Israel Enters a New Phase of War With Hamas and Still Doesn’t Have a Postwar Plan for Gaza

T. Belman. No Israeli plan for the day after.  Great. Best news I have had all week. Blinken’s visit was a bust for him.

Smotrich to Blinken:

“US Secretary of State Blinken, welcome to Israel. We greatly appreciate the US’s support for Israel, but as far as our existence in our country is concerned, we will always act according to the Israeli interest.”

“That is why we will continue to fight with all our might to destroy Hamas, we will not transfer a single shekel to the Palestinian Authority that will go to the families of the Nazis in Gaza and we will work to allow the opening of the gates of Gaza for the voluntary migration of refugees as the international community did to the refugees from Syria and Ukraine.

The U.S. and Egypt have both put forward ideas on what the future government of Gaza could look like, but it seems that Israel is refusing to even discuss a future beyond ‘ongoing Israeli security control.’ As the war enters its fourth month, the future is as up in the air as it was when it started.

By Zvi Bar’el, HAARETZ Jan 9, 2024 2:48 pm IST

Palestinians gather at a tent camp in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, in December.Credit: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/ Reuters

Without public declarations or official statements, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met Monday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi “to coordinate positions ahead of the meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.” News reports said the two “discussed the situation in the Gaza Strip and agreed to categorically reject the possibility of Palestinians emigrating outside the Strip.”

Abbas congratulated Sissi on winning reelection and wished him continued success. For all that, the 87-year-old Abbas really didn’t have to travel all the way to Cairo. A phone call or even a text message would have sufficed. Egypt doesn’t need Abbas in order to rebuff any idea, Israeli or American, that it take in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza. Sissi has already made it abundantly clear that it’s best not to even mention the idea to him.

Egypt will continue to help the inhabitants of Gaza in other ways. It sends in food every day or two, either from its own supplies or those from other countries that arrive at the El Arish airport in Sinai. Egypt is willing to participate in the reconstruction of Gaza, to continue to mediate in the hostage deal, if the opportunity arises, but no Palestinians, except for the sick and the wounded and those who hold Egyptian citizenship, will be permitted into its territory.

The two leaders do have another urgent matter to address, and it concerns the administration of the Strip. In the near and perhaps immediate future, given Washington’s pressure on Israel to allow the return to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip of around 1 million displaced Gazans, there is a need to put in place civil mechanisms to take care of the urgent needs of the returnees. These include erecting temporary residences – tents or mobile structures – since most of the buildings in the northern Strip have been destroyed; organizing critical infrastructure such as water pipes and generators – the latter will eventually be replaced by connection to some electrical grid – and the immediate provision of health services.

The Israeli government currently does not have a plan or outline for handling the return of these people, nor has any decision been made on who will manage the area that will continue to be under the security control of the IDF. This is not just a technical question. Any “temporary arrangement” is liable to become permanent, even if it is not defined as such.

There are local organizations and neighborhood committees in Gaza that take care of distributing the food aid, but they do not have the tools and the capabilities need to run cities or a large residential area like the northern part of the Gaza Strip. This demands complex coordination with Egypt or other donor countries, as well as with Israel, which will have the final say on every civil activity in Gaza.

These local mechanisms will need a security and policing force, if only to prevent conflicts between residents over land or control of the remaining buildings or what is left of them. In similar situations in countries, such as Iraq and Syria, police forces were needed to deal with local gangs that exploited the war to take over properties, terrorized neighborhoods and clashed with the government.

In Gaza there is currently no central government, no police and no inspectors. This means that even if Israel can find Palestinian civil organizations that will agree to cooperate with it in managing the initial reconstruction, they will also be forced to be the local policeman who will keep them safe.

No financing with occupation

Mayors, mukhtars, and other administrators were mostly Hamas members or at least men who, if they did not support its ideology, were required to declare their allegiance to it in order to serve in their posts. If Israel intends to “purge” Gaza of Hamas, civilly and of course militarily, it will have to use fine mesh to filter every mechanism, organization, and institution that will be needed to administer the Gaza Strip.

Thousands of officials who live there received salaries from the Palestinian Authority, at least until Israel decided to deduct the customs and VAT refunds that the Palestinian Authority used to finance its officials in Gaza, as well as some health, water, and power services.

These civil officials can man some positions that have been filled by Hamas officials, but there is still a large shortfall between the needs and the supply of workers. When they return to work, Israel will have to decide who will finance, and how, the activities of tens of thousands of officials.

In a situation in which Israel is the ruling power in the Gaza Strip, even if it does not define its presence there as an occupation, but as an ongoing Hamas, it is doubtful if it will find a source of stable and significant international or Arab financing that would release Israel from the financial burden of administering the Gaza Strip. Such financing may only be possible if a Palestinian administration governs Gaza.

