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How Israel Can Ensure Security in Post-War Gaza
Smoke rises following Israeli strikes, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, in Gaza City, Nov. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Al-Masri
JNS.org – Israel’s calculated and legitimate response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre and years of rocket fire on Israel’s civilian population is advancing systematically, leading many to anticipate the eventual dismantling of the terror group and its leadership. However, divergent views have emerged regarding the future governance of Gaza.
A paramount objective is mitigating the security challenges confronting Israel. Post-conflict, Israel’s military and security apparatus will maintain a concerted effort to systematically destroy Hamas’s presence within Gaza, targeting terrorists and dismantling both its military and administrative infrastructures. Simultaneously, a structured, phased strategy will be imperative to institute effective civil governance mechanisms in the coastal enclave.
One proposal for post-Hamas Gaza has come from Israeli Knesset member and former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon. His plan came in response to pressure from the Biden administration, which has recently been demanding that the close of this war result in two states for two peoples, with Gaza being governed by the Palestinian Authority.
Danon’s proposal rejects the P.A. as the ruling party. Instead, he foresees the best governing solution as the establishment of an international framework that will consist of the region’s countries and the broader international community.
In his plan, Danon lists five core steps for Gaza after the war. These comprise complete demilitarization of the Gaza Strip; the establishment of a defensive security buffer zone along the border with Israel; an upgrade of the Rafah crossing on the Gazan side, which he envisions as being overseen by a combination of Israeli and international forces; the enabling of voluntary emigration for Gazans who wish to relocate; and finally, economic rehabilitation within Gaza on the premise of the renunciation of incitement and terror.
Danon explained: “My five-point plan will provide a solution that will ensure the security of Israel’s residents in the southern communities and will also allow the Gazans to build a normal life free from the trappings of hate and terror. Given the devastation and trauma [inflicted on Israel by] Oct. 7…we cannot abide…a solution that involves Gaza being ruled by any authority that supports and promotes terror. We will never risk the lives of our citizens in this way.”
Danon told JNS that in Gaza, Israel will retain the freedom “to act against any terror threat, as we do in Judea and Samaria.”
Israel will not count on the international community to fight terrorism, “but we are counting on them to deal with the civilian issue and rebuild society in Gaza,” he added.
In a similar vein, former National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror said on a JINSA conference call on Thursday that Israel will require a buffer zone on the Gaza side of the fence and will also need to maintain freedom of action as it has in the West Bank and Syria to prevent and eliminate threats to the Jewish state.
There are several stages of operation that Israel is considering. Initially and of immediate concern is killing or capturing all Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists and destroying all terror infrastructure. At the same time, Israel is working with the Biden administration to ensure the transfer of aid to the Palestinian population.
Dr. Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, and Col. (res.) Prof. Gabi Siboni, an expert on cyber security, military strategy and technology at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, noted that at a later stage, “Complex needs will need to be addressed, such as education, employment, advanced health services, environment, communications and infrastructure, among other needs.”
The question of who will be addressing these needs has yet to be solved. Israel has expressed disinterest in taking on this responsibility and instead would like to see the Abraham Accords group of nations, together with the United States, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, adopt the role of rebuilding Gaza and rehabilitating its residents while ensuring the end of all incitement against Israel.
Israel also needs to prepare for the political chaos that will take place in Gaza after the transition period from high-intensity to low-intensity conflict, after achieving full operational freedom there.
As part of Israel’s complete breakaway from Gaza, Michael and Siboni suggested that Israel’s coordination and liaison administration, the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), “be dismantled to ensure complete Israeli civilian disengagement from the Gaza Strip. A similar process should be examined in Judea and Samaria to create an alternative organizational structure to the P.A.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes the P.A. being given influence in Gaza, citing its historical failures, corruption and anti-Israeli sentiments. The P.A. is known for inciting violence, supporting terrorism and lacking legitimacy.
According to Michael and Siboni, “Three decades of P.A. rule have shown it to be—through most of that time—a failed, corrupt and illegitimate entity, devoid of domestic legitimacy. The P.A. has also become a major instrument in building a Palestinian consensus that denies the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. The P.A. has systematically incited against Israel and the Jews and delegitimized Israel.”
They also noted that to date, no P.A. official has condemned the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7. “In addition, many schools under the P.A.’s jurisdiction glorify the massacre. It is clear that after the war it will be necessary to reexamine the situation in Judea and Samaria as well,” they said.
“There’s a need to revise the educational curriculum in Palestinian territories to eliminate content that incites violence against Israel,” they added.
