Last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken headed to the Middle East to try to prevent Israel’s war in Gaza from spiraling out of control and to begin talks about what diplomats call the day after shooting has stopped.

Who will rule a shattered Gaza? Who will feed and house the refugees?

Who will oversee the destroyed streets?

And perhaps improbably, can war, however brutal its toll, be turned into an opening for a broader peace?

When this crisis is over, there must be a vision of what comes next, President Biden said last month. And in our view, it should be a two-state solution, an agreement in which a sovereign Palestinian state would live side by side with Israel, with security guarantees for both.

Blinken delivered that message to Tel Aviv on Friday, starting with a plea to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for humanitarian aid to provide food and water to civilians trapped in Gaza.

Netanyahu said there can be no pause unless Hamas releases more than 220 hostages, a sign of how difficult it will be to negotiate even a short ceasefire.

The next day is the wrong way to think about these challenges. Stabilizing Gaza, establishing a new government, and reviving progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace will be the work of years, not days or months.

Last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken headed to the Middle East to try to prevent Israel’s war in Gaza from spiraling out of control and to begin talks about what diplomats call the day after shooting has stopped.

Who will rule a shattered Gaza? Who will feed and house the refugees?

Who will oversee the destroyed streets?

And perhaps improbably, can war, however brutal its toll, be turned into an opening for a broader peace?

When this crisis is over, there must be a vision of what comes next, President Biden said last month. And in our view, it should be a two-state solution, an agreement in which a sovereign Palestinian state would live side by side with Israel, with security guarantees for both.

Blinken delivered that message to Tel Aviv on Friday, starting with a plea to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for humanitarian aid to provide food and water to civilians trapped in Gaza.

Netanyahu said there can be no pause unless Hamas releases more than 220 hostages, a sign of how difficult it will be to negotiate even a short ceasefire.

The next day is the wrong way to think about these challenges. Stabilizing Gaza, establishing a new government, and reviving progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace will be the work of years, not days or months.

It’s a good idea to plan for what comes after the war. A vision of a better future is essential. But a reality check is in order.

I spoke last week with American diplomats who worked on previous Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and they all had the same advice: Lower your expectations.

Almost a month after Hamas October. After seven attacks on Israeli towns and villages, the war is far from over. Israel appears to have the upper hand, but it is not clear what winning will look like.

Netanyahu said he intends to destroy Hamas. Other Israeli officials have offered somewhat narrower goals: eliminating Hamas’ military capacity and ending its rule over Gaza.

Those goals are desirable, but it is not yet clear how achievable they are, warned David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who worked on the Israeli-Palestinian talks during the Obama administration. I wouldn’t predict this to be a slam dunk.

If Israel achieves its goals, the question is what to do with Gaza, he said. Israel does not want to occupy Gaza. They don’t see it as a reward. They don’t want to stay, so they want to turn it over to someone.

Last week, Blinken said the most logical candidate to take control of Gaza would be the Palestinian Authority, the de facto government in the West Bank. But its officials are widely seen as ineffective and corrupt, and Blinken said it must be revived to meet the challenge.

Placing the [Palestinian Authority] in now? It would be doomed to failure, Makovsky said. And repairing the PA will take a while.

If there is an interim measure, discussion in Washington and Israel has focused on convincing a consortium of Arab countries to form a peacekeeping force for Gaza, but it is not clear that anyone wants the job.

Which Arab state will volunteer to counter the uprising against the Palestinians in Gaza? asked Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who worked on Arab-Israeli negotiations for more than two decades. The Egyptians are a logical candidate, and they might do this as a way to regain a closer relationship with the United States, but could this hold up over time?

With all these problems, seeking negotiations on a two-state solution may sound quixotic. But Biden and other officials insist they mean business.

Blinken says a commitment to a two-state solution is needed so that Hamas or an extremist alternative does not rise again.

We have to fight [Hamas] with a better idea that gives people something to hope for, believe in and hold on to, he said last week.

The government also has practical diplomatic reasons for pursuing a two-state solution. Without this, other Arab states, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are unlikely to assist a peacekeeping effort in Gaza.

Much needs to change before a two-state solution seems feasible, including within the Israeli government. Netanyahu has devoted most of his career to blocking the creation of a Palestinian state.

A change in the Palestinian Authority would also help. The current president, Mahmoud Abbas, is 87, discredited and unpopular.

Under current circumstances, the two-state solution is actually an ambitious talking point, Miller said.

Previous wars have led to breakthroughs, he noted. The 1973 Middle East War led to a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt six years later. The Palestinian uprising that began in 1987 indirectly led again six years later to the Oslo Agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

At some point, Blinken may have to pack a few extra shirts, Miller joked, referring to the shuttle diplomacy pursued by previous secretaries of state. But that time is not now. We were still in the middle of a goddamn war.

So again, this isn’t about the next day. It’s about the years after that and many years after that.