The U.S.’ position on this point is clear. “A renewed Palestinian Authority” is the entity that must assume responsibility over Gaza. Israel also has a clear and contradictory position: No revised, renewed, rejuvenated, or polished Palestinian Authority will control Gaza.

The rejection is not just for security reasons, on the grounds that the current Palestinian Authority “supports terrorism,” but due to the fact that rule by any Palestinian Authority, however pure and eligible it may be, in the Gaza Strip, means that Palestinians will be under a unified leadership that will represent all parts of a future Palestinian state.

This means the total collapse of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-term promise to prevent all possibility of negotiations that could result in the elusive “two-state solution.” This promise states that, so long as there is no single recognized Palestinian leadership that controls all parts of the Palestinian territories, there is nobody to negotiate with and nothing to negotiate about.

Hamas served this strategy well, through Netanyahu’s distorted concept that propping up Hamas would be in Israel’s best interest, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority and prevent a unified leadership from controlling the Palestinian political arena.

When Hamas finally ceases to rule the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu’s strategic partner will disappear, and he will no longer have his ‘no negotiation partner’ excuse to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.
Ostensibly, this is the junction where American involvement is needed, which will set the conditions that will decide the qualifying conditions for the Palestinian Authority to administer the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority has been clear about these conditions, specifically an international conference to discuss the future of a sovereign Palestinian state. But closing this circle is still far off, and Monday’s talks between Sissi and Abbas revolved around it.

It is necessary to build a complicated structure that rests on two floors. The first being an expanded and renewed PLO, in which all Palestinian political factions, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and others, will be members. This is supposed to be an umbrella organization in which all factions recognize the international resolutions and agreements that the “old” PLO signed with Israel, including the Oslo Accords and recognition of Israel as a sovereign state.

Out of this, the second floor will be born, a new Palestinian Authority which will not include Hamas or Islamic Jihad, and its members will be considered as non-partisan technocrats. That was the theory that Sissi proposed in his three-step plan to end the war in Gaza, but this is where Abbas disagrees, as the prospect of a non-partisan technocratic Palestinian Authority will stand as a threat to his and Fatah’s long-term grip on power.

Without Abbas and Fatah on board to the still ambiguous Egyptian or American plans for the future of a Palestinian state, it is difficult to see how a truly new Palestinian Authority will be established, even if Israel goes against its promises and comes around to the idea.

ADDENDUM:

 

January 10, 2024 | 5 Comments »

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5 Comments / 5 Comments

  1. re: Gallent- ‘rehabilitation’.
    Really?
    What does this rehabilitation consist of?
    No rehab until the will of the Gazans to fight is utterly destroyed.
    Exhibit A- Japan, 1945

  2. What about Gallant’s recently disclosed plan to let Gaza be ruled by the Gazan Arabs and international forces, etc.? Was it a joke?

    Plus his dismantling the settlements the other day.

    Plus their ignoring of the tunnel construction in the West Bank.

    I think they are trying to put everyone to sleep on the way to TSFS:

    Gallant’s post-war Gaza plan: Palestinians to run civil affairs with global task force
    Defense minister’s 4-part proposal calls for ongoing Israeli military control; no Jewish settlement; US, Egypt, moderate Arab countries to lead rehabilitation; Smotrich slams it
    By Tal Schneider, Jacob Magid and ToI Staff 4 January 2024, 11:03 pm

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/gallants-post-war-gaza-plan-palestinians-to-run-civil-affairs-with-global-task-force/

  3. I spoke too soon. We have already given in more than we can afford.

    Amir Avivi said today that we never have enough munitions. He also said that Hamas keeps getting more munitions smuggled in. Therefore we must occupy the Philidelphi Corrirdor in order to stop the smuggling.

  4. As long as a Palestinian promise is worth less than the air to express it, not to mention the valuable paper it may be written on, there is no partner. Our problem us to strengthen Netanyahu enough to ensure that US/EU/UN etc don’t apply so many threats and pressure that he lets them have their way. If US/EU/UN were to provide the required substantial assistance rather than dire threats and lawfare, something might even be achieved, but since it is much more fun to sandbag the Jews at every turn rather than help the “poor innocent Palestinian terrorists”, that is the game they play.

  5. Israel will “intensify and continue” its military operation in the southern Gaza Strip until the Hamas leadership is found and the more than 120 hostages still held by the terrorist group are returned to the Jewish state, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.

    Gallant wrote in a post on X following the tête-à-tête.

    “We are determined to complete the war goals and strengthen regional stability in the Middle East by dismantling Hamas in the south and changing the security situation in the north,” he added, the latter a reference to the ongoing attacks by Iranian-backed Hezbollah from Lebanon.