Similarly, Israel’s National Security Council Director Tzachi Hanegbi said in a Saudi editorial published last week that Israel seeks a “reformed” P.A., and focused on the need to denazify the next generation growing up in Gaza and Judea and Samaria.
Michael and Siboni also called for an end to the P.A.’s “pay-for-slay” policy of paying salaries and allowances to terrorists detained and imprisoned in Israel, or to the families of terrorists.
According to Michael and Siboni, one of the most important demands Israel must now make of any new Palestinian leadership is that Palestinians must drop “the two foundational pillars of the Palestinian ethos: the ‘right of return’ and the ‘armed struggle.’ To this end, all mechanisms for perpetuating Palestinian refugeehood—the refugee camps and UNRWA—must be dismantled.”
Overall, Michael and Siboni’s message is that Israel must ensure a strategic reevaluation and restructuring of governance and security in the Gaza Strip and the wider Palestinian territories, with a focus on regional collaboration.
As part of its plan to eradicate terrorism in the Gaza Strip, Israel will need to maintain security control, including over the Philadelphi corridor, which it left in 2005 due to pressure from then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. This was a costly mistake that led to the massive militarization of Gaza, allowed Hamas to fire approximately 100,000 rockets at Israel, and led to the massive stockpiling of weaponry the IDF sees today in Gaza’s homes, hospitals, mosques, schools and tunnels.
Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told JNS that Israel and Egypt “will need to share national security responsibilities, each on its side of the border.”
He noted that Israel, “like in areas A and B of the areas under nominal P.A. control in Judea and Samaria, will always maintain the right to pursue terrorists” in post-war Gaza.
“It remains unclear who and how internal policing will be handled in Gaza, but it is reasonable to assess that local police forces will secure their local districts,” he said. “What is an essential pre-condition to future security for both Gazans and Israel is that the IDF destroys Hamas militarily and politically with an overwhelming victory,” he said.
“The Arab world as well as the Iranian regime and its terror proxies are watching carefully,” he warned.
However, David Weinberg, a senior fellow at Misgav: The Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy, and Israel’s Defense and Security Forum, told JNS that post-Hamas Gaza “is mostly the world’s problem, not Israel’s, because the resolution is tied to broader regional battles.”
“Israel is done with coddling Gaza,” said Weinberg. “Relief and rehabilitation for Gazan Palestinians is now the world’s problem, not Israel’s.”
Weinberg suggested that Israel is “exempt from answering this question—certainly now when it must laser-focus only on outright military victory. The demand that Israel answer this question now is pointedly meant to prevent Israel from doing what needs to be done in Gaza, so it must be rebuffed.”
Weinberg agreed with other experts that Israel will need to create “a new security buffer zone inside Gaza and along its entire perimeter (maybe including the Philadelphi corridor on the border with Egypt) which Israel will control indefinitely.”
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Drexel University Professor Stole Signs From Synagogue, Police Say
Illustrative: People pass a cluster of signs outside a pro-Hamas encampment at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. on April 28, 2024. Photo: Max Herman via Reuters Connect
A Drexel University professor allegedly participated in a mass theft of items from a synagogue in a suburb outside Philadelphia, a local NBC affiliate reported on Tuesday.
Mariana Chilton, 56, a professor of health management and policy at Drexel, has been accused of stealing pro-Israel signs from the Main Line Reform Temple in Lower Merion Township, traveling there from her neighborhood of residency, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. Chilton allegedly drove the getaway car while two other accomplices, Sarah Prickett and Sam Penn — who is from New York — trespassed the synagogue and absconded with the loot.
“We are just taking them because we feel like it is a representative of genocide,” Chilton told law enforcement after being caught in the act, the report stated. She then, after offering to “just put them back,” refused to identify herself and comply with other lawful orders.
Video evidence provided by a local resident placed Chilton and her accomplices at the scene of the crime, and a Main Line Reform Temple official identified the signs recovered from her car as the temple’s property. That was enough for law enforcement to charge her with several offenses, including conspiracy and theft. She is also charged with driving without a license and not registering her vehicle.
Drexel University has not responded to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment for this story.
Experts have told The Algemeiner in the past academic year that while the conduct of anti-Zionist students should be reported on, the role of faculty in fostering and engaging in antisemitic acts should be closely scrutinized. Last semester, anti-Zionist faculty attached themselves to anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrations, sometimes breaking the law by preventing officers from dispersing unauthorized demonstrations and detaining lawbreakers.
