Hamas is not just an armed group. It runs a full-fledged government in the Gaza Strip. In a scenario where there is no Hamas in Gaza, who would fill that vacuum? There has been a trickle of hints from Israeli leaders who are understandably not giving specifics since the war is going on and no one knows for sure how or when it will end.
While the focus at the moment in Israel remains on the destruction of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the deliberations over what happens the day after the fighting stops appear to be also ongoing among the Israeli leaders. While the United States has warned against any occupation of Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said the country may have an “overall security responsibility” for some time after the war ends.
Netanyahu did not elaborate on what that would mean. In the absence of such clarity, the interpretations have ranged from an Israeli occupation of Gaza to an autonomous or semi-autonomous Palestinian rule overseen by broader Israeli authority.
US President Joe Biden has said the Israeli occupation of Gaza would be a “big mistake” and Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) reinstatement in Gaza would be the best bet. Experts have also said that a coalition of Arab countries could also take over Gaza in the interim after the war.
West Asia expert and former diplomat Anil Trigunayat tells Outlook that there are no good options and the most feasible would be to have an empowered PA in Gaza.
“An empowered Palestinian Authority may take over Gaza but even then it would be very difficult to govern it. The Hamas’s top leaders are based in Qatar. As long as they can provide leadership to the movement, there is a possibility of the group waging violence even after the group has been removed from power. That would be a challenge to PA’s rule and it would have to be empowered accordingly to tackle such a situation,” says Trigunayat, a former Indian envoy to Jordan and Libya who currently serves as a Distinguished Fellow at the think tank Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF).
Trigunayat also says that the gradual weakening of PA, under Netanyahu in particular, has strengthened Hamas and therefore the empowerment of PA is actually the only way to have a workable alternative governance arrangement in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “those who do not want to continue the way of Hamas” would rule the Gaza Strip after the war and that Israel could have “overall security responsibility” in the territory.
“I think Israel will, for an indefinite period will have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don't have it. When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine,” said Netanyahu in an interview with ABC News.
In 2005, Israel vacated Gaza which it had occupied since 1967. In 2006, Hamas won the elections in Gaza and, in the subsequent intra-Palestinian conflict, drove out Fatah from Gaza in 2007. Fatah is the mainstream Palestinian party that runs the internationally-recognised Palestinian Authority (PA) that partially governs the West Bank. Together, the West Bank and Gaza form the envisioned State of Palestine. Hamas, a designated terrorist organisation, has run Gaza since 2007.
Netanyahu’s mention of the “overall security responsibility” has been interpreted by some as occupation whereas others understand it as an interim measure or a West Bank-like arrangement where the Israeli government and PA share the security responsibilities. That would make more sense considering Netanyahu’s past comments in which he has shown deep scepticism about completely giving up the Israeli security role in the region.
In an earlier conversation with podcaster Lex Fridman, Netanyahu said, “Israel is going to control that airspace and the electromagnetic space and so on. So security has to be in the hands of Israel. My view of how you solve this problem is a simple principle. The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves and none of the powers to threaten Israel, which basically means that the responsibility for overall security remains with Israel. And from a practical point of view, we’ve seen that every time that Israel leaves a territory and takes its security forces out of an area, it immediately is overtaken by Hamas or Hezbollah or jihadist who basically are committed to the destruction of Israel and also bring misery to the Palestinians or Arab subjects.”
Both Gaza-based Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon —the southern part of which Israel occupied during 1985-2000— have the destruction of Israel in their charters and are backed by Israel’s archenemy Iran, which itself opposes the Israeli nationhood. The Islamic Revolution of Iran of 1979 that formed the current Iranian state termed Israel a “cancerous tumour”.
While one may interpret Netanyahu’s statement in the context of his previous comments, the Israeli strategy is not his alone to decide. It’s not certain how long he will be at the helm of Israel as his popularity has taken a big hit from months of protests over the proposed judicial overhaul and the massive intelligence and security failure to predict and prevent the October 7 attack.
The United States has been clear that Israel should not occupy Gaza after the war. President Joe Biden has said occupation would be a “big mistake”.
When Netanyahu’s “overall security responsibility” comment is put into context of his past comments, and seen alongside what other top Israeli leaders have said, the picture emerges in which Israel does not wish to occupy Gaza at this stage.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant last month told the Israeli parliament that the country would give up the “responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip” after the war. While Israel has not governed Gaza since 2005, it has provided it with up to a third of its water supply and some electricity as well. Gallant suggested that post-war Gaza would have no relationship with Israel.
