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Reconstruction of Gaza Is the Way to Regain Initiative in War on Hamas
An UNRWA aid truck at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
Israel’s wars, according to Israel’s traditional defense strategy, are aimed at thwarting and removing military threats, not at politically shaping the region. Hence our familiar focus on the military dimension. But the goal of the war in Gaza is more ambitious: the destruction of the Hamas regime.
Accordingly, its realization depends on additional dimensions. A slow reconstruction of parts of Gaza based on military achievements can regain the initiative, transfer the pressure back to Hamas, and serve as a lever for a hostage deal. This is also a one-time opportunity for Israel to physically shape the ruined Strip according to its interests. Once we finally get out of the strategic corner we’ve fallen into, we would be wise to return to the more modest Israeli approach to war. We will focus on the effective removal of threats and leave the business of political engineering to the powers.
A total war of attrition
Since the War of Independence, the State of Israel has not known such a long and comprehensive war as the current war in Gaza. The 1970-1971 War of Attrition lasted about a year and a half, but it did not have the scope of forces or continuity of the current war. The First Lebanon War officially lasted only three months.
Elsewhere, I have called the current war Israel’s first total war. I don’t mean “total war” in the sense with which the phrase is applied to the two world wars of the 20th century. Those wars were total in terms of general mobilization, the use of all means of war, including unconventional weapons, and the intentional targeting of civilian populations. The situation in Gaza is the opposite.
It is difficult to recall any other war in which one side fought while making sure to deliver supplies and humanitarian assistance to the enemy population. By the term “total war” I mean to highlight the contrast between this war and its goals from the limited war approach that has always characterized the State of Israel.
Contrary to our original defense strategy, in this war we set as a goal not only the destruction of the Hamas army, but also the destruction of the Hamas regime.
The historical precedents are misleading. In the First Lebanon War (1982), we expelled the PLO from Lebanon and tried to stabilize Maronite rule. The PLO, as we know, was a foreign entity in Lebanon, hated by most Lebanese. The Maronites were a strong local faction and the historical rulers of Lebanon.
The Sinai operation (1956) was indeed intended to damage and overthrow the Nasser regime, but the State of Israel was only a junior partner in the Anglo-French scheme.
Both these affairs are far from the ambition of the current war, which is to remove a neighboring regime that has a strong grip on Gaza. Both those wars are also remembered as total failures.
The historical failures highlight the logic of Israel’s modest approach to wars. Our strategy recognized Israel’s power limitations. No matter how victorious it is on the battlefield, Israel cannot forcefully influence the hatred and hostile intentions on the other side, much less engineer its politics. The core concept of this strategy — decisive defeat on the battlefield — was always reserved for the military dimension alone. Eliminating the immediate military threat was intended to restore security and allow Israel to avoid a prolonged war of attrition that would inevitably serve the other side.
That is exactly what Hamas was aiming for when it invaded Israel on October 7. Sinwar’s strategy was to drag Israel into an attritional war that would eventually exhaust the IDF in general and the reserve forces in particular, empty the munitions stockpile, and turn the international community against Israel.
Rehab program
The goals of the current war, therefore, must by necessity extend beyond Israel’s comfort zone and the healthy understanding that characterized us in the past. Under the circumstances of October 2023, there was no better alternative.
In the article “Sustainable Strategy,” I analyzed the process in which we deviated from the correct basic assumptions of Israeli strategy. Wrong assumptions, primarily the assumption that the State of Israel had become a regional power, maneuvered us into corner where we remain stuck today. I further argued that the flawed theory according to which we can influence the intentions of the enemies in order to “deter them” without paying attention to their combat capabilities is what allowed the building up of the terrorist armies that delivered the blow of October. We now cling to the opposite error.
Much has been written about the Israeli refusal to deal with the “day after” issue. In the absence of a civilian alternative, Hamas has not only returned to control and restored its power in the neighborhoods from which the IDF withdraws, but it does not even feel threatened. There is, therefore, no time constraint from Hamas’s point of view, even in the context of a hostage deal.
If “total victory” means a complete and lasting removal of Hamas, it should only be understood as a long-term strategy that includes not only the military defeat of Hamas and the collapse of its government but also the stabilization and pacification of the Strip. Israel will be required to take care of the stabilization of the Strip through civil, security, and economic control mechanisms.
