Israel faces fierce resistance in the streets of the Gaza Strip (Reuters)

The occupying Power continues its war against the Palestinian people with a great goal of eliminating Hamas, but it was clear from the outset that Israel had no vision of how to achieve this goal, and there were doubts about its achievability, as confirmed in the following report published on the website of the Vision Center for Political Development.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak expressed these doubts best, stating in an interview that Hamas cannot be completely eliminated because it is "an ideological movement, and it exists in people's dreams, hearts and minds."

This view is not exclusive to Barak, as it can be said that the occupation government and its experts are aware of this fact.

It seems to the occupation that the problem is not Hamas, but the Gaza Strip with its more than two million and 200,<> citizens, which opened the debate about the "next day" after the elimination of Hamas.

The United States was the initiator of this issue when President Joe Biden, during his visit to Israel and his meeting with the Israeli War Council on October 18, announced that difficult questions would be asked of the leaders of the occupation.

Biden reportedly told Israeli leaders during his meeting with them: "Start thinking about what happens the next day, how do you see in a month or two or a year — you have all the legitimacy and time to fight — but what happens the next day?"

Perhaps this American quest to find an arrangement for the future of Gaza came after the United States and the occupying power realized that there is a wide Arab rejection of the issue of the displacement of Gaza to Sinai or elsewhere.

This issue raises a large number of questions about the alternatives put forward by the occupying power with full American support to solve the "problem of the Gaza Strip", as well as the obstacles faced by these alternatives, and what option is currently implemented by the occupying power on the ground?

Despite this, the occupying Power is determined to adhere to the option of displacement as a final solution because of what it sees in the Gaza Strip as a permanent problem for its security and the security of the Zionist project as a whole, and this option it implements on the ground without officially announcing its adoption, while recognizing the Arab, Egyptian and Jordanian rejection in particular, and the magnitude of the risks involved in this option.


Alternatives to occupation. The most beautiful is bitter

Zionist professor and orientalist Michael Milstein wrote an article on October 17 in Yedioth Ahronoth entitled "Who Will Rule Gaza... These are the choices, and they are all bad." He was perhaps one of the first to address this issue among the leaders and experts of the occupation, taking advantage of his orientalist knowledge of Palestinian society.

Milstein began his article by questioning the possibility of eliminating Hamas, but if the occupation succeeds in eliminating it, which is not certain, he has four options for the future of Gaza, two of which are bad and two worse.

The worst and the most abstainable are:

1- The reoccupation of the Gaza Strip and continued Israeli rule, and this option will have a heavy security, economic and political price, which is similar to what happened with the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2- Eliminating the Hamas rule and quickly leaving Gaza, which will leave behind a vacuum that will quickly turn into serious security chaos.

And less bad:

1. Restoring the Palestinian Authority to rule Gaza, but achieving this option requires the government of Israel to get rid of the perception that the PA is a worse enemy than Hamas.

The hard-running Palestinian Authority (PA) of the West Bank also does not seem to be interested in taking on this complex task, and if it accepts this task "on the back of an Israeli tank," it is not known how long it will hold.

2- Developing an alternative political system that runs Gaza based on local leaders (mayors, notables and tribes) with the participation of the Palestinian Authority and external support from Egypt.

Although Milstein is leaning towards the latter option as the least bad option, he nevertheless doubts its possibility as well, what this means is that it was clear from the beginning that the options before Israel for the future of Gaza are few and difficult, if not impossible to achieve.

However, the occupying power, with the support of the United States of America, along with Western countries, the most important of which are Britain and Germany, tried to put forward these and other options, and with each time it turns out that one option is impossible or difficult, this state moves to another option.


To Sinai

The first option that Israel sought to implement with full American and Western support was to displace the residents of the Gaza Strip to Sinai, and the talk at the time was about temporary displacement until Israel completed its mission to eliminate Hamas.

This option came before the Israeli army launched the ground incursion into the Gaza Strip, because the occupation leaders were aware of the difficulty of carrying out the ground operation in light of the overcrowding of the Gaza Strip, but the departure of the residents from it inevitably means that they will not return to it, and this is the ultimate goal of the occupation.

Neither Israeli nor Western officials, especially Americans, have explicitly declared the idea of displacing Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Sinai, but there have been many unofficial or extremist statements and calls for the displacement of Gazans.

This includes the call of Israeli Minister Avi Dichter, who described the displacement of Palestinians from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip as the 2023 Nakba, but since the beginning of the war, and with the escalation of talk about the ground invasion of the Strip, some Israeli and American circles began to call for the provision of what they call "safe humanitarian corridors" to Sinai to spare Palestinian civilians the effects of the war.

