Gaza the day after: Strategies for long-term stability

But a post-ceasefire Israeli withdrawal and its renewed facilitation of electricity, water, fuel, communications and other resources will only occur when Israel sees an acceptable outcome long-term, including on disarmament, governance, assistance and international engagement issues. 

This is Israel's "ace in the hole" in "day after" deliberations.

Disarmament of Hamas

While Israeli goals include the destruction of Hamas as a military and political force, that may not be entirely possible. 

Rather, as the International Coalition accomplished with the Islamic State (IS), Israel may define victory as the disarmament of Hamas (and smaller terrorist groups) to the degree that it cannot hold terrain and launch offensives like 7 October.

That would mean destroying most of its rockets, anti-tank missiles and mortars, killing or capturing top leaders and most of its elite shock troops, dismantling its tunnel system, weapons factories, fortifications and command and control facilities, and returning all hostages.  Israel may be able to achieve this itself if it accepts high Israeli casualties and resists international ceasefire calls. 

But even if Israel does accept a ceasefire without a complete victory, as noted above it is unlikely to leave Gaza or turn on the flow of services and thus allow a post-war arrangement, absent Hamas accepting a ceasefire and agreeing to complete its own disarmament.

Governance of Gaza post-withdrawal

As both the US and Israeli governments have ruled out long-term Israeli occupation, there are only two governance choices:  The Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas itself.  While as noted below there could be a role for an international coordination presence, such a presence could not govern.  

The best option by far would be the PA, despite its weaknesses.  But that would require the acquiescence of Hamas.  Even if largely stripped of its heavy weapons and leaders, it still will be a force which, as seen in the West Bank, the PA could not really defeat.  Such Hamas acquiescence is difficult but possible, depending upon the outcome of the fighting. 

Likewise, Hamas continuing its rule would require Israel's acquiescence despite its declared goal of ending it. 

But why would Israel agree? 

A combination of international pressure, success in disarming Hamas, a different approach to humanitarian and other assistance as outlined below, and the inability of the PA to assume governance could compel an Israeli change of heart. 

Provision of assistance

Assistance to the impoverished population of Gaza includes four elements:  humanitarian subsistence, the key priority during the fighting;  provision of essential services by Israel; a huge stabilisation and development programme run by UN agencies and various NGOs; and post-war reconstruction.   

For the most understandable, charitable reasons, those delivering assistance, UN Agencies, NGOs, and even Israel and Egypt to some degree, have operated as if such assistance to Gaza on one hand and the conflict between Hamas and Israel on the other were on two different planets. 

Yet international assistance in inadvertent ways enables Hamas' war machine, allowing it to siphon off assistance for its needs, to dedicate financial support from Iran to weapons rather than to its population, and to benefit from whatever popular satisfaction international help generates.  

Post 7 October, this must change because it is unimaginable that Israel will again provide significant services to Gaza absent concrete assurances on security and because the international community has a responsibility to avoid a repeat of this horrific war. 

Those providing international assistance to what amounts to a state thus cannot blithely continue business as usual once it becomes clear that that state's leadership would try to destroy a neighbouring state.

Aid organisations and UN agencies will baulk at any political leveraging of their laudatory actions, done under terrible, now dangerous, conditions.  But the first commandment of any effort to help Palestinians in Gaza is to ensure this conflict does not reoccur. 

And that requires every means possible to encourage Hamas, other terrorist organisations, and the population of Gaza to embrace and not undercut whatever arrangements are eventually reached to preserve peace.

Conditioning at least some assistance, particularly reconstruction and dual civilian-military use materials, on adherence to de-escalation, ceasefire and disarmament requirements will be critical to any viable solution.

Role of the international community

Here, the world can help. 

The UN should not govern Gaza.  But some ad-hoc international operations, working with the Gaza government, Israel and Egypt, the UN, NGOs and donors, can help make permanent a cessation of violence while improving the lot of the Gaza population. 

The possible mandates and organisation of such an operation are discussed below, but the first priority is understanding its mission. 

Beyond technical support to Gaza's governing organs, the operation would synchronise assistance efforts with the terms of whatever ceasefire is arranged, increasing or decreasing reconstruction aid and other facilitation based on compliance by Hamas and others with ceasefire and disarmament terms. 

Again, such conditioning will generate resistance among assistance providers, but donors should insist on it for at least some assistance.  In addition to this crucial role, an international operation could provide direct security, from internal policing support against terrorist cells to patrolling buffer zones between Israel and Gaza.

Various models of such operations have been deployed to help resolve conflicts, including, as French President Macron suggested, the Defeat-IS Global Coalition, as well as the High Representative Office for Bosnia and Herzegovina after 1995, and the EULEX Mission in Kosovo post-1999. 

Such missions benefit from a UN Security Council Mandate but are not under the UN Secretary-General, an important consideration for Israel.  

A UN mandate also gives more authority to any possible armed security role an international operation undertakes. The High Representative Office for Bosnia model probably best fits the Gaza situation. 

Aside from coordinating international assistance with the Bosnian central and regional governments, UN and other agencies, and donor states, that Office collaborated closely with the NATO security force and used political leverage and development, reconstruction and assistance sticks and carrots to pressure Bosnian leaders to adhere to ceasefire provisions. 

Relationship between Gaza and larger issues

No set of  "day after" governance, assistance, and disarmament efforts will permanently resolve the Gaza conflict without progress on the underlying issues at two levels. The first is the Israeli-Palestinian issue.  The least bad long-term solution remains the Oslo two-state construct, but the stars currently are not aligned for progress on it.

However,  only Israeli (and some American) internal politics blocks freezing Israeli settler activity in the West Bank and restarting productive talks between the Israeli Government and the PA. 

Given the extraordinary nature of President Biden's engagement for Israeli security, he has earned the right to demand such steps as a condition for America's massive military support.

Even with calm in Israeli-Palestinian affairs, longer term solutions are futile without better containing the Iranian regional threat, which exploits the Palestinian issue for its own regional aggression.  

That is a huge, longer-term issue, but it can no longer largely be ignored by Washington.  One glimmer of light from this horrible conflict is that if Hamas is disarmed, and Iran and its proxies deterred from intervening, Teheran's march through the Arab world would be significantly slowed.