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The debate over what should happen in Gaza after the war, explained
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel and the United States agree on how the Israel-Hamas war started — with the terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre. They agree on how it should end — with the removal of Hamas from power in the Gaza Strip.
But there are differences over how to get there, which are becoming more pronounced. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden openly criticized Israel’s conduct in the war.
“Israel’s security can rest on the United States, but right now it has more than the United States,” Biden said at a fundraiser at a Washington hotel convened by Lee “Rosy” Rosenberg, a major donor to Democrats and pro-Israel causes.
“It has the European Union, it has Europe, it has most of the world,” he said. “But they’re starting to lose that support by indiscriminate bombing that takes place.”
Over 18,000 Gazans have been killed so far in the fighting, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, and over 1,200 Israelis were killed on Oct. 7. Close to 250 people were taken hostage by Hamas, and over 100 Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat.
There are even greater differences between Israel and the United States over what happens the day after the war ends. Does Israel stay in the Gaza Strip? If so, for how long? And who takes its place?
“Yes, there is disagreement about ‘the day after Hamas’ and I hope that we will reach agreement here as well,” Netanyahu said Tuesday in a statement, describing what he called an “intensive dialogue” he had just completed with Biden.
Netanyahu made clear what the differences are: Biden has pushed for the Palestinian Authority — which governs Palestinian population centers in the West Bank — to take control of Gaza. Netanyahu rejected that idea, referencing the Oslo Accords, the 1993 agreement that created the P.A., which is led by the Fatah Party.
“I will not allow Israel to repeat the mistake of Oslo,” Netanyahu said. He referenced longstanding Israeli complaints about the P.A.: that it glorifies violence against Israelis and pays stipends to convicted Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prison.
“After the great sacrifice of our civilians and our soldiers, I will not allow the entry into Gaza of those who educate for terrorism, support terrorism and finance terrorism,” he said. “Gaza will be neither Hamastan nor Fatahstan.”
Netanyahu has said Israel will retain security control of the Gaza Strip after the war, though he has not elaborated on who will govern its day-to-day affairs or how long the Israeli security presence would last. That’s frustrating the Biden administration, said David Makovsky, a fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank, which has ties with the Israeli and U.S. governments.
“The Americans want to know, like, OK, you have a military strategy. I get that. And maybe a very reasonable one, but tell me how it leads to political outcomes? The outcome is no Hamas. Okay. That’s good. That’s necessary. But is it sufficient?’”
Here’s a look at the outcomes the United States, Israel and other actors are talking about.
Will the Palestinian Authority govern Gaza?
The Biden administration, for several weeks after Hamas’ massacre, talked about bringing the Palestinian Authority into the Gaza Strip.
“We must also work on the affirmative elements to get to a sustained peace,” Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, said in Tokyo during a summit of the G7 industrial giants on Nov. 8. “These must include the Palestinian people’s voices and aspirations at the center of post-crisis governance in Gaza. It must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”
Netanyahu has emphatically counted out any P.A. role in the Gaza Strip, pointing to its continued payments to the families of jailed and killed terrorists and what he says is continued incitement in its textbooks and media.
That may explain why Blinken has been more circumspect in recent statements, in which he has envisioned the establishment of an independent Palestinian state uniting Gaza and the West Bank but hasn’t named the Palestinian Authority.
“When the major military operation is over, this is not over, because we have to have a durable, sustainable peace, and we have to make sure that we’re on the path to a durable, sustainable peace,” Blinken said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “From our perspective, I think from the perspective of many around the world, that has to lead to a Palestinian state.”
Netanyahu is not the only obstacle to such an outcome. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, is not too eager to be seen as assuming control of the Gaza Strip on the heels of an Israeli invasion. Polls show that Abbas, who hasn’t run in (or won) an election in nearly two decades, has low approval ratings among Palestinians.
“I will not return on top of an Israeli tank,” the Associated Press quoted Abbas as telling his confidants last month.
The P.A. itself is seen as corrupt and weakened by decades of cooperating with Israeli security measures in the parts of the West Bank it governs. Some major West Bank cities, such as Jenin, are home to large concentrations of militant groups.
But a paper published this week by Israel Policy Forum scholars Michael Koplow and Shira Efron says the end of the war is an opportunity for Israel to expand its relationship with the P.A. — and demand that it undergo reforms that address Israel’s concerns. IPF has long advocated for a two-state solution.
“Despite hopes to the contrary, no other players in the international community are willing to entertain long-term commitments to Gaza, let alone ruling the Strip, leaving the PA as the only viable option,” Efron and Koplow write.
Will Netanyahu preserve his hardline coalition?
Efron and Koplow added, however, that Netanyahu is rejecting cooperation with the P.A. in Gaza because of pressure from far-right parties in his coalition. Those parties, they said, wield an “absolute veto” over strengthening the P.A.