At Northeastern University in Boston, professors formed a human barrier around a student encampment to stop its dismantling by officers, and at Columbia University, anti-Zionist faculty at the school, as well its affiliate Barnard College, staged a walkout in support of the demonstrations and demanded the abeyance of disciplinary sanctions against anti-Zionist students — dozens of whom cheered Hamas and threatened more massacres of Jews similar to Oct. 7 — who violated school rules.
Chilton’s case is unlike any other reported in the past year, however. While dozens of professors have been accused of abusing their Jewish students and encouraging their classmates to bully and shame them, none are alleged to have resorted to stealing from a Jewish house of worship to make their point.
Mass participation of faculty in pro-Hamas demonstrations marks an inflection point in American history, Asaf Romirowsky, an expert on the Middle East and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told The Algemeiner in April.
Since the 1960s, he explained, far-left “scholar activists” have gradually seized control of the higher education system, tailoring admissions processes and the curricula to foster ideological radicalism and conformity, which students then carry with them into careers in government, law, corporate America, and education. This system, he concluded, must be challenged.
“The cost of trading scholarship for political propagandizing has been a zeal and pride among faculty who esteem and cheer terrorism, a historical development which is quite telling and indicative of the evolution of the Marxist ideology which has been seeping into the academy since the 1960s,” Romirowsky said. “The message is very clear to all of us who are looking on from the outside at this, and institutions have to begin drawing a red line. The protests are not about free speech. They are about supporting terrorism, about calling for a genocide of Jews.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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White House Cites Biden Clash With Netanyahu Over Iran as Proof of President’s Mental Fitness
US President Joe Biden hosts the 2023 Teacher of the Year event at the White House in Washington, US, April 24, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Amid growing concerns over US President Joe Biden’s mental fitness, key White House officials are suggesting his foreign policy discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including a clash over how to respond to Iran’s unprecedented military attack on the Israeli homeland earlier this year, serve as evidence that he is still capable of leading from the Oval Office.
Biden and Netanyahu engaged in a heated back-and-forth in the immediate aftermath of Iran launching a massive missile and drone salvo at Israel in April, according to a new report by the New York Times. The US and other allies helped Israel shoot down nearly every drone and missile. The attack caused only one injury.
However, the Times revealed that while Netanyahu initially wanted to respond to Iran in a forceful way, Biden threatened to withhold US support in the event of a major Israeli retaliatory strike, arguing it would risk sparking a regional conflict in the Middle East.
“Aides present in the Situation Room the night that Iran hurled a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel portrayed a president in commanding form, lecturing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone to avoid a retaliatory escalation that would have inflamed the Middle East,” the Times reported. “‘Let me be crystal clear,’ Mr. Biden said. ‘If you launch a big attack on Iran, you’re on your own.’”
“Mr. Netanyahu pushed back hard, citing the need to respond in kind to deter future attacks,” the report continued. “‘You do this,’ Mr. Biden said forcefully, ‘and I’m out.’ Ultimately, the aides noted, Mr. Netanyahu scaled back his response.”
Israel’s military response was small and appeared aimed at minimizing the risk of escalation.
The Times report, headlined “Biden’s Lapses Are Said to Be Increasingly Common and Worrisome,” came on the heels of Biden delivering a widely-panned presidential debate performance last Thursday against former US President Donald Trump. Biden’s performance, which oftentimes appeared incoherent and muddled, set off alarm bells in Democratic circles, sending the president’s allies scrambling to extinguish concerns over his age and mental acuity.
While highlighting rising concerns, the news story also noted instances in which, according to aides, Biden appeared coherent and capable, citing the exchange with Netanyahu and his handling of the Iranian missile attack more broadly as one such example.
However, an anonymous Biden administration official told the Times that they are unsure whether Biden could hold his own against adversarial foreign leaders such as Vladimir Putin of Russia.
On Wednesday, the White House directly attributed quotes to Netanyahu in which the Israeli premier reportedly said he found Biden “very clear and very focused” during his visit to Israel following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. According to a White House spokesperson, Netanyahu also reportedly cited the “more than a dozen phone conversations, extended conversations with President Biden” as evidence of the commander-in-chief’s vitality.
“Some White House officials adamantly rejected the suggestion of a president not up to handling tough foreign counterparts and told the story of the night Iran attacked Israel in April,” the New York Times reported. “Mr. Biden and his top national security officials were in the Situation Room for hours, bracing for the attack, which came around midnight. Biden was updated in real time as the forces he ordered into the region began shooting down Iranian missiles and drones. He peppered leaders with questions throughout the response.”
