More questions than answers as Israeli PM Netanyahu seeks security control over Gaza. More than a month into the conflict, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement this week that Israel would assume command of Gaza’s security for an indeterminate length of time has increased doubts about what will happen to the beleaguered territory.
Since then, Israeli authorities have made an effort to clarify that they do not want to reoccupy Gaza, from where Israeli soldiers withdrew in 2005. However, it is unclear how security will be guaranteed in the area without a continuous military presence.
One thing has been emphasized time and time again: Hamas, the Islamist organization that carried out an unexpected attack on October 7 that Israel claims resulted in the deaths of almost 1,400 people and saw terrorists kidnap over 240 Israelis and foreigners, has to be destroyed.
Last month, Benny Gantz, the former defense minister, joined Netanyahu in an interim unity government. “They cannot be here,” Gantz stated on Wednesday. “We can come up with any mechanism we think is appropriate, but Hamas will not be part of it.”
Gantz told reporters that Israel would have to maintain “security superiority” surrounding Gaza. However, the details are still unclear, given the lack of a clear vision for the country’s political future. Gantz claimed that Hamas posed an existential threat to Israel. One of Netanyahu’s closest advisers, Ron Dermer, who is also a member of the inner war cabinet, stated that although Israel would need to monitor Gaza actively, a lot would depend on how the enclave was run in the future.
Will there be someone there to stop terrorism from growing? Will a Palestinian army exist that will not only destroy Israel but also construct and run Gaza as it should for its people? That is still to be seen,” he told the American network NBC on Tuesday.
According to Palestinian sources, the battle is already one of the worst incidents in decades of warfare, with over 10,000 Palestinians killed in the Israeli planes’ unrelenting pounding of the Gaza Strip.
According to U.N. estimates, large portions of the heavily populated coastal strip have been destroyed, and more than 1.5 million people—roughly two-thirds of the population—have been displaced from their homes.
The enormous challenge of restoring the region’s physical infrastructure and administration will compel Israel to cooperate with the Palestinians despite the intense animosity between the two sides, according to diplomats.
As the conflict has dragged on, Western nations—including the U.S.—have called for a restart of the long-stalled negotiations to establish a two-state solution that would see Israel and an independent Palestinian state coexist.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated at a press conference in Tokyo, “Now, the reality is that there may be a need for some transition period at the end of the conflict, but it is imperative that Palestinian people being central to governance in Gaza and in the West Bank as well.”
“It’s also clear that Israel cannot occupy Gaza,” he stated.
TROUBLES AHEAD
When former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon determined that the expenses of maintaining a presence were too expensive, Israel first withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, incurring the rage of hardline settlers who were compelled to depart with the army.
Over 18 months of increasingly violent conflicts in the surrounding occupied West Bank have made evident the obstacles that any reformed Israeli security system is going to face.
Suppose Israel is successful in its goal of deconstructing Hamas. In that case, some diplomats have raised the prospect of a reorganized Palestinian Authority (P.A.), the organization established under the Oslo interim peace agreements thirty years ago, having a role in the governance of Gaza.
The PA used to rule both the West Bank and Gaza, but Hamas forced it out of Gaza in 2007; as a result, it currently only controls parts of the West Bank, which is peppered with Jewish settlements that are constantly expanding.
Recent comments from Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh to foreign reporters cast significant doubt on reports that Israel will try to shift accountability for the day-to-day management of the enclave onto its former owners by stating that the P.A. would not return to Gaza “on the back of an Israeli tank.”
In any event, the P.A. has long resisted attempts to assert its authority, especially in the West Bank, where it is nominally in charge of maintaining law and order but has little trust from either Israel or significant segments of the Palestinian populace.
The Israeli army has mainly assumed responsibility for suppressing militant activities in its place.
Israeli forces have murdered hundreds of Palestinians in the last eighteen months, including stone-throwing youngsters, seasoned militant combatants, and innocent bystanders, while also making thousands of arrests throughout the West Bank. Numerous Israelis have lost their lives as a result of Palestinian assaults throughout the same period.
Terrorist organizations like Hamas have established bases in cities like Nablus and Jenin, which earlier this year saw a two-day conflict involving hundreds of Israeli soldiers supported by drones and helicopter gunships. Although the Israeli military has physically infiltrated communities in the West Bank, Dermer said that they had virtually been out of Gaza for the previous seventeen years. We are unable to duplicate this. Israel will thus need to continue its primary security responsibilities long after Hamas is overthrown.”
Marwan Muasher, a former deputy prime minister of Jordan, told Reuters he had not seen any compelling proposals for Gaza’s post-conflict governance.
Vice president for research at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, Muasher, remarked, “I don’t think that there is any clear thinking about what to do with the day after.”
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