Clear strategic thinking, not politicization of the war, is required. The analogy of the Second World War, which was used to establish the idea of ”absolute victory,” indicates what is required here. De-radicalization of Germany and Japan was possible not only thanks to their unconditional surrender but also to some civil-economic measures that were taken.
In an attempt to correct the mistake of three decades of appeasement and deterrence strategy, Israel is now making the opposite mistake. We set a clear political war goal — removing the rule of Hamas — but continue to refuse to carry out any non-military war planning.
In principle, I do not believe a war for regime change is the right idea for the State of Israel. But in a practical sense, we have attached ourselves to that aim by allowing the build-up of terrorist armies on our borders. This war should be considered a painful but one-time weaning process. If we have committed to this, it is necessary to see the constraint as an opportunity as well.
Resume initiative by dictating the terms of restoration
The truth must be told. The war is stuck.
The pressure on all fronts — a hostage deal, international hostility, the economy, the northern front, the internal front, even the combat stockpiles — is all on Israel. The military raids returning to the Strip and the operation that started in Rafah, as important as they are, will not restore Israel’s strategic initiative. It is also absolutely clear from Hamas’ demands in the negotiations that the war has moved to the stage where the parties are competing for the future political order in Gaza.
The rehabilitation of Gaza should be transformed from a Hamas demand in the negotiations, which the State of Israel is presented as refusing, to a strategic lever that will return the initiative to Israel and the pressure to Hamas.
Meanwhile, the desired end state for Israel must be discussed again. The current strategic vision according to which the Gaza Strip will become a “lawn mowing” space is correct but not satisfactory. Although it is too early and too painful at the moment, we must seize the crisis in Gaza as an opportunity for a redesign of the Palestinian arena.
Instead of repeatedly occupying the same neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip, Israel should take advantage of the reoccupation to create safe spaces for rehabilitation. These spaces can be secured by IDF activity around them and managed by an Arab-American-Palestinian coalition. All the actors mentioned desire such an initiative and are ready for it. Initiating this move would allow Israel to influence the way secured neighborhoods are restored, such as through the registration of citizens; prevention of the entry of Hamas operatives; kicking out Hamas-supporting UNRWA people; introducing alternative education and welfare systems, including an extensive de-radicalization program; and more. Humanitarian and economic support mechanisms can make these supervised rehabilitation areas attractive. The threat to Hamas rule would intensify as the areas of rehabilitation are stabilized and expanded.
As the reconstruction expands to more neighborhoods, Israel will also be able to participate in the urban re-planning of the Gaza Strip. Roads and transportation, employment centers, and other infrastructures will be rebuilt with Israeli interests in mind, like an open buffer zone and other security needs. As the economic planning of the Strip expands, Israel will be able to better build its financial oversight mechanisms, which have been neglected under the fault strategy. Replacing the terror-finance-based economy with a productive one for the people of Gaza should also contribute to de-radicalization.
Focusing and concentrating efforts on specific neighborhoods for rehabilitation will increase the chances of success and build the capacity for gradual expansion. Successful reconstruction areas will not only undermine Hamas’s self-confidence. It is possible that local prosperity, conditional on systematic de-radicalization, could also influence the West Bank as a pressure lever on the corrupt and terror-supporting Palestinian regime there.
Take politics out of the equation
The issue of “the day after” is stuck on the political level. The right wing in the coalition refuses to discuss it since its vision is not Palestinian self-government but settlement of the Strip. But the Israeli strategy should not relate to the political vision. As long as no one assumes the two million residents of the Gaza Strip will disappear, the discussion about restoring their lives stands on its own. Since the Six Day War, the State of Israel has preferred civilian control mechanisms that are as independent as possible for the Palestinian population. Even before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, mayors were local and civil mechanisms functioned. The great 2002 anti-terror offensive in the West Bank was only possible because the IDF made sure the PA’s civil mechanism would continue to function. Today, the stabilization of the Gaza Strip as a safe and functioning civilian space is a condition for any political vision, settlement or disengagement, which includes the safe return of Israeli citizens to the Western Negev region.
The percolation of the concept of “decisive defeat” from the military level into the political culture has created a devastating paralysis. This paralysis played a role in the crisis that brought us to war and continues to play a destructive role.
It was absurd to think for years that we had the power to change the intentions of our enemies without overwhelming their military power. We are paying for this deterrence-based strategy today. It is essential that we do not now adhere to the mirror image of this error — a strategy of political defeat while stubbornly focusing on military means alone.