Regarding Netanyahu’s political interests, Makovsky was blunter.
“He can’t say the word ‘P.A.’ — he can’t say it,” Makovsky said. “If the government seems completely shut down over being able to talk about the day after, that’s a function of the politics.”
On Tuesday, Biden suggested that it was time for Netanyahu to cut off his far-right partners, whom the president has long reviled.
“Bibi’s got a tough decision to make,” he said at the fundraising event, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “This is the most conservative government in Israel’s history,” that “doesn’t want a two-state solution.”
He called for Netanyahu to bring in the center-left opposition and drop the extremists. Netanyahu “has to strengthen and change” the government, he said.
That’s not going to happen as long as the far right is ready to keep Netanyahu in office and shield him from the political consequences of the Oct. 7 attack, said Nimrod Novik, another IPF scholar and a member of the executive committee of Commanders for Israel Security, which also favors a two-state outcome.
“The longer [the war] is, the farther the trauma of Oct. 7,” Novilk said. “The longer it is, the farther the investigations of the responsibility for it all. Maybe people will forget, maybe something good will happen and he’ll get credit for it.”
Jonathan Schanzer, a vice president with the right-leaning Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Netanyahu had every incentive to pursue the war until victory somewhat repairs his legacy shattered by Oct. 7.
“He said ‘everybody will have to give answers’ [about what went wrong] when the war is over,” Schanzer said. “And he’s hoping that he can postpone that discussion until such a time that events on the ground will have swung in his favor.”
Will Israel reoccupy Gaza?
Although Netanyahu has discussed maintaining control of security in Gaza, he has not yet said the word “occupation”: For one thing, it would set off a firestorm at home. Before Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, many Israelis remember weeks of military reserves duty spent occupying the dangerous strip of land, and the costs it incurred in lives and resources.
For another, the Biden administration has said indefinite Israeli occupation of Gaza is not an option.
At the G7 summit in Tokyo last month, Blinken rejected every possible iteration of occupation that has apparently bubbled up under consideration by Netanyahu, according to leaks to the Israeli media. These include resettlement of Israelis in Gaza, military occupation, “buffer zones” that Israel would control along Gaza’s border, a return to blockading the strip — which was the status in place until Oct. 6 — and the removal of a portion of the Palestinians, an action that would bolster charges of ethnic cleansing against Israel.
“The only way to ensure that this crisis never happens again is to begin setting the conditions for durable peace and security, and to frame our diplomatic efforts now with that in mind,” Blinken said. “The United States believes key elements should include no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza — not now, not after the war. No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks. No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza.”
Many Palestinian commentators have focused their attention on the Gaza death toll over the past two months. But Diana Buttu, a former Palestinian negotiator, wrote in The New York Times on Tuesday that ongoing Israeli occupation of Gaza would be the worst possible option.
“The future of Gaza — like that of the West Bank — is for Palestinians to decide,” she wrote. “That is the essence of self-determination. The international community must not continue to place Israel first, as has been done for decades.”
She added, “Palestinians must live freely, without the faintest sense of an Israeli noose around our necks.”
Will Israel’s Arab partners play a role in Gaza’s future?
Blinken has shuttled between Arab capitals for weeks seeking buy-in for the postwar scenario. But in public comments after meeting foreign ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,and Turkey, as well as a Palestinian Authority senior official, he was vague about what that scenario involves — beyond expressing hope for a Palestinian state.
Behind the scenes, reports have said, he has been more explicit, seeking pledges of funding for whatever form the government of Gaza takes after the war. He has also weighed asking Arab countries to commit troops to Gaza to help maintain the peace.
Arab states, which have been calling for a ceasefire, have not bitten at that offer, for myriad reasons: They, like Israel, distrust Abbas, who has gained a reputation for corruption and fecklessness. And while four Arab states have normalized relations with Israel in recent years, they are not ready to join with it in a military effort to keep Gaza calm.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the United Arab Emirates, which has cultivated increasingly close ties with Israel in recent years, said it would help with the reconstruction of Gaza only if there’s progress toward a two-state solution.
“We need to see a viable two-state solution plan, a road map that is serious before we talk about the next day and rebuilding the infrastructure of Gaza,” said the Emirati ambassador to the United Nations, Lana Nusseibeh.
In their paper, Efron and Koplow propose a U.S.-led rehabilitation of Gaza that melds Arab buy-in with reconstituting the Palestinian Authority in the territory. Preparing for that future, they wrote, needs to begin even as the fighting is ongoing.
“Stabilizing Gaza, resuming necessary services, rebuilding infrastructure, and preventing the return of Hamas — assuming that Israel is successful in removing it from effective power — will require a concerted effort from multiple stakeholders: Israel, the Palestinians, Middle Eastern countries, the international community, and particularly the United States,” said the paper.