In addition, US President Joe Biden's financial support plan for Ukraine and Israel included a $3.495 billion clause entitled "Immigration and Asylum Aid," a vague phrase that was coupled with US efforts to convince Arab countries to displace Gazans.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken promoted the option of displacement during a tour from October 11 to 16 to seven countries in the region, but he did not issue any statements in this regard, but announced at the end of his tour that the United States opposes the idea of displacement.

However, the repeated and strongly stated rejection of the issue of displacement by a number of Arab countries, especially Egypt and Jordan, indicates the magnitude of the pressure exerted on these countries to accept the idea of displacement, perhaps the most important of which is the announcement by the Egyptian National Security Council, whose meeting was chaired by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on October 15, rejecting and condemning the policy of displacement.

The Council stressed at the time that Egyptian national security is a red line, in reference to the fact that the displacement plan poses a threat to his country, as well as Jordan issued successive statements clarifying that the displacement of Palestinians, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, is considered a declaration of war on Jordan, one of which came from Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh.


Egyptian No's

After this explicit Arab rejection of the displacement plan, the United States, through its president, who visited Israel and met with its war council on October 17, began to invite the occupation to think about the next day.

Several plans have been put forward since then for the future of Gaza, all of which have clearly failed and have not received any Arab acceptance or consensus, including the re-administration of the Gaza Strip by the Palestinian Authority, handing it over to the Egyptian administration, handing it over to a joint Arab international administration, handing it over to NATO and United Nations forces, or re-occupying the Strip by Israel.

It was reported that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi explained to CIA Director William Burns during his visit to Cairo on November 7, what can be called the four Egyptian no's, namely: He rejected the displacement of the residents of the Gaza Strip, rejected Israel's reoccupation of the Gaza Strip and its administration, rejected the proposal of the Egyptian administration of the Gaza Strip, and rejected the entry of NATO forces or any other foreign forces into it.


Mysterious American recipe

With this Arab and regional rejection, the United States gradually retreated from its various theses to try to find a way out of the Gaza predicament, as Blinken, during his stay in Tokyo to attend the Group of Seven summit, presented what is described as the five no's, which are "No to the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, no to using Gaza as a platform for terrorism, no to reoccupying Gaza after the end of the conflict, no to the siege of Gaza, no to reducing the territory of Gaza."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared his rejection of the idea of the Palestinian Authority returning to rule the Gaza Strip, declaring that he will not accept the return of a regime that teaches its children to kill and hate Jews, finances terrorists and does not condemn "atrocities" on October 7.

On the other hand, he stressed his insistence on maintaining security control over the Gaza Strip, including "the ability for the Israeli army to enter" into the Strip whenever it wants to eliminate terrorists who could be established in the Strip, while at the same time opposing the idea of handing over the Strip to international forces.

Netanyahu reiterated his position on the Palestinian Authority and the occupation of Gaza at a conference he held with ministers Benny Gantz and Yoav Galant on November 18, concluding by saying, "I will not agree to the entry into Gaza of any party that pays money for terrorism, terrorists and their families, raises children to kill Jews and eliminate the State of Israel, and without such a shift in the character of the civil administration that will exist in Gaza, it is only a matter of time until Gaza returns to terrorism and I will not accept that."

He refers to the Palestinian Authority, which is publicized by settlers, as the other side of Hamas. Regarding the continued control of the occupation over Gaza, Netanyahu adds: "There is another condition that I set for the next day, that the IDF will have complete freedom to act in the Gaza Strip in the face of every threat, only in this way will we ensure the demilitarization of Gaza."

Although there is American opposition to these Israeli positions, and an American assertion that there is "a Palestinian leadership and a union for Gaza with the West Bank under the leadership of the Palestinian Authority," there is ambiguity in these positions, with Blinken pointing to the need for a "transitional period" at the end of the war, and that the occupying power will assume for an indefinite period overall security responsibility in Gaza.

These phrases carry a great degree of ambiguity and maneuver, as they imply many possibilities, the most important of which is the continuation of the Israeli occupation of the Strip, especially as it says "for an unlimited period", and the idea of the transitional phase means the stage of preparing a system for the administration of Gaza from which none of the options are excluded, in any case there does not seem to be a significant difference in views between the occupying power and the United States regarding the future of the Gaza Strip.


Major obstacles

It was clear from the outset that not all of the alternatives were viable, Milstein explained before they began to be rolled out.

