From Military Invasion to Military Occupation

On August 11, Haaretz published an editorial titled “Israel’s Hostages Must Return. The War in Gaza Has To End.” Public sentiment is largely behind the position expressed in the first part of the headline. Most Israelis want the hostages home now, whatever the terms of the deal currently on the table. The problem with the Haaretz headline is the juxtaposition of an agreement on the hostages’ release and the end of the war. If an agreement is reached in the coming days, and at this point it’s anybody’s guess, it will at best involve a ceasefire that is bound to be short-lived.

The first phase of the three-phase plan laid out by President Biden at the end of May calls for a partial hostage release in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, a six-week ceasefire in which the IDF will withdraw from populated areas in Gaza, and a surge in humanitarian assistance. If the sides agree to the deal, the exchange would likely take place and humanitarian aid would likely increase, but the chances of the ceasefire lasting six weeks are close to nil. The Israeli Government has repeatedly declared that it’s right to self-defense means that it can resume the fighting at a time of its choosing. In fact, in a situational assessment held in the Philadelphi Corridor as the Israeli delegation was en route to Qatar, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said that the army is ready for any scenario and that if the political echelon decides to withdraw, monitor, and raid as necessary, the IDF knows how to do it. Boasting that there is no place in Gaza that the army cannot reach, he added: “We know how to get anywhere in a short time, and this achievement must be maintained.”  The United States may give Hamas guarantees that Israel will abide by the agreement, but Israel will be looking for pretexts to justify renewed attacks, and Hamas will undoubtedly provide plenty.  The “permanent end to hostilities” defined in phase two as including a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will collapse under the weight of the arguments over what “full” means, and the phase three reconstruction plan will be relegated to somewhere over the rainbow.

With the Gaza war now in its 10^th month and with 113 hostages remaining in captivity, close to 40,000 Palestinians dead and over 90,000 wounded, and Yahya Sinwar still calling the shots in Gaza, it is painfully clear that Netanyahu’s goal of defeating Hamas militarily is unattainable. Back in April, the Passover seder dishes had barely dried off before a senior Israeli defense official announced that the preparations for the almighty Rafah operation, which was being promoted as the coup de grace of the IDF military campaign, had been completed and that the army was just awaiting the green light from the war cabinet. The light was given on May 7, and the IDF entered Rafah in a move which Netanyahu declared “serves two of the main objectives of the war: returning our hostages and eliminating Hamas.”  Yes, indeed. The Rafah operation was so successful that today, three months later, rumors are that there may not be enough living hostages to meet Israel’s threshold, Sinwar has succeeded Ismail Haniyah as leader of Hamas, and the IDF is back in Khan Younis after having withdrawn in April with the announcement that the Khan Younis mission had been completed.

During the second intifada, Uri Ariel, then head of the Yesha Settlement Council, coined the slogan “Let the IDF win” in protest against what the right wing perceived as unwarranted restraint in the army’s fight against Palestinian terrorism. In the 20-odd years that have passed, this cry was raised repeatedly during every IDF operation, particularly with regard to decisions not to launch a ground offensive during previous Gaza hostilities. No one can accuse the army of pulling any punches in this war, however, and yet none of the stated objectives have been achieved. The Rafah operation has done nothing to end the game of whack-a-mole Israel is playing with Hamas throughout the Strip, while the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza worsens daily and Israeli soldiers are falling in a senseless war that cannot be won. Eventually, Netanyahu will have no choice but to stop using the term “total” when he speaks of victory over Hamas, order most of the IDF troops to withdraw, and move on to the next stage in his vision of the “day after”: cementing the transition from military invasion to military occupation.

The government has made it unequivocally clear that it intends to leave “security control” of the Gaza Strip in Israel’s hands after the current hostilities end. There is talk of a 1-km-deep buffer zone that would eat into approximately 16% of the territory of Gaza. In addition, according to Haaretz correspondents Yarden Michaeli and Avi Scharf, satellite images and photographs show infrastructure work that includes the paving of roads and extensive construction and development at military outposts, all of which leaves some 26% of Gaza under IDF control. Although the army claims that the structures are not meant to be permanent, the Haaretz report cites a senior IDF officer as saying that “an effort at prolonged occupation” is underway.

Resettlement of Gaza does not appear to be on Netanyahu’s agenda, although many in his government have different ideas. Several Likud ministers attended a conference in January under the heading “settlement brings security,” alongside ministers from the far-right parties who signed a pledge to “grow Jewish settlements full of life” in Gaza. Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu was quick to declare that his opposition to settlement in Gaza has not changed. After all, he’s in “pick your battles” mode and realizes that Jewish settlement is an international red line best not crossed… yet.

What he does envision is some kind of civil administration run by Palestinians who are not affiliated with any faction – at least publicly. “Neither Hamastan nor Fatahstan,” Netanyahu has declared, putting the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the same category as Hamas. Instead of the PA, he is counting on desperation, expediency, greed, or any other number of human failings to get a sufficient number of Palestinians to agree to serve at the pleasure of the occupation.

And occupation it will be. There is no such thing as “security control” without it.  And unfortunately, there is no Israeli political leader today, aside from the heads of the Arab parties, who does not buy into the notion of control until such time as the Palestinians have been tamed and reeducated or, as opposition leader Yair Lapid put it, have shown that they are as peaceful as the Swiss.  Even Yair Golan, chair of the liberal Democrats party that was born of the Meretz-Labor merger, said in an interview to The Guardian that Israel must be “proactive” militarily, a clever euphemism for remaining aggressive. He went on to say that while his political vision is a two-state solution, “it will take years,” and so his day-after plan is one of freedom of action for Israel in Gaza and the West Bank “for the near future.”

Last month, the New York Times featured a Peace Now report claiming that de facto annexation of the West Bank has already happened. This claim was supported by the advisory opinion on the occupation issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ruled that Israel’s “policies and practices amount to annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The ICJ also pronounced that Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip did not entirely release it of its obligations under the law of occupation and that those obligations are commensurate with the degree of its control over the Gaza Strip. Given that finding and the government’s admission that it intends to maintain security control of the Strip, one could conclude that the reoccupation of Gaza is nearing completion. That then begs the question: When occupation comes, can annexation be far behind?