Ghaith al-Omari, a former adviser to Palestinian officials and a fellow at the Washington Institute, told the Washington Post last week that bringing in the P.A. was a prerequisite to getting other Arab countries to play a role in postwar Gaza.
Arab nations, “to even be able to engage with us, they need that framing, the two-state solution framing and the transitional framing,” he told the Post. “Because this way they can always claim, ‘We’re doing this to support the Palestinians.’”
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As Gaza War Continues, Hamas Calls for Global Protests While Israel Marks Breakthroughs in Medical Innovation
A pro-Hamas march in London, United Kingdom, Feb. 17, 2024. Photo: Chrissa Giannakoudi via Reuters Connect
As the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas calls for global protests amid stalled Gaza ceasefire talks, Israel has broken new ground despite the ongoing conflict, achieving a major medical breakthrough in synthetic human kidney development.
The contrast illustrates a stark contrast between the priorities of Hamas, an international designated terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, and Israel, the lone democracy in the Middle East that has long been a leader in tech and medical innovation.
On Wednesday, Hamas urged worldwide protests in support of Palestinians, calling on the international community “to denounce Israel’s genocidal war and starvation policy in Gaza.”
“We call for continuing and escalating the popular pressure in all cities and squares on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday … through rallies, demonstrations and sit-ins outside the embassies of the Israeli regime and its allies, particularly in the US,” the statement read.
The Palestinian terrorist group also called to expose what it described as “the terrorism of the Zio-Nazi occupation against defenseless civilians.”
Hamas’s latest move against Israel comes amid stalled indirect negotiations over a proposed 60-day ceasefire and hostage release deal, which collapsed last month after the group vowed it would not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established — rejecting a key Israeli demand to end the war in Gaza.
In its statement, Hamas demanded the opening of all border crossings to allow immediate aid into the war-torn enclave and urged a global condemnation of “the international community’s inaction on the Israeli crimes.”
Amid mounting international pressure to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israel announced new measures to facilitate the delivery of aid, including temporary pauses in fighting in certain areas and the creation of protected routes for aid convoys.
Israeli officials have previously accused Hamas of diverting aid for terrorist activities and selling supplies at inflated prices to civilians, while also blaming the United Nations and other foreign organizations for enabling this diversion.
Hamas’s statement also emphasized that the “global resistance movement must continue until Israeli aggression on Gaza ends and the siege on the coastal strip is lifted.”
Meanwhile, as Israel faces escalating hostilities and the heavy toll of war, the Jewish state continues to push the boundaries of innovation and resilience, achieving new medical breakthroughs while confronting ongoing challenges.
In a major medical breakthrough, scientists at Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University have successfully grown a synthetic 3D miniature human kidney in a lab using specialized stem cells derived from kidney tissue — one of the most promising advances in regenerative medicine.
Dr. Dror Harats, chairman of Sheba’s Research Authority, described this achievement as a reflection of Israel’s leading role in global medical innovation.
“Despite growing efforts to isolate Israel from international science, breakthroughs like this prove our impact is both lasting and essential,” he said.
In a landmark study, a team from Sheba’s Safra Children’s Hospital and Tel Aviv University’s Sagol Center for Regenerative Medicine created synthetic kidney organs that matured and remained stable for 34 weeks — the longest-lasting and most refined kidney organoids developed to date.
Nearly a decade ago, the research team became the first to successfully isolate human kidney tissue stem cells — the cells responsible for the organ’s development and growth.
Previous attempts to grow kidneys in a lab using general-purpose stem cells were short-lived, typically lasting only a few weeks and often producing unwanted cell types that compromised research accuracy.
However, this Israeli research team used stem cells taken directly from kidney tissue — cells that naturally develop into kidney parts — allowing them to create a much purer and more stable model with key features found in real kidneys.
This medical breakthrough could have far-reaching implications, redefining the current understanding of kidney diseases and advancing the development of innovative treatments.
Researchers believe the model could help assess how medications impact fetal kidneys during pregnancy and move science closer to repairing or replacing damaged kidney tissue with lab-grown cells.
The discovery came days after researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and international partners discovered a way to boost the immune system’s cancer-fighting ability by reprogramming how T cells, which are white blood cells critical to the immune system, produce energy.
The researchers explained in a study published in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications that disabling a protein known as Ant2 in T cells greatly enhances their effectiveness against tumors.
“By disabling Ant2, we triggered a complete shift in how T cells produce and use energy,” Prof. Michael Berger of Hebrew University’s Faculty of Medicine, who co-led the study with doctorate student Omri Yosef, told the Tazpit Press Service. “This reprogramming made them significantly better at recognizing and killing cancer cells.”