The rehabilitation of Gaza, as painful as the phrase may be to Israeli ears after the October attack, can and should be Israel’s ultimate weapon against Hamas. It is customary in wartime that the first stage of the campaign is intended to prepare the conditions for the next. In the current war, the ground maneuver did not cleanse the Gaza underground or eradicate the Hamas regime, but it created and can continue to create the conditions for the next stage. That stage should be dedicated to the stabilization and slow rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip.
Step by step, the IDF will secure limited locations and the reconstruction coalition will create a more attractive alternative in those areas. Time will turn against Hamas, the pressure will shift to it, and Israel will stop being seen as conducting a vengeful war and will start serving its own long-term interests. Above all, a quick hostage deal will return to the status of an existential interest of Hamas.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal recently retired from military service as commander of the Dado Center for Multidisciplinary Military Thinking. He is a well-known military thinker both in Israel and abroad. His works have been published in The Military Review, War on the Rocks, Small Wars Journal at the Hoover Institution, at Stanford, and elsewhere. His book The Battle Before the War (MOD 2022, in Hebrew) dealt with the IDF’s need to change, innovate and renew a decisive war approach. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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New Jersey Man Inspired by Hamas’s Oct. 7 Attack Pleads Guilty to Assisting Al Shabaab Terror Group
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
Karrem Nasr, a 24 year-old man from New Jersey, has pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to al Shabaab, a US-designated terror group, with federal prosecutors noting that he was inspired by Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 to become a jihadist terrorist.
“Karrem Nasr devoted himself to waging violent jihad against America and its allies,” Danielle Sassoon, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement announcing the plea on Monday. “Inspired by the evil terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, Nasr, a US citizen, traveled from Egypt to Kenya in an effort to join al Shabaab so that he could execute his jihadist mission of creating death and destruction.”
The Palestinian terror group Hamas murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, kidnapped 251 hostages, and started the Gaza war with its Oct. 7 onslaught, which also included widespread sexual violence against the Israeli people.
“Now, instead of perpetrating a deadly attack in the name of a foreign terrorist group, Nasr resides in federal prison,” Sassoon added. “I thank the career prosecutors of my office and our law enforcement partners for their extraordinary work in disrupting this plan and bringing a terrorist to justice.”
In the US, attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Nasr is scheduled to be sentenced by a judge on June 30.
Nasr relocated from his home in New Jersey to Egypt around July 2023, according to the US Justice Department. In November of that year, he began repeatedly expressing his desire and plans to join al Shabaab, which is based in Somalia, including in communications with an undercover FBI informant pretending to be a recruiter for terrorist groups.
Further detailing his beliefs, Nasr explained to the informant that he hoped to receive training from al Shabaab, kill innocent people, and ultimately die on behalf of the organization’s jihadist goals.
“I would like to become a martyr in the sake of Allah … I think in coming years, inshallah we are going to see here big events in Egypt and the other Arab countries. Inshallah if this happens; I will come back to Egypt, inshallah to help the Muslims in Egypt in their struggle to establish here in Egypt,” he said in one communication, according to the Justice Department.
Al Shabaab has a history of calling for violence against Jews and Israel. In 2014, Sheikh Ali Dhere, a spokesperson for the group, publicly repudiated “the Americans who stood by the Jews in their aggression against the Muslims in Gaza.”
“Muslims must attack the Jews and their properties in every place, and they must pray for their brothers in Gaza,” he said at the time.
In both his discussions with the FBI and his online postings, Nasr communicated that he was particularly motivated to engage in terrorism by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in Israel.
During his discussions, Nasr rebuked the United States as “evil” and lambasted the country as the “head of the snake.” He also warned that jihadist violence would “soon” happen across the US.
Experts have warned of a rising global terror threat in the wake of Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel, explaining to The Algemeiner that “lone wolf” terrorists inspired by Islamist groups could carry out attacks on US soil, motivated by the Oct. 7 attack and war in Gaza.
The post New Jersey Man Inspired by Hamas’s Oct. 7 Attack Pleads Guilty to Assisting Al Shabaab Terror Group first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Judenrein’: CUNY Professors Blast Faculty Union for Passing ‘Antisemitic’ BDS Resolution
CUNY pro-Hamas students and supporters setup encampment at the school’s campus in New York City on April 25, 2024. Photo: Steve Sanchez via Reuters Connect
Jewish faculty at the City University of New York (CUNY) are denouncing their public sector union’s passing of a resolution which called for the adoption of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union, which represents over 30,000 CUNY staff and faculty, passed the measure on Jan. 23 by a razor thin margin of just three votes. It falsely accused Israel of war crimes and other affronts to humanity, including “genocide” and “apartheid,” and called for the union to divest its pension plan of holdings linked to “Israeli companies and Israeli government bonds no later than the end of January 2025.”