However, the extensive handling of Israeli and American plans during the days of war raises big question marks, as there are many obstacles to the implementation of any of these alternatives, the most important of which are:

  • Arab and regional opposition to most of these plans, and this is very important, because the implementation of a number of them requires Arab approval and participation.
  • The weakness of the Palestinian Authority, its erosion of legitimacy, its inability to administer the West Bank, as well as Israel's apparent efforts to further marginalize, weaken and limit it to a specific functional role.
  • The possibility of opening new war fronts, especially by Hezbollah, whose Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has stressed that he will not allow the defeat of the Palestinian resistance and Hamas in particular.
  • On the other hand, the occupation army has not been able to occupy the Gaza Strip, not even its north, so its progress is very slow, and its areas of progress are areas of escalating confrontation, not areas of occupation and the establishment of control.

In the face of these very difficult obstacles, it seems that talking about the post-Hamas phase or the "next day" is far from reality, and it is not certain to happen if nothing exactly the opposite happens, and Netanyahu said in light of this: "We will not talk about the future of Gaza until after Hamas is eliminated."


Back to square one

The long experience with the Israeli occupation proves that its permanent policy is to put forward plans and visions and engage everyone with discussing them, while it is busy shaping the reality on the ground.

Since the Oslo Accords in 1993, the occupation has put forward dozens of plans and initiatives, declared its commitment to the two-state solution, signed agreements and engaged in multiple negotiations, then stopped negotiations and began to put forward new initiatives, such as Netanyahu's economic peace, the plan to annex the West Bank and the "deal of the century", the reduction of the conflict by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, and the decisive plan of settler Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

While everyone was preoccupied with these plans and proposals, the occupation was imposing facts on the ground and reshaping the fait accompli in order to achieve its ultimate goals related to settlement and displacement in the West Bank.

The current reality in the Gaza Strip is no different, as while all parties are concerned about the post-war issue, the occupation imposes facts on the ground, so the inconsistency and lack of clarity of the occupation in the future of the Gaza Strip is not only related to the fact that it does not have implementable goals, but rather the policy of creating facts through the field so as not to be criticized that hinders the implementation of its goals.

For example, in the structure of the Zionist narrative about the events of the Nakba in 1948, Israel justifies the reason for the displacement of Palestinians because it came at the request of the Arab leaders to the Palestinians to leave their lands, and that it had no plan or policy for displacement.

It is now noticeable that the occupation is focusing most of its military efforts on the northern Gaza Strip, but this effort ensures the destruction of all the necessities of life in it, including infrastructure, hospitals, stations, houses, residential buildings and many others, and imposes a deadly siege on it that multiplies it by committing criminal massacres.

In these circumstances, people have no choice but to flee to the south or wait for death from starvation, thirst and bombardment, and it is known that the occupation will move to carry out its ground invasion of the south soon, which means that it will practice the same policies there.

The Israeli army began dropping leaflets on areas in the northern Gaza Strip, calling on them to flee to the south, and the final plan was displacement.

Of course, Egypt categorically rejects the option of displacement to Sinai, but displacement may not occur as expected, but as Smotrich called for "voluntary migration" to the countries of the world.

The term voluntary migration is merely a play on words, because after destroying all the necessities of life in Gaza and depriving people of their most basic rights, they will have no choice but to flee this reality to another place.


Turning Gaza into a repellent environment. Success is not guaranteed

The occupation has fallen into a dilemma regarding the way to deal with the Gaza Strip, although the solution to this impasse is very simple: a concession to meet the minimum Palestinian national rights to establish a fully sovereign Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.

However, the occupation completely ignored this solution, and denied the possibility of achieving it, and now the United States is looking for a way out of its predicament and lack of options in dealing with the Gaza Strip.

It is clear that the West Bank is currently outside all these calculations, although the predicament of the occupation is not limited to Gaza, but also includes the West Bank, including Jerusalem.

In light of the preoccupation with discussing the American and Israeli plans and theses for the post-war phase, the occupation is busy drawing the future of Gaza and the West Bank by working on the ground and creating conditions for displacement, under the name of "voluntary immigration", by "raising the awareness" of the Palestinian people and their terrorism and pushing them to surrender to the Zionist killing and destruction machine, to be receptive to the idea of leaving their land, which is no longer habitable.

However, it is not necessary for the occupation to succeed in this endeavor either, as the obstacles that faced all the alternatives that were previously proposed, including displacement, face this undeclared option as well, as everything depends on the outcome of the war and the ability of the occupying power to risk pushing other fronts and Arab countries to the front line. But this calls for standing up to this plan as well, and taking measures to stop the systematic killing and destruction aimed at exterminating and displacing Palestinians.

Source : Al Jazeera