difficult it becomes to rebuild the territory and restore any semblance of normal life. Perhaps that is what Israel is aiming for.The Trump plan itself envisages Gaza being administered temporarily by a Palestinian technocratic committee under international supervision before the Palestinian Authority can resume control. Egypt and Jordan are expected to assist with security and policing, but neither is interested in assuming responsibility for governing Gaza. The idea that Egypt can simply be persuaded to take over the territory is therefore unrealistic.Along with reconstructing Gaza is the issue of full normalisation of relations between the Arab world and Israel. Currently that process, too, is stalled, with Saudi Arabia indicating that it will not have anything to do with Israel without a credible and definitive pathway for the Palestinians to have a state of their own. Riyadh’s position has remained unchanged: normalisation requires an independent Palestinian state and credible guarantees for a two-state solution.The limits of the Abraham AccordsThis is where the limits of the Abraham Accords become apparent. The 2020 accords demonstrated that Arab states could separate their bilateral interests from the Palestinian issue, at least for a time. But they never actually resolved the underlying problem. The normalisation agreements with the UAE, Bahrain and later Morocco and Sudan were based on the assumption that economic and strategic interests could gradually marginalise the Palestinian question. That assumption has been badly shaken by the Gaza war.Indeed, the events of the past three years have demonstrated that the Palestinian issue is not merely a humanitarian or territorial dispute. It is a source of political legitimacy across the Arab and wider Muslim world. Governments may want better relations with Israel, and many have important strategic and economic reasons for doing so, but they cannot indefinitely ignore the anger generated by the continuing occupation and the destruction of Gaza. The result is that the Palestinian issue keeps returning to the centre of regional politics, however often outsiders try to push it aside.Just how the Palestinian issue has poisoned the region is brought out by how Iran emerged as an adversary of Israel. The two do not share a common border and the Shia mullahs of Iran had no direct links with the Arab movements supporting the Palestinians. Indeed, ties between Iran and Israel were friendly in the era of the Shah of Iran. However, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic attacked Israel for its occupation of the Palestinian territories, and over the years the rhetoric became harsher. Then came the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Iranians sent the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to back the Shia militia, Hezbollah.Beginning in the 1990s, Iran constructed what came to be called the “axis of resistance”, linking Hezbollah in Lebanon, various Shia militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen and, for a period, the Assad regime in Syria. These groups had different interests and agendas, but the Palestinian cause provided a common ideological thread. Israel’s confrontation with Iran consequently became intertwined with a much wider regional conflict.This is why military victories over Iran or Hezbollah cannot by themselves produce lasting peace. Even if Israel succeeds in degrading Iran’s military capabilities or destroying the infrastructure of militant organisations, the political grievances that produced their appeal will remain. The lesson of the past decades, and, indeed the ongoing war, is that military power can suppress symptoms but cannot eliminate the political causes of conflict.For some time now, there has been a feeling in Israel that it could bypass the question of Palestinian statehood. Helped by the Trump administration, Israel was able to sign the Abraham Accords in 2020, through which it established normal diplomatic relations with Bahrain and the UAE through the good offices of the US. Thereafter Morocco and Sudan also became part of the process. In 2025, Trump sought to expand the Accords to Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. But the wars in Gaza and Iran may have fundamentally altered the political landscape.The regional consequences are already visible. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey have drawn closer on regional issues, while Egypt and Turkey have repaired their strained relations. Arab governments have also become more assertive about the need for Palestinian statehood. In August, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey, Qatar and the UAE jointly condemned Israel’s rejection of the roadmap and its opposition to Palestinian statehood.The war has also brought out the limits of the United States as the region’s security provider. For decades, America’s military presence was assumed to be the ultimate guarantee of security for its Arab partners. But the recent conflict has demonstrated that Washington cannot necessarily prevent attacks, control escalation or compel Israel to accept a regional settlement. This has encouraged regional powers to diversify their relationships and develop greater strategic autonomy.Israel’s standing in the United States has deteriorated sharplyAt the same time, Israel’s standing in the United States has deteriorated sharply. The old assumption that American support for Israel could be taken for granted is becoming increasingly problematic, particularly as Washington itself tries to impose a settlement that the Israeli government is reluctant to accept.Israel therefore needs a foreign policy reset. This will not be easy given that Israeli politics has shifted to the right. But its fundamental problem is to understand that there are limits to the extent to which it can ride on American shoulders. Military superiority cannot substitute for political legitimacy, nor can Israel indefinitely expect the United States to shield it from the consequences of its policies.Israel now needs to deal with the region in which it actually lives, not one it thinks it can create through war and genocide. The choice before it is ultimately a political one. It can continue to rely on military force and hope that the Palestinian issue will somehow disappear, or it can accept that a durable regional order requires Palestinian statehood.The latter may be difficult, but the alternative is a perpetual cycle of war. Gharekhan’s point, therefore, goes beyond the immediate crisis in Gaza. The Palestinian question is not just one item on the West Asian agenda. It is the fulcrum around which the region’s other conflicts continue to revolve.The writer is a distinguished fellow with the Observer Research Foundation.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.