Netanyahu says Israel will control all of Gaza. What then?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sworn to take full possession of the Gaza Strip, and that the current military offensive would continue. Those of us who believe that Israel has the right and obligation to defend itself must therefore ask: what sort of control does this mean, and what are we preparing to inherit?

The logic of control is not new. Israeli security doctrine has argued for decades that a lasting peace cannot be achieved without lasting control of key terrain. It was the failure to hold that terrain – more specifically, the borders with Gaza – that permitted Hamas to grow into what emerged on October 7. Any talk of withdrawal now, therefore, with Hamas still breathing and with alternatives still unclear, seems rather naive at best, and negligent at worst.

In the short term, there is no trustworthy partner in Gaza. The notion that a multinational Arab peacekeeping force will take Hamas’ place – or that the Palestinian Authority will somehow grow teeth overnight – is not only implausible but reckless. Control, then, is more of a military necessity than a political wish. Alas, though, necessity is not a strategy.

There is another truth here: open-ended control of Gaza is a trap. Netanyahu’s declaration may have scored points with his base and the Israeli public’s raw fear, but it was met with alarm by partners of Israel abroad. The United States, European Union and regional Arab powers have warned with increasing clarity that reoccupation is perhaps not the best way forward given Gaza’s history: Israel occupied the Strip from 1967 to 2005. It established settlements and military outposts that became increasingly costly and unpopular, only for Hamas to seize power in 2007 two years after the unilateral withdrawal of Israel’s military and settlers.

Already, the diplomatic costs of the war are mounting. Even within Israel, the contradiction is staring the public in the face: how can the government insist that it does not want to rule over Palestinians, while pledging near-permanent control over two million of them?

We have been here before. Israel occupied southern Lebanon in 1982 in what began as a security operation in response to aggression from Palestinian militants. It ended 18 years later in retreat and exhaustion.

If ‘control’ means preventing Hamas from rebuilding, Israel will support it. If it means sending Israeli soldiers to maintain Rafah, to oversee water supplied in Khan Younis, and to collect taxes in Nuseirat, what we will see is something entirely different.

We cannot afford to conflate military success with political clarity. Defeating Hamas is not the same as deciding Gaza’s future, and Israel is still yet to articulate its plan.

A transitional administration backed by regional players is a feasible way ahead. A temporary international trusteeship with Israeli oversight. Even a phased reintroduction of Palestinian civil actors under close security conditions. None of these are perfect, but they do not trap Israel into the role of occupier or ruler.

Netanyahu may believe that Israel has little choice but to hold Gaza indefinitely. Leadership, though, is more about determining the best way forward for a people than it is about repeating the logic of fear. Gaza is not a prize, nor should it be a trophy of war. Control in the short term may indeed be necessary, but it must not become the long term plan.