This is not the first controversial resolution passed by the CUNY faculty union. In 2021, during a previous conflict between Israel and Hamas, it voted to approve a defaming statement which accused Israel of “ongoing settler colonial violence” and demanded the the university “divest from all companies that aid in Israeli colonization, occupation, and war crimes.” Doing so set off a cascade of events, including a mass resignation of faculty from the union, the founding of new campus Jewish civil rights groups, and a major — ultimately unsuccessful — lawsuit which aimed to abolish compulsory public sector union membership.
History is repeating itself, Jewish faculty said following what has been described as the union’s latest outrage against the Jewish community.
“Since the mass exodus of Jews from the union after its antisemitic pro-BDS resolution in 2021, its delegate leadership is virtually Judenrein,” Jeffrey Lax, a Kingsborough Community College professor and founder of the advocacy group Students, Alumni, and Faculty for Equality (SAFE), told The Algemeiner on Wednesday in a statement. “This is a welcome development for the antisemitic, Marxist leaders who have been lying in wait to adopt a full BDS divestment policy, which they have now done, with few Jews still around to oppose it.”
Taking aim at PSC president James Davis, Lax continued, “Senior leaders like President James will pretend that they were against the vote as it ‘divides’ the union. No kidding. But the truth is, it’s no secret that Davis is a proud BDS supporter. We exposed video of him voting for BDS at the American Studies Association. And this is our union today: a corrupt, opaque, Jew-expunging entity that has just signed its own death knell by so blatantly breaking the law.”
Lax’s group, SAFE, is mounting an effort to thwart the resolution’s objectives, and filed on Tuesday a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights (DHR) alleging discrimination against Zionism, a central component of Jewish identity, and the “blatant violation” of a state executive order, EO 157, which explicitly proscribes boycotts of Israel. The letter also requested that DHR open a formal investigation of PSC CUNY to uncover any further acts of alleged antisemitism.
“It is no coincidence that hundreds — perhaps thousands — of Jewish faculty members have left the PSC union,” the complaint says. “The PSC-CUNY’s BDS boycott policy and singular divestment from Israel makes clear that Zionist Jewish and Israeli faculty members are not welcome to work with the union, will not receive the same benefits or protections, and will not receive any assistance of values from the union related or connected in any way to their protected nationality or ethnicity.”
Davis maintained in a statement issued on Wednesday that the union will continue to serve the interests of its members.
“We were elected to protect PSC members’ rights, to improve their pay and working conditions and working conditions, and to strengthen their union,” Davis said. “Keeping focus on these primary responsibilities while engaging in wider struggles for justice and peace is important, especially in this politically tumultuous movement. The PSC recently ratified a new contract and is intent on enforcing that contract and improving the working conditions of all members.”
CUNY faculty such as Queens College professor Azriel Genack, continue to be suspicious of the union’s intentions, however, and argue that its recent conduct is unbecoming of any institution which counts academics as members.
“This new PSC Resolution does not mention Hamas or its unspeakably brutal attack [in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023]: the torture, rape, mutilation, kidnapping, and massacre of entire families that broke the ceasefire that has been in place since the previous war. Now the PSC has two resolutions condemning Israel and not a single resolution condemning any other country; not Russia, Iran, China, or North Korea,” Gunack wrote in an open letter shared with The Algemeiner. “The resolution does not speak truth to power; it hides and distorts the truth in order to find soulless solidarity that disgraces CUNY by seeking to demonize a people that faces an enemy that is sworn to annihilate it, even if this entails destroying the hopes of its own people for a better life.”
The City University of New York’s campuses have been lambasted by critics as some of the most antisemitic institutions of higher education in the country.
Last year, the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) resolved half a dozen investigations of antisemitism on CUNY campuses, a consortium of undergraduate colleges located throughout New York City’s five boroughs.
The inquiries, which reviewed incidents that happened as far back as 2020, were aimed at determining whether school officials neglected to prevent and respond to antisemitic discrimination, bullying, and harassment. Hunter College and CUNY Law combined for three resolutions in total, representing half of all the antisemitism cases settled by OCR. Baruch College, Brooklyn College, and CUNY’s Central Office were the subjects of three other investigations.