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Netherlands to Push EU to Suspend Israel Trade Deal but Won’t Recognize Palestinian State ‘At This Time’
Netherlands Foreign Affairs Minister Caspar Veldkamp addresses a press conference, in New Delhi on April 1, 2025. Photo: ANI Photo/Sanjay Sharma via Reuters Connect
The Netherlands is spearheading efforts to suspend the European Union-Israel trade agreement amid rising EU criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, while simultaneously refusing to recognize a Palestinian state, contrasting with other member states as international pressure mounts.
On Thursday, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp announced that the Netherlands will push the EU to suspend the trade component of the EU-Israel Association Agreement — a pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with the Jewish state.
This latest anti-Israel initiative follows a recent EU-commissioned report accusing Israel of committing “indiscriminate attacks … starvation … torture … [and] apartheid” against Palestinians in Gaza during its military campaign against Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.
Following calls from a majority of EU member states for a formal investigation, this report built on Belgium’s recent decision to review Israel’s compliance with the trade agreement, a process initiated by the Netherlands and led by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas.
According to the report, “there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations” under the 25-year-old EU-Israel Association Agreement.
While the document acknowledges the reality of violence by Hamas, it states that this issue lies outside its scope — failing to address the Palestinian terrorist group’s role in sparking the current war with its bloody rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israeli officials have slammed the report as factually incorrect and morally flawed, noting that Hamas embeds its military infrastructure within civilian targets and Israel’s army takes extensive precautions to try and avoid civilian casualties.
In a Dutch parliamentary debate on Gaza on Thursday, Veldkamp also announced that the government would not recognize a Palestinian state for now — a position that stands in sharp contrast to the recent moves by several other EU member states to extend recognition.
“The Netherlands is not planning to recognize a Palestinian state at this time,” the Dutch diplomat said.
“This war has ceased to be a just war and is now leading to the erosion of Israel’s own security and identity,” he continued.
This latest decision goes against the position of several EU member states, including France, which has committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood in September.
The United Kingdom has likewise indicated it will do so unless Israel acts to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and agrees to a ceasefire.
For its part, Germany said it was not planning to recognize a Palestinian state in the short term, and Italy argued that recognition must occur simultaneously with the recognition of Israel by the new entity.
Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Slovenia all recognized a Palestinian state last year.
Israel has been facing growing pressure from several EU member states seeking to undermine its defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
On Thursday, European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera strongly condemned Israel’s actions in the war-torn enclave, describing the situation as a “grave violation of human dignity.”
“What we are seeing is a concrete population being targeted, killed and condemned to starve to death,” Ribera told Politico. “If it is not genocide, it looks very much like the definition used to express its meaning.”
Until now, the European Commission has refrained from accusing Israel of genocide, but Ribera’s comments mark one of the strongest European condemnations since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
She also called on the EU to take decisive action by considering the suspension of its trade agreement with Israel and the implementation of sanctions, while emphasizing that such measures would require unanimous approval from all member states.
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Graduate Student Unions Promoting Antisemitism, Reform Group Says
Students listen to a speech at a protest encampment at Stanford University in Stanford, California US, on April 26, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
Higher-education-based unions controlled by United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) are rife with antisemitism and anti-Zionist discrimination, according to a new letter imploring the US Congress’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce to address the matter.
“Tracing its roots to communism in the 1930s, the UE is a radical, pro-Hamas labor union that has a long history of antisemitism,” the National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), one of the US’s leading labor reform groups, wrote on July 30 in a message obtained by The Algemeiner. “The UE openly supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is designed to cripple and destroy Israel economically. Today, the UE furthers its antisemitic agenda by unionizing graduate students on college campuses and using its exclusive representation powers to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. The hostile environment includes demanding compulsory dues to fund the UE’s abhorrent activities.”
NRTW went on to describe a litany of alleged injustices to which UE members subject Jewish student-employees in the US’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Cornell University. At MIT, the letter said, “union officers” aided a riotous group which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings. UE members at Stanford University, meanwhile, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the BDS movement. And Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”
The situation requires federal oversight and intervention, NRTW said, including Congress’s possibly clarifying that student-employees are not traditional employees and are therefore afforded protections under sections of the Civil Rights Act which apply to the campus.
“These continuing patterns of antisemitism are illegal, immoral, and must be stopped,” the letter continued. “We encourage you to do all that is in your power to investigate and help bring an end to the UE and its affiliates’ nonstop harassment and intimidation of Jewish students … The Trump administration can also use tools available to it under Title VI and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act against colleges who work with unions to create a hostile environment for Jewish students.”
July’s letter is not the first time NRTW has publicized alleged antisemitic abuse in unions representing higher education employees.
In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.
That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.
“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.