When the war ends, what’s next?
After the war, Israeli security oversight in Gaza will be necessary.
When the Israel-Hamas war finishes, Israel will need to maintain temporary but long-term control over Gaza to demonstrate to Palestinians that Hamas no longer has any authority there, according to analyst Khalid Abu Toameh.
Visiting for the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), the Israeli Arab, a senior fellow with the Jerusalem Institute of Public Affairs, told a Melbourne luncheon that while Israel cannot resume its 1967-2005 occupation or rebuild settlements, neither can the Palestinian Authority (PA) become Gaza’s new government.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas would “be happy to go back to Gaza” from which his Fatah faction was violently ejected by Hamas in 2007, but a PA return, favoured by the US, would fail to quell jihadists.
Abbas “is not going to fight terrorism, dismantle Hamas and Islamic Jihad, he can’t do it”, said Toameh. “He can’t even do it in the West Bank.”
Abbas and his inner circle have faced US pressure to moderate the PA and prepare it to govern Gaza. But Abbas’s response – replacing Mohammad Shtayyeh with another loyalist Mohammad Mustafa as PM – is no reform.
Toameh noted Hamas’s attempts to draw Israeli Arabs into the October 7 aftermath failed, many sharing Israelis’ horror at the Hamas bloodletting which also claimed 21 Israeli Arab lives. Arabs in Israel have maintained peaceful relations, with “more demonstrations in Sydney and London” than among Israel’s Arab community.
Ehud Yaari, Middle East commentator for Israel’s Channel 12, said Hamas commanders planned for October 7 to trigger “an Al-Aqsa flood”, with Hamas, joined by Iran proxy Hezbollah and forces in Syria, overrunning Israel from Gaza to the West Bank. But Hamas’s co-conspirators shrank from the plan.
Moreover, the opportunity for atrocities at the Nova festival with “lots of hostages, lots of people to kill” diverted the terrorists. Now there are bitter recriminations among Hamas’s factions over how their plan collapsed.
Yaari was adamant that despite warnings from the US, Australia and others, an IDF operation in Rafah must proceed, to remove the four battalions of Hamas’s notorious Rafah Brigade – virtually the terrorist organisation’s last offensive remnant.
If the Rafah Brigade is not destroyed, Israel’s entire war effort would be “a waste of time”, as Hamas, now well on the way to being reverted into “an armed underground” with no hold on territory, could stage an 11th-hour resurgence.
But Yaari believes Israel should make a formal offer to Hamas to surrender in Rafah, so it is clear that if it does not, it alone bears the responsibility for civilian casualties among 1.2 million Palestinians sheltering there.
After the war, Israeli security oversight in Gaza will be necessary, together with a reconstruction agency backed by moderate Arab countries and the West, and “linked to the PA but not subordinate”.
Yaari lamented PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to address any post-conflict scenario and believes that with the war now winding down, its end will bring his rapid political demise.
“The one thing he doesn’t want to get to is the moment after, because in the moment after, he’s [politically] doomed. There will be a million people on the street, who are reluctant to be on the street while Israeli soldiers are fighting.”
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