Why Israel has no good options in Gaza

In one of his first speeches, Netanyahu said Israel’s response would “change the Middle East”. This is absolutely true: It could make it much, much worse, for Israel and for everybody else.

Majalla/Agencies

As Israel ponders its next steps, caution should be the operating word. Israel should set realistic and gradual goals to degrade Hamas while fostering hope for an actual resolution of the conflict.

Why Israel has no good options in Gaza

Michael Horowitz

last update on 26 Oct 2023

In the wake of the unprecedented Hamas attack that killed 1,400 Israelis, Israeli officials have made several statements about what kind of response and goals Israel was planning to reach in Gaza.

All of those, suggest that the massive Israeli aerial campaign against Gaza, which has already led to large-scale Palestinian casualties, displacements and destruction, are just the beginning. But as Israeli officials responded emotionally to the Hamas attacks, some voices have also warned that going into Gaza without a serious plan could prove disastrous.

Parallels have been drawn between the US response to 9/11, and the Israeli response to the October 7 attacks, with multiple commentators and officials (chief among them President Biden), warning that mistakes could easily be made — and civilians are most likely to pay the price for those mistakes.

This requires an examination of Israeli statements, and what they actually mean. The Israeli conflict is often entirely discussed on a narrative level, with both sides blaming each other. But for both sides’ sake, a vision of what the future entails — even at this darkest time — should be discussed.

Netanyahu under mounting public pressure

One thing to understand is that public pressure in Israel is at its maximum. TV channels still show witness accounts of what happened on 7 October, and images are still being distributed.

Reuters — Israelis attend a demonstration, calling for the return of loved ones who were taken as hostages following a deadly infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip in Tel Aviv, Israel, October 14, 2023.

Kids are grieving their parents on TV; some have lost their entire families, the body parts of burnt victims are still being analysed, and people are still missing. The shock has not been absorbed, nor has it fully been comprehended by most. This is compounded by the extreme lack of trust expressed by most Israelis towards their government.

The shock of 7 October has not been absorbed, nor has it fully been comprehended by most Israelis. This is compounded by the extreme lack of trust expressed by most Israelis towards their government.

Netanyahu was not, by any measure, popular before 7 October. But polls have shown that his popularity has collapsed: A poll by Israeli news outlet Ma'ariv showed Netanyahu's party would sink to unprecedented levels, and that his coalition would be decisively defeated if elections were held today.

Although Netanyahu's longtime opponent, Benny Gantz (who polls show benefited the most from the crisis) joined the government, this is by no means a real "unity" government, as several other figures have refused to sit in a government that includes extremist figures like Itamar Ben Gvir or Bezalel Smotrich.

In other words, this government enters the crisis with everything to prove, and an extremely low level of public trust. Yet this is the government that may make decisions that will impact the future of the region, both in Israel and Palestine but also beyond.

Ground offensive: Is there an actual plan?

Since 7 October, Israeli officials have made several statements about the possible objective of a future ground invasion of Gaza. The first days saw Defence Minister Gallant say Israel would "wipe out this thing called Hamas", comparing Hamas to the Islamic State (IS) and saying again that it would be "wiped from the face of the earth".

Without considering the specific parameters of such an operation to "wipe out" Hamas from Gaza, or the enormous death toll such a plan would entail, I will note that in any counter-insurgency campaign that has been waged everywhere else in the world, be it the anti-IS campaign in Iraq and Syria or the anti-Taliban campaign in Afghanistan, "victory" has proven elusive.

Militant groups can be weakened through security campaigns, but they are rarely defeated in the same "definitive" manner Gallant suggests.

Any serious security campaign without some political and state-building component would also be against lessons learned from previous campaigns to defeat radical groups. That's not to mention that such counter-insurgency operations have taken years.

Israel has never waged such a campaign, and doing so without serious preparations, on the back of a surprise attack could easily prove unwise, to say the least.

Israeli troops in tanks and other armoured vehicles amass in a field near the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon on October 14, 2023.

Netanyahu's government enters the crisis with everything to prove, and an extremely low level of public trust. Yet this is the government that may make decisions that will impact the future of the region, both in Israel and Palestine but also beyond.