One of the cases which OCR resolved, involving Brooklyn College, prompted widespread concern when it was announced in 2022. According to witness testimony provided by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law — which filed the complaint prompting the investigation — Jewish students enrolled in the college’s Mental Health Counseling (MCH) program were repeatedly pressured into saying that Jews are white people who should be excluded from discussions about social justice.
The badgering of Jewish students, the students said at the time, became so severe that one student said in a WhatsApp group chat that she wanted to “strangle” a Jewish classmate.
“Some of the harassment on CUNY campuses has become so commonplace as to almost be normalized,” the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) once alleged in July 2022. “Attacking, denigrating, and threatening ‘Zionists’ has become the norm, with the crystal-clear understanding that ‘Zionist’ is now merely an epithet for ‘Jew’ the same way ‘banker,’ ‘cabal,’ ‘globalist,’ ‘cosmopolitan,’ ‘Christ killer,’ and numerous other such dog-whistles have been used over the centuries to target, demonize, and incite against Jews.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Judenrein’: CUNY Professors Blast Faculty Union for Passing ‘Antisemitic’ BDS Resolution first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Australian Police Foil Antisemitic Attack After Finding Explosives, List of Jewish Targets
Car in New South Wales, Australia graffitied with antisemitic message. Photo: Screenshot
Australian police announced on Wednesday that they foiled a potential mass-casualty antisemitic terrorist attack after discovering a caravan in a suburb of Sydney filled with explosives and material containing details about Jewish targets.
The announcement came amid a wave of antisemitic incidents, including arson and graffiti, in Australia recent months that has alarmed the country’s Jewish community.
Law enforcement officials said police discovered a list of Jewish targets and a cache of Powergel, a mining explosive, in a trailer located in the outer suburb of Dural on Jan. 19.
According to New South Wales state Deputy Police Commissioner David Hudson, there were enough explosives to create a bomb with a blast zone of around 40 meters, or 130 feet.
“This is certainly an escalation,” Hudson said in a press conference, commenting on the recent spate of antisemitic crimes in the greater Sydney area, where businesses and vehicles have been torched and buildings vandalized with graffiti.
“The use of explosives … have the potential to cause a great deal of damage,” he added.
Hudson also confirmed that several suspects unrelated to the explosives had been arrested and that the Jewish community would be informed about the potential targets.
Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales, referred to the incident as “terrorism,” while confirming that counterterrorism authorities are also investigating the discovery of the explosives.
“This is the discovery of a potential mass casualty event,” he said. “This would strike terror into the community, particularly the Jewish community, and it must be met with the full resources of the government.”
Antisemitism spiked to record levels in Australia — especially in Sydney and Melbourne, which are home to some 85 percent of the country’s Jewish population — following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s bloody invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
In the past two months alone, at least half a dozen incidents were reported in Sydney.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar condemned the latest plot as “intolerable” in a post on the X social media platform.
“The epidemic of antisemitism is spreading in Australia almost unchecked,” he said. “We expect the Australian government to do more to stop this disease!”
The attempted antisemitic terror attack at a synagogue in Sydney is intolerable. This joins a long list of antisemitic attacks in Australia, including setting fire to a childcare center in Sydney, firebombing a synagogue in Melbourne, and many other antisemitic attacks.
The…— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) January 29, 2025
Last week, a child care center in Sydney was set alight and antisemitic graffiti was sprayed on the wall. Located near a Jewish school and synagogue in the city’s eastern section, the center suffered extensive damage, though no injuries were reported.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the attack as “a vicious crime.”
That incident followed several recent cases of antisemitic vandalism targeting cars, homes, and synagogues.
Amid upcoming national elections to be held by mid-May, antisemitism has become a key issue, with Albanese facing criticism from the opposition for being “weak” in addressing hate crimes against Jews.
Last month, arsonists set fire to a synagogue in Melbourne, injuring one person and causing significant damage to the building.
According to a report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the country’s Jewish community experienced over 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, a significant increase from 495 in the prior 12 months.
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, the number of antisemitic physical assaults in Australia rose from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. The level of antisemitism for the past year was six times the average of the preceding 10 years.
Amid the onslaught, law enforcement in Australia has started an investigation into the origins behind the spree of recent antisemitic crimes, announcing they suspect individuals outside the country have coordinated the campaign of hate.
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