Gallant further hinted at the planned withdrawal from Gazan affairs. He said that the war would be fought in three phases: In the first phase, Israel would destroy Hamas's infrastructure; in the second phase, Israel would launch “operations at lower intensity” to eliminate “pockets of resistance”; the third phase would “require the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip, and the establishment of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel”.
Following Netanyahu’s comment, a senior Israeli official was quoted as saying that the Israeli intention was not to “reoccupy Gaza or control it for a long time”.
“It’s not Israel’s intention to reoccupy Gaza or control it for a long time. Our operation is not open-ended. The idea behind Israel going in militarily is to destroy Hamas’s ability to threaten us. We understand that will take time and that, even if we complete this phase of our military operation, we’ll still have to take some action against their remaining military infrastructure,” said the senior Israeli official to The Jerusalem Post on the condition of anonymity.
On his part, Blinken has said that Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under Palestinian rule after the war. He also pressed for the sustained reconstruction of Gaza battered by the Israeli bombardment and peace process for the long-running conflict.
“We must also work on the affirmative elements to get to a sustained peace. These must include the Palestinian people’s voices and aspirations at the centre of post-crisis governance in Gaza. It must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority. And it must include a sustained mechanism for reconstruction in Gaza, and a pathway to Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in states of their own, with equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity, and dignity,” said Blinken on Wednesday.
The reinstatement of the PA in Gaza would have its own share of challenges. For one, the PA has a legitimacy crisis and its leader Mahmoud Abbas —who has ruled without elections since 2004— remains deeply unpopular.
Blinken’s comment also reiterated the US push for the two-state solution on which much of the international community agrees. It envisions a Jewish State of Israel and an Arab State of Palestine coexisting in the historic Palestine region side-by-side. It is also in line with the United Nations (UN) partition plan that gave around 56 per cent of the land —half of which was the Negev desert— to Israel and the rest to the Arabs in 1947. While the Jews accepted the proposal, the Arabs rejected it and the six Arab states of Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Transjordan (present-day Jordan) declared war on Israel. The Arabs lost the war.
At the end of the war, Israel was in control of around 77 per cent of the region. Around 700,000 Arabs were displaced in what’s called the ‘Naqba’. The displaced Arabs and their descendants live in a number of towns and camps across the region, including in Gaza. For many of the Palestinians in Gaza —1.5 million of whom are currently displaced internally— the ongoing war has felt like a second round of ‘Naqba’.
The parallels between the ongoing Israel-Hamas War and the Yom Kippur War of 1973 are striking. In both cases, the famed Israeli security apparatus failed to predict and prevent the attacks which deeply shocked the Israeli consciousness and shattered its sense of invincibility. While the human toll itself is staggering, the abduction of even children and the elderly has been a further blow.
The Yom Kippur War, however, led to the beginning of the peace process that culminated in peace between Israel and Egypt. Experts say a similar peace process has to start after the conclusion of the ongoing Israel-Hamas War. Under such a process, ideally, the Palestinian enclave of Gaza —one-half of the envisioned State of Palestine— should be under the Palestinian Authority (PA). Such a transfer should ideally be the first step in the post-war peace process towards the realisation of the two-state solution. But it’s not that simple.
West Asia expert Anil Trigunayat highlights that the PA faces a legitimacy crisis and its leader Mahmoud Abbas is unpopular — particularly in Gaza.
“Abbas has not been able to go to Gaza since 2005 because of threats to his life. One important fact is also that the people of Gaza actually elected Hamas to power. It is also part of the problem because, terrorist organisation or not, the Hamas government in Gaza was democratically elected and Israel or the United States don’t recognise it. Hence the problem,” says Trigunayat.
For any meaningful role of PA in Gaza, it would have to be both empowered and reformed, according to Trigunayat.
“Hamas has to be and will be decimated in Gaza — at least in its capacity as a ruler. That’s certain. There would have to be elections and a change in leadership to address its legitimacy crisis. Abbas is 87 and has been there since 2004 without any elections. This has made him and PA unpopular. That’s the only solution to make PA acceptable to the Palestinian people,” says Trigunayat of the think tank Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF).
Trigunayat says such an arrangement as part of a broader peace process is the only workable way forward. If not done, it would lead to something that no one wants.
“A peace process like the one after the Yom Kippur War has to take place after this war. If nothing happens, you will see another Intifada —Palestinian uprising— which no one would want, not Israel, not the PA, and not the Arab neighbours,” says Trigunayat.