“Israel has no plan for Gaza before the end of the war,” experts warn

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “change the Middle East.”

Joe Biden, President of the United States, assured that “there is no going back.”

But as Israeli forces intensify their attacks in the Gaza Strip and repeat their warnings to the Palestinian population to evacuate and get out of the way, many are asking themselves these two questions: Where is the war headed and what will happen next?

After the horrific attacks of October 7, Israeli authorities have said time and again that they intend to drive Hamas out of the Gaza Strip, both militarily and politically.

But beyond demonstrating ruthless and overwhelming military might, it is unclear how they will achieve this unprecedentedly ambitious goal.

“You can’t promote such a historic step without a plan for the day after” said Dr. Michael Milshtein, director of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University.

Milshtein, former head of the Palestinian Affairs department of Israel’s military intelligence service, fears the planning has only just begun.

“We have to do it right now,” he says.

Western diplomats say they are in intensive talks with Israel about the future, but so far nothing is clear.

“There is no set plan at all,” someone told me. “You can sketch some ideas on paper, but making them a reality will require weeks, months of diplomacyhe added.

There are military plans that range from reducing Hamas’ military capacity to taking control of large parts of the Gaza Strip. But those with extensive experience of previous crises say this is the plan.

“I don’t think there is a viable solution for Gaza until the day after we withdraw our troops,” said Haim Tomer, a former senior official at Israel’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.

Israelis are almost unanimous: Hamas must be defeated. The massacres of October 7 were nothing short of horrific. The organization cannot be allowed to rule Gaza again.

But Hamas, Milshtein says, is an idea, not something that Israel can simply erase.

“It’s not like Berlin in 1945, when a flag was placed over the Reichstag and it was over.”

“Big mistakes in Iraq”

A better parallel, he explains, is Iraq in 2003, where US-led allied forces tried to erase all traces of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The so-called “de-Ba’acification” (the process by which Hussein’s Baath Party was made illegal and outlawed) was a disaster.

This left hundreds of thousands of Iraqi officials and members of the armed forces unemployed. sowing the seeds of a devastating rebellion.

American veterans of that conflict are now in Israel, speaking to the Israeli military about their experiences in places like Fallujah and Mosul.

“I hope they explain to the Israelis that they made big mistakes in Iraq,” Milshtein said.

“Such as, for example, Don’t hope to eradicate the ruling party or change the people’s mentality.. “That will not happen.”

The Palestinians agree with this view.

“Hamas is a popular organization with many roots,” said Mustafa Barghouti, chairman of the Palestinian National Initiative. “If they want to eliminate Hamas, they will have to ethnically cleanse all of Gaza.”

That idea – that Israel is secretly planning to force hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip and move to Egypt – fuels the deepest fears of Palestinians.

For a population that was already largely made up of refugees – those who fled or were driven from their homes when Israel was founded – the idea of ​​another mass exodus brings back memories of the traumatic events of 1948.

“Running away means a one-way ticket” says Diana Buttu, former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). “It doesn’t mean you have to go back.”

Israeli analysts, including former senior officials, have repeatedly referred to the need to temporarily house Palestinians across the border in Sinai.

Giora Eiland, former head of Israel’s National Security Council, claims that the only way Israel can achieve its military ambitions in Gaza without killing many innocent Palestinians is by evacuating civilians from Gaza.

“They have to cross the border into Egypt‘, he says, ‘temporary or permanent’.

Adding to this fear for the Palestinians is a line from President Joe Biden’s Oct. 20 speech in which he asked the U.S. Congress to approve funds to support Israel and Ukraine.

The text refers to the crisis that “could well lead to cross-border displacement and increased regional humanitarian needs.”

“Bone in the throat”

To date, Israel has not said it wants Palestinians to cross the border.

What the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has reiterated to civilians is that they are only moving to “safe areas” in the south, without defining exactly which areas are affected.

In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah el Sissi, for his part, has already warned that Israel’s war in Gaza “could be.”an attempt to coerce the civilian residents” to emigrate to that country.

But assuming there are still Palestinians in the Gaza Strip when this is all over, who is going to govern them?

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Milshtein says.

According to him, Israel should support the establishment of a new government, led by the Palestinians of Gaza themselves, with the participation of local leaders and the support of the United States, Egypt and perhaps Saudi Arabia.

It should also include leaders of Fatahthe rival Palestinian faction that forcibly expelled Hamas from Gaza a year after winning the 2006 elections.

Fatah is the party that controls the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), based in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

But so much the ANP and its aging president, Mahmud Abbas, are deeply unpopular among Palestinians, both from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

According to Diana Buttu, the ANP may want to return to Gaza in secret, but not if it means “entering on the back of an Israeli tank.”

Veteran Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi, who worked briefly in the PA in the 1990s, acknowledged that she is wary of the idea of ​​outsiders, including Israel, trying to redefine how Palestinians live their lives.

“People think this is a chessboard and they can move some pawns here and there and get a checkmate at the end. “That’s not going to happen,” he says.

“They might find people who want to help,” he says, “but the majority of people in Gaza won’t take that well.”

Even those who have experienced wars in Gaza before, although not on this scale, recognize that there is a deep concern and a sense that almost everything has been tried before.

Former Mossad official Haim Tomer said he would suspend military operations for a month as part of a plan to free the hostages first.

In 2012, after an earlier round of fighting in Gaza, Tomer accompanied the Mossad director to Cairo for secret talks that culminated in a ceasefire.

On that occasion, he says, Hamas representatives were “across the street,” with Egyptian officials acting as intermediaries.

Tomer believes a similar mechanism could be used now, but almost certainly adds that Israel would have to be prepared to pay a very high price.

“I don’t care if we release a few thousand Hamas prisoners. I want to see our people come home”.

He explains that once that happens, Israel could decide whether to resume large-scale military operations or opt for a long-term ceasefire.

What is clear, he says, is that, short of physically separating that territory and dragging it into the Mediterranean, Israel is destined to deal with the Gaza Strip indefinitely.

“It’s like a bone in our throat.” (JO)