Winning the peace in Gaza

As I have argued in previous Times of Israel essays (“Should Israel clear and hold Gaza?”; “Israel must now decide: Will it win or lose this war?”), there is only one way to defeat Hamas – the enemy must be physically separated from Gaza’s civilian population.

It is that civilian population that Hamas hides behind. It is the aid sent to keep that civilian population alive that Hamas diverts to feed its personnel. And it is the offer of access to that looted aid for their families that Hamas dangles in front of the recruits it mobilizes to rebuild its depleted ranks. As long as Hamas controls two million Gazans, it will survive. And if it survives, it will flourish.

Now, in those previous essays, I admitted that – while absolutely necessary – a military campaign aimed at taking firm control of Gaza’s civilian population would inevitably result in considerable casualties for both the IDF and Gaza’s civilian population. It would also doom the remaining hostages. Furthermore, in the aftermath of such an operation, Israel would have to govern the Strip – something that could require the deployment of as many as 50,000 already exhausted troops – for an indefinite amount of time.

The Gaza ceasefire agreement, however, changed everything.

It is increasingly clear – even to those prone to magical thinking – that Hamas has no intention of honoring the terms of the agreement brokered by President Trump, which unambiguously required it to disarm and disband.

To address inevitable Hamas non-compliance, the agreement allows Israel to retain the half of the Strip that it currently holds as long as Hamas refuses to capitulate. This gives Israel the time, space, and diplomatic legitimacy required to finish Hamas off for good should it choose to do so.

So how does the agreement facilitate the defeat of Hamas?

Rather than having to seize Hamas’s remaining strongholds in order to assert control over the civilian population, it is now possible to gradually relocate civilians to Israel’s side of what is now called the “Yellow Line.” This allows Israel to strip Hamas of the civilians that it controls with minimal IDF and non-combatant casualties.

Once Hamas’s remaining strongholds are emptied of civilians, Israel will have two options for how to finish off the enemy. One would be to complete the conquest of the entire Strip. While the resultant fighting would be intense, the IDF would not be constrained by the need to avoid civilian casualties or preserve the lives of hostages. It would be an extremely one-sided fight.

Alternatively, Israel could choose to simply wait out Hamas’s “deadenders” – cutting off all aid, power, and water to areas that had been emptied of civilians. Eventually, the only alternatives that would be left to the enemy would be to capitulate or starve.

As for occupation, the ceasefire agreement relieves Israel of the need to engage in a complicated, manpower-intensive mission to govern two million Gazan civilians. The agreement envisions that this task will be given to the nascent International Stabilization Force (ISF).

It would, however, be tragic if Israel won the Gaza War but then proceeded to lose the peace that followed it. And nothing will determine whether that peace is won or lost more than assuring that the stabilization and reconstruction of Gaza is properly executed.

To achieve a successful outcome, a number of principles must guide the ISF’s creation and the design of its mission.

The first is that Qatar and Turkey must be excluded from participation in the ISF. These countries are allied with Hamas, and their clear intention is to exploit their participation in the Ceasefire process as a way to sabotage it and preserve what is left of Hamas’s footprint in Gaza.

The second is that the Palestinian Authority should only be allowed to participate in the stabilization and reconstruction process if it makes material and verifiable progress towards competent administration and legitimate governance, while demonstrating a genuine intention to abide by its obligations under the Oslo Accords.

The third is that responsibility for the administration of Gaza’s schools should be assigned to the United Arab Emirates – a country whose own school curriculum is by far the most pluralistic and forward-looking of any country in the region…besides Israel.

The fourth is that Hamas combatants who wish to remain in Gaza should be required to surrender to the IDF and only released following completion of a re-education program similar to that pioneered by Saudi Arabia and widely copied in other countries struggling with Islamist death cults. I discussed the logic and effectiveness of these programs in an earlier Times of Israel essay (“To defeat Hamas, we must use our words”).

Finally, the Gazans themselves need to be partners in the administration of Gaza, something I discussed in the first Times of Israel essay I wrote after 7 October (“Who should rule Gaza? Ask the Gazans”).

This last point is probably the least intuitive…and the most important.

The reality is that all efforts to achieve peace since the Oslo Accords have foundered because the Palestinian “leadership” that the Accords imposed on Gaza and the West Bank lacked political legitimacy. As a result, they have been unable to tell Palestinians what they need to know rather than what they want to hear.

Legitimacy is earned from the bottom up rather than the top down. To address the lack of legitimate Palestinian leadership, Gazans should be integrated into the administration of their own local communities as early in the stabilization and reconstruction effort as is feasible.

A good start towards local representation has already been made with the handful of self-governing Gazan neighborhoods that emerged over the past year with Israeli support. Rather than supersede such local initiatives, the ISF should integrate these neighborhoods – and others likely to emerge – into the overall governance framework for Gaza.

If Israel, the US, and our Arab allies follow these principles in the creation of the ISF, there would still be no assurance of a good outcome. Real life simply does not provide certainty. A lot can go wrong.

But at least we would be giving peace a chance. A good chance.