During its first direct attack on Israeli territory, Iran in April launched roughly 300 missiles and drones at the Jewish state.
Leading up to the attack, Iranian officials had promised revenge for an airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria that they attributed to Israel. The strike killed seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a widely designated terrorist organization, including two senior commanders. One of the commanders allegedly helped plan the Hamas terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the incident.
“After it was over, and almost all of the missiles and drones had been shot down, Mr. Biden called Mr. Netanyahu to persuade him not to escalate. ‘Take the win,’” Mr. Biden told the prime minister, without reading from a script or extensive notes, according to two people in the room. In the end, Mr. Netanyahu opted for a much smaller and proportionate response that effectively ended the hostilities,” the article added.
Days later, Israel responded to the Iranian aggression by launching a modest missile attack on an airbase near Isfahan. The Jewish state sought to show that it could effectively target key strategic locations in Iran while not escalating the conflict any further. Netanyahu insisted on launching a retaliatory attack against Iran, arguing that ignoring the Iranian strikes would incentivize more attacks against the Jewish state.
IRGC Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that Iran is waiting for “the opportunity” to launch a new round of strikes against Israel, Iranian media reported on Tuesday, potentially boosting Netanyahu’s argument that a smaller response would invite further attacks.
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Journalist at US-Based Nonprofit Promoted Stabbing Israelis, Depicted Rescued Hostage as Pig Drinking Blood: Report
Palestinian terrorists ride an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot
A journalist at a US-based nonprofit posted tutorials on how to commit stabbing attacks and depicted a rescued Israeli hostage as a pig drinking blood, according to newly surfaced social media posts.
Eitan Fischberger, a communications analyst and former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) staff sergeant who first broke the story on X/Twitter, alleged that Mahmoud Ajjour, a correspondent for The Palestine Chronicle, posted disturbing images and videos to his Instagram page.
Fischberger posted screenshots and screen recordings of the posts.
According to The Chronicle‘s website, Ajjour is a photojournalist and correspondent for the outlet, which is a US-based 501c3, or nonprofit organization.
One of the posted images depicted Noa Argamani — an Israeli who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, and then rescued in an IDF special operation last month — as a pig drinking blood from a Coca-Cola bottle.
Here, for example, Ajjour posted a picture of Israeli hostage Noa Argamani, portrayed as a pig drinking the blood of Palestinians.
Noa, as you recall, was freed by Israeli forces in the same rescue operation in which Ajjour’s terrorist colleague was killed pic.twitter.com/oiLCqekxbl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
In Oct. 2015, Ajjour posted a picture of a masked Palestinian holding up a knife, with the caption, “I declare it a revolution.”
That time — from approximately Sept. 2015 to June 2016 — was referred to as the “knife intifada,” as there was an uptick in Palestinian terrorist attacks, particularly using knives, against Israelis in Jerusalem, along with other parts of Israel and the West Bank.
Ajjour also seems mighty fine endorsing stabbing attacks pic.twitter.com/xi2MnZVddl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
During that same month, Ajjour also reportedly posted a two-part tutorial on how to carry out stabbings with the caption, “May Allah protect them,” likely referring to those who were engaging in such attacks.
So much, in fact, that he uploaded a two-part instruction video showing off some best practices for stabbing Israelis pic.twitter.com/Z12rVo4Enx
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
Then, in 2023, after the son of a Hamas preacher was killed when a device he was trying to launch at Israel exploded, Ajjour mourned his death on Instagram. “Your father’s legacy is proud of you,” he wrote alongside a picture that included what appeared to be a Hamas flag.
And here, Ajjour mourns the death of Bara’a al-Zard, son of Hamas preacher Wael al-Zard.
Silly Bara’a died in an explosion caused by a device he was trying to launch at Israeli forces near the Gaza security fencehttps://t.co/vZR6IW0shF pic.twitter.com/ipQw55BYd7
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
This is not the first time a journalist from The Palestine Chronicle was alleged to have either supported or partaken in terrorism.
Abdallah Aljamal, who was a correspondent for The Chronicle, allegedly held three Israeli hostages in his home, according to the Israeli government. He was killed during a raid that rescued four hostages, including Argamani. After the allegations came to light, The Chronicle changed Aljamal’s status on its website from a correspondent to a contributor.
The Palestine Chronicle did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Fichberger wrote that he wants the US House Ways and Means Committee to investigate The Chronicle for what seems to have become a pattern.
“If The Chronicle is let off the hook for employing an actual terrorist hostage-taker, it would prove that the American counter-terror legal apparatus really is irreparably broken,” he wrote.
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