Toppling Hamas

The second type of objective Israeli officials have mentioned is the "toppling" of the Hamas regime in Gaza. Hamas has acted as a dictatorship, cracked down on any unrest in Gaza, and diverted international aid. It has now brought the region closer to the edge of a regional war than ever.

While removing it may sound like a sound objective to Israelis, the realities of how to do so are far less trivial. This requires a realistic alternative and a realistic state-building path, particularly given the immense destruction a conflict in Gaza would (and is already) leaving in its wake.

Is the Netanyahu-led government, which has long sought to "divide and conquer" by propping up Hamas and marginalising the Palestinian Authority, now suddenly ready to help Mahmoud Abbas wrest back control of Gaza?

Even if that is the case — which, given Netanyahu's track record, I would not put money on — the Palestinian Authority could be dead by the time Israel "captured" Gaza. Even before 7 October, the Authority was experiencing a long and deep-seated crisis, having lost legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinians, and even physically lost control of some part of the West Bank.

Abbas is deeply unpopular and completely powerless to do anything for Gaza. He can barely exit the Mukata, the seat of his government in Ramallah. But his fate is, in fact, tied to Gaza's. In the wake of the strike at al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, spontaneous protests erupted in multiple Palestinian cities, including Ramallah.

Palestinians hold posters and the national flag as they protest against French President Emmanuel Macron, who is visiting Israel, during a protest in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank on October 24, 2023.

Chants were not solely directed at Israel, but also at Abbas. Hamas flags and slogans were heard. This is not a new phenomenon: We saw the same trend during the Gaza war in 2021. If we're about to witness a month or even years-long campaign in Gaza, these chants will only grow.

What Israel is trying to "eradicate" in Gaza, it may soon face in the West Bank. Regional fragilities may rupture, and moderate Arab governments, including Jordan and Egypt, will feel the aftershocks of Israel's attempt to take over Gaza.

While removing Hamas may sound like a sound objective to Israelis, the realities of how to do so are far less trivial. This requires a realistic alternative and a realistic state-building path, particularly given the immense destruction a conflict in Gaza would (and is already) leaving in its wake.

The future of the Palestinian Authority

Should the PA survive, it will have become even more of a shell incapable of ruling over Gaza and the West Bank. In this "best case scenario", Israel would face in Gaza (and possibly in the West Bank) what it now faces in Lebanon with Hezbollah: A militant group that hides behind a government powerless to stop it.

Hamas will return to its origin as an insurgent group. The group was initially thought by some to have changed, having purportedly accepted (by omission) an Israeli state, along the 1967 border. The 2023 attacks show that this purported change was an illusion and that the group in Gaza has grown even more radical.

More importantly, Hamas would have managed to secure one of its objectives: being able to fire at Israel from Gaza, without having to deal with the cumbersome responsibility of acting like a responsible government that can provide for Gaza's more than 2 million inhabitants — an enclave that has been under Israeli blockade since it took it over, in 2007.

Indeed, the group has, over the past years, signalled it was willing to have the PA take back control of Gaza, as it wants to maintain its ability to be the face of the "resistance" to Israel's occupation, without having actually to care for Palestinians in Gaza.

The group doesn't want to handle civilian affairs and will always prioritise its core identity as militant. If it remains after the Israeli offensive, it will seek to thwart any effort to stabilise the Palestinian enclave.

Other alternatives to restoring PA rule, such as an Egyptian take-over, or a government by Mohammed Dahlan — a longtime archrival of Abbas — are being explored. None of them are truly realistic: Egypt is in no way interested in taking back responsibility for Gaza when it faces its own enormous domestic challenges.

AFP — A Palestinian youth rides a bicycle as others watch search operations on the rubble of a building following overnight Israeli strikes on the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on October 25, 2023.

Dahlan, who is exiled in the UAE, has not been in Gaza for years and was the one who lost it to Hamas in 2007. He is, at best, a murky and opportunistic figure, whose relations with Hamas aren't clear. If he is put back in charge of Gaza, he will either be a powerless figurehead or continue to make deals for his own survival — including with Hamas if need be.

