Regional sources reported that Israel informed its neighbors Egypt and Jordan, along with other Arab countries and Turkey, of this idea.
The initiative does not indicate that the Israeli attack, which resumed on Friday after a 7-day truce, is near the end, but it does show that Israel is communicating with countries other than the well-known Arab mediators, such as Egypt or Qatar, as it seeks to determine the situation in Gaza in the post-war period.
No Arab country expressed its willingness to manage Gaza in the future, and most of them strongly condemned the Israeli attack, which killed more than 15,000 and destroyed large areas of urban areas in the Strip.
Israel says the Hamas attack on October 7 killed 1,200 people and detained more than 200 others.
A senior regional security official, one of the three sources who asked not to reveal their nationalities, said: “Israel wants to establish this buffer zone between Gaza and Israel from the north to the south to prevent any infiltration or attack on it by Hamas or any other militants.”
In response to a question about the idea of establishing a buffer zone, Ofir Falk, foreign policy advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in statements to Reuters: “The plan has more details than that. It is based on a three-level operation for the next day to eliminate Hamas.”
Explaining the position of the Israeli government, he said that the three levels include destroying Hamas, disarming Gaza, and eliminating extremism in the Strip.
He added, “The buffer zone may be part of the disarmament process,” and refused to provide details when asked whether these plans had been raised with international partners, including Arab countries.
Arab countries reject Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas, describing it as impossible, saying that the Palestinian movement is more than just an armed force that can be defeated.
Displacement of Palestinians from Gaza
An American official, who requested to remain anonymous, said that Israel “presented” the idea of a buffer zone without specifying who presented it to it, but the official reiterated Washington’s opposition to any plan that would reduce the area of Palestinian territories.
Jordan, Egypt and other Arab countries have expressed their fears that Israel will expel the Palestinians from Gaza in a repeat of the confiscation of lands from the Palestinians when declaring the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and the Israeli government denies any such goal.
A senior Israeli security source said that the idea of a buffer zone “is being studied,” adding: “It is not clear at the present time how deep it is (the buffer zone) and whether it may reach one or two kilometers or hundreds of meters (inside Gaza).”
Any incursion into the Gaza Strip, which is about 40 kilometers long and between 5 and 12 kilometers wide, would result in its population of 2.3 million people being trapped in a smaller area.
Egypt and Qatar are leading mediation talks with Israel that focus on releasing detainees held by Hamas in exchange for Israel releasing Palestinians detained in its prisons.
A repetition of the Lebanon scenario
- Regional sources likened the idea of the buffer zone in Gaza to the “security zone” established by Israel in southern Lebanon.
- Israel evacuated that area, which was about 15 kilometers deep, in 2000 after years of fighting and attacks by Lebanese Hezbollah.
- The sources added that Israel’s plan for Gaza in the post-war period includes expelling Hamas leaders, a measure similar to the Israeli campaign in Lebanon in the 1980s when it expelled the leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was launching attacks from Lebanon on Israel.
- One of the regional officials familiar with the talks said that Israel is prepared to pay a high price to permanently expel Hamas from Gaza to other countries in the region, as it did in Lebanon, but he indicated that the matter is not the same, adding that getting rid of Hamas is difficult and uncertain.
- A senior Israeli official said that Israel does not consider Hamas to be like the Palestine Liberation Organization and does not believe it will act like one.
- Muhammad Dahlan, the former head of the Preventive Security Service in Gaza and a member of the Fatah movement that was expelled from the Strip after Hamas took control of it in 2007, said that Israel’s plan for the buffer zone is unrealistic and will not protect Israeli forces.
- Dahlan added that the buffer zone may also make Israeli forces a target in the area.
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