The death toll in Gaza continues to rise: According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the death toll is over 8 thousand. A convoy of 60 trucks loaded with water, food and medical supplies, the largest since the beginning of the conflict, crossed the Egyptian Rafah border crossing to reach the Israeli Awja crossing to be inspected before entering the Strip. But no one thinks this is the beginning of a real “humanitarian pause” that Europe demands. The raids in the West Bank raise fears that the conflict could even spread beyond the Strip. Tel Aviv appears to have no plans for post-war Gaza. More precisely, there may be several that can bring together Israel’s various political forces or Tel Aviv’s experts and allies, but none of them can.
Israel has made clear that it wants to destroy Hamas, but one issue is the future of Gaza without the organization that has ruled this region for almost two decades. “It is not possible to promote such a historic move,” that is, “to liberate Gaza from Hamas” without a plan for the next day, “he told the British broadcaster BBC Michael Milshtein is president of the Palestine Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University’s “Moshe Dayan” center. Hasan Alhasan, a researcher on Middle East politics at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, agrees; He says the plan to destroy Hamas could be dangerous and complex, and could lead to unpredictable and adverse consequences for Israel itself. “Hamas is a grassroots people’s organization,” says Mustafa Barghouti, head of the Palestinian National Initiative party. “If they want to eliminate Hamas, they will have to carry out ethnic cleansing all over Gaza,” he warns.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau has said he wants to “destroy” Hamas’ “military and government capabilities”, but there are strong doubts among military experts from the US, EU and UK about whether this is an achievable goal in the short term. In Tel Aviv. As a condition for joining Netanyahu’s “emergency government” in the days after the Hamas attack, “opposition leaders Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot insisted that there must be a clear plan for how the Israeli army will leave Gaza and which government regime will replace Hamas.” .” , recalls financial diaries Finance Times. Gantz and Eisenkot, both former military leaders, are now part of the small war cabinet overseeing the campaign against Hamas. However, leaked news from this cabinet points to strong internal differences. It is perhaps no coincidence that Netanyhau’s polemic post (later removed with an apology) in which the prime minister accused intelligence and the IDF (Israeli armed forces) of failing to foresee the Hamas attack.
Internal divisions within the Israeli structure certainly do not help in tackling such a complex and risky plan. Former senior Mossad officer Haim Tomer told the BBC: “I don’t think there is a viable solution for Gaza the day after the evacuation of our forces.” The risk is a repeat of what happened in Iraq in 2003, when US-led forces tried to eliminate all traces of Saddam Hussein’s regime. “De-Baathification” (named after the pan-Arab movement of which Hussein was a part) was a disaster. “He laid the foundations for a devastating insurgency, leaving hundreds of thousands of public employees and members of the Iraqi armed forces unemployed,” he recalls. BBC. Perhaps this is what White House President Joe Biden meant when he told Netanyahu not to make the same mistakes the US made after 9/11.
Even if we assume that the elimination of Hamas from Gaza is possible, how will a region where 2.3 million people live be governed? Israel does not intend to take over the Strip; There is maximum agreement among experts on this issue. Some ministers of the Tel Aviv government have presented plans to create large buffer zones in Gaza. However, it is unclear how these zones might work in practice.
Relying on Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, might seem like the simplest solution, if the party led by Mahmoud Abbas had not already lost the trust of not only the people of Gaza, but also the Palestinian people. The majority of Palestinians are in the West Bank. Egypt fears that chaos will arise in the Strip after the Israeli operation, which will lead to hundreds of thousands of refugees coming to the country. For this reason, Cairo is trying to intensify its efforts to ensure peace as soon as possible, but for now this attempt has remained fruitless.
Many experts think that no matter how you look at it, the dream of liberating Gaza from Hamas could turn into a nightmare for both the stability of the region and Israel itself. Unfortunately for the civilian population, this is already the case.
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Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
