Israel plans a post-war Gaza with Palestinian administration but under military control

Almost three months have passed since the outbreak of the bloodiest war in half a century in the Holy Land. Israel is already preparing for the day after the conflict while it continues to systematically bomb the Gaza Strip and deploy troops on the border with Lebanon. The Palestinian coastal enclave has been devastated, with more than 22,000 deaths recorded, but the Hamas militia, which sparked the conflict by killing 1,200 people in Israel, has not been eradicated. The only one of its leaders eliminated since last October 7, Saleh al Aruri, fell on Tuesday in a drone operation in Beirut, 340 kilometers to the north.

Faced with a war scenario that will last “as long as necessary”, foreseeably for “months”, despite the beginning of the withdrawal of battalions with thousands of reservists, the Israeli Minister of Defense, former general Yoav Gallant, announced on Thursday night the implementation of a third phase of the war plan that resembles an exit strategy. Once the military objectives have been achieved, Israel plans a Gaza with limited Palestinian administration, based on “local committees” of mere management, without mentioning the Palestinian National Authority, but under the control of the army, which reserves full “freedom of operational action.” to intervene in the Strip.

The Security Cabinet, a sanhedrin of ministerial and senior military and intelligence officials that sets the course of the wars in Israel, met on Thursday night to study the document that the Minister of Defense had presented hours before with the main lines designed for Gaza's post-war future. Although the civil government of the territory would remain in the hands of the Palestinians, the minister's report makes no reference to the Palestinian National Authority, which governs part of the West Bank under military occupation by Israel, and had been vetoed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. to govern the enclave. “The residents of Gaza are Palestinians and therefore the Palestinian bodies will be in charge [de la administración], on the condition that there be no hostile actions or threats against the State of Israel. (…) Hamas will not govern Gaza, Israel will not govern the civilians of Gaza,” states the document cited by the Hebrew press.

Minister Gallant also foresees a Strip “without Israeli civilian presence” once the fighting ends. This plan threatens to provoke divisions in Netanyahu's right-wing coalition government, where four ultra-conservative ministers have already spoken out in favor of the return of Israeli settlers to Gaza, from where they were evacuated in 2005. The Minister of National Security, the radical Itamar Ben Gvir called on Monday for settlers to return to Gaza after the war and “encourage” the Palestinian population to emigrate. Something that the head of Finance, the religious ultranationalist Bezalel Smotrich, has also supported. The Security Cabinet meeting had to be interrupted by Netanyahu amid internal disputes, according to Hebrew media. An eventual withdrawal of support from the deputies of Ben Gvir and Smotrich would leave the Executive, the most conservative in three quarters of a century of history of the Jewish State, in a minority in the Knesset (Parliament).

For now, Israel has limited itself to announcing a combat strategy focused on specific objectives in the north of the Strip, a devastated and almost unpopulated territory, and towards the persecution of the political and military commanders of Hamas in the south of the enclave, where The army suspects that they have gone into hiding, along with the 136 hostages captured in Israel almost three months ago. In the southern part, the majority of the more than two million Gazans are now overcrowded, in precarious conditions in the middle of winter. In accordance with Israeli military forecasts, the displaced will not be able to return to their homes in the north until the hostages are released.

Amid growing international pressure to reduce the intensity of the attacks in Gaza, the Minister of Defense announced a new phase of combat “based on the objectives achieved on the ground”, focused on the destruction of tunnels and centers of command of the Ezedín al Qasam militia, the armed wing of Hamas, through the action of army special forces. More than 163 Palestinians have lost their lives between Thursday afternoon and Friday noon, according to data from the Gaza Ministry of Health.

Deployment of international forces

The document of the third phase of the conflict, which has yet to be endorsed by the full Government, projects the deployment of an international force with troops from Western and moderate Arab countries for the reconstruction of the enclave, coordinated by the United States. Gallant anticipated that Egypt will have “a relevant role” in the future of Gaza, but did not want to give details about the plans being negotiated with the authorities in Cairo, which include a reinforced technological border in the south of the Strip. Israel would also reserve the right to inspect the entry of goods at customs.

Israel continues to hope that Hamas will not govern after the war in Gaza, where it seized power by force in 2007, having defeated the Fatah party of the president of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, at the polls the previous year. Even if the Islamic resistance movement loses control of the territory, it is foreseeable that officials and public employees affiliated with Hamas will remain in their positions to guarantee the provision of essential services.

The announcement of the Israeli vision for post-war Gaza comes on the eve of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's tour of the Middle East, his fifth since the outbreak of the conflict. On Monday he plans to visit Israel to learn first-hand about the plans for the day after the fight, a date that Netanyahu does not seem to be either politically or personally interested in taking place in the near future, both due to the unstable parliamentary balance of his coalition as well as the corruption trial in which he has sat on the bench for three years.

“The war has not achieved any of its objectives to this day. There have been operational achievements on the ground, but there is no exit strategy,” warns Israeli analyst Nahum Barnea this Friday in the pages of the newspaper Yediot Ahronot. “The army expects the same rules of the game to apply as in the northern West Bank, where it enters cities and towns at will and has partial cooperation from the Palestinian civil administration,” argues this veteran columnist, “but Gaza is not Jenin. “, writes. “And with the collapse of the Hamas administration it will become a black hole, the same one that aerial photographs of the Strip show,” he concludes.

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