That's not to mention that anyone put in charge by Israel will start his career as an illegitimate figure in the eyes of Palestinians.

Should the PA survive, it will have become even more of a shell incapable of ruling over Gaza and the West Bank. In this "best case scenario", Israel would face in Gaza (and possibly in the West Bank) what it now faces in Lebanon with Hezbollah: A militant group that hides behind a government powerless to stop it.

Nakba 2.0

The other alternative, that Palestinians certainly fear, is another "Nakba" — the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. Although some figures in Israel have mentioned this possibility, including a marginal think tank headed by Meir Ben Shabbat, a former national security advisor, this is unlikely to be Israel's plan.

Left: Palestinians fleeing their homes in 1948 after the creation of the state of Israel. Right: Palestinians flee from northern Gaza to the south after the Israeli army issued an unprecedented evacuation warning on 13 October 2023

By doing so, Israel would send a major shockwave across the Arab world — particularly in Egypt — and would ensure it turns a government it has been able to work with, into a mortal enemy. This would roll back not just years of progress, but decades.

Although I understand why Palestinians in Gaza would fear such a scenario and why they would believe Israel is capable of contemplating it, anyone advocating for it in Israel will be deemed a dangerous fool, be it by other Israeli figures, and by Israel's allies, including the US.

And while the Bibi-led government has shown foolishness comes to it naturally, it is now under the tutelage of other "adults in the room" who won't sanction such actions.

Any Israeli idea to displace Palestinians from Gaza would send a major shockwave across the Arab world — particularly in Egypt — and would ensure it turns a government it has been able to work with, into a mortal enemy. This would roll back not just years of progress, but decades.

Destroying Hamas's military capabilities

Finally, Israeli officials have also claimed they would "destroy Hamas's military capabilities''. This certainly sounds like a more realistic plan, at face value. But even this objective will prove challenging.

To give a sense of scope, the campaign to recapture Raqqa from IS lasted five months. The campaign to recapture Mosul from IS took nine months. Gaza is a much bigger and even denser area.

Hamas is believed to have more than 30,000 men, several times more than IS — though Israel has also mobilised a broader force and is a much more solid force. Hamas has divested concrete for years to build an underground city, mainly in Gaza City, but also in parts of Central Gaza Strip, and east of Khan Yunis.

Egyptian soldiers inspect a smuggling tunnel in the divided border town of Rafah, along the border with the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, on November 4, 2014.

Israeli planes would have to use bunker-busters to destroy some of the tunnels, at the risk of killing hostages likely hidden inside. While Gaza faces a dire humanitarian crisis, Hamas probably has stored fuel, food and water to last for months.

Israel has been training specific units, including combat engineers and special forces, to fight in tunnels, but this will be a brutal war that will leave scores of civilians killed and most of Gaza destroyed.

By now, I expect that Israeli leaders and their partners have explored these scenarios in their heads, hopefully aloud. The cooler heads in the room will have made those assessments —they are hard to foretell by no stretch of the mind.

Hopefully, some of them understand that while Israel has to respond to Hamas's barbarity, it could just as easily make mistakes of epic proportions. Mistakes will only serve radicals across the region, including Iran — a country that's always been happy to exploit the misery of Palestinians and recruit more footsoldiers to feed its regional ambitions.

In one of his first speeches, Netanyahu said Israel's response would "change the Middle East". This is absolutely true: It could make it much, much worse, for Israel and for everybody else.

In one of his first speeches, Netanyahu said Israel's response would "change the Middle East". This is absolutely true: It could make it much, much worse, for Israel and for everybody else.

Caution should be the operating word. Israel should set realistic and gradual goals to degrade Hamas while fostering hope for an actual resolution of the conflict.

If I had faith in Netanyahu, I would suggest that, once the first parameters of the operation are set, he resigns, to absorb part of the public anger, allow for public trust to be restored, and a decision to be made by more legitimate figures.

I doubt he will. But faced with surprise, one should act with caution. And sometimes, it's better to be called a fool than to be one.

+ / -