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What Comes Next in Gaza? Here Are Some Options — and the Best Solution
An Israeli military convoy moves inside the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, as seen from Israel, June 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Discussions about the future of Gaza are being conducted in isolation, without comparative discourse, and the political dimension is causing opinions to harden rather than remain open and flexible.
Thus, for example, the head of the INSS Institute wrote on May 29 that, “An alternative civil address in Gaza [is] the need of the hour” and opened with the words, “There is no time,” while Gabi Siboni from the Mishgav Institute said on May 24 that, “We need to enter the Strip and take control of all humanitarian aid in Gaza.” And so on.
There are several alternatives for the future of Gaza, and in this article I will present five of them. A choice will be made through a comparative discussion of their costs and benefits. Constructive strategic planning creates maximum flexibility for decision makers, and optimal conduct would be to implement close alternatives that all serve Israel’s strategic goals.
Before presenting the options, we must define the Israeli goals and interests according to which they will be examined. I propose that Israel’s goals and interests should be prioritized thus:
Destroying Hamas’s military capability: This is the key strategic need. Israel’s long-term position in the region depends on its delivering the clear message that anyone who carries out a criminal attack like that of October 7 will, at the very least, lose their military capabilities and their ability to harm Israel for a very long time.
Abolition of Hamas control in Gaza: Following on from the first consideration, Israel must strive to ensure that any party — especially a terrorist organization — that carries out murderous attacks against Israel will lose its rule and its leaders will lose their lives. Between the statement that it is impossible to eliminate an idea, especially a radical one, and the statement that the existence of Hamas in any form, including a civilian one, should be protested, there are many shades of possibility, a significant one of which should be the abolition of Hamas control.
Relations with the United States: Every alternative should take into account the strategic need to maintain good relations with the United States over time. This is a complex consideration against the background of American domestic politics. There can be disagreements, even difficult ones, with the American administration, but Israeli insistence on its positions should be part of a healthy relationship between the countries despite occasional extreme asymmetry. An Israel that pleases the Americans time and time again will lose its position in the United States. With that said, however, it is important to respect American global interests and help to promote them.
The return of the abductees: This is an important issue, but as it is not an existential necessity, it does not meet the same level of importance as the previous considerations. The return of the abductees is a matter of moral and value considerations but not strategic ones. The reality is that there is no scope for a comprehensive deal with Hamas because Sinwar’s personal fate depends on his holding the hostages. He will continue to hold them as long as possible until he has another survival option. Efforts to return the abductees through operational means or through local deals should be continued in every way.
The issue of the northern front and dealings with Iran: This consideration is also complex. Hezbollah has said it will not stop firing on the north and will not allow the return of the displaced residents without the cessation of fighting in Gaza. But for Israel, the cessation of fighting in Gaza without the achievement of its objectives against Hamas would represent serious damage to its deterrence against it and against Iran. This is an impasse that can be resolved with either a wider-scale war, which would severely damage Hezbollah’s capabilities; or an informal arrangement that Hassan Nasrallah can present as an achievement or as a “non-cessation” of the fighting while the war in Gaza continues. Because of this impasse, this consideration has been relegated to a relatively low place, though in principle it is more fundamental.
Approaching the moderate regional countries, with an emphasis on Saudi Arabia: The war in Gaza, the escalation with Iran, and the incessant Houthi attacks, only strengthen the region’s understanding of the need to join forces with Israel. While the delay in implementation stems from public opinion and American interests, it seems that it will eventually continue, and Israel’s continued military achievements against Hamas strengthen the likelihood that it will come to fruition. This consideration, therefore, has less influence on the choice between the alternatives.
The issue of Israel’s legitimacy: In this area there is a gap. While in the short and medium term Israel’s legitimacy is under pressure from international institutions, in the long term, the gap — if not the abyss — between the false and politicized accusations against Israel and the actual situation on the ground will be revealed. Although the war is creating negative images, it is one of the “cleanest” wars in history in terms of the proportion of combatants to civilians killed and the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza. Therefore, despite the need to continue to fight resolutely and place the blame for the consequences on Hamas, in choosing alternatives, this is a less influential concern.
There are second-order considerations. These include resources (the economic cost of each option); legal (Israel’s obligations towards Gaza within the framework of international law and how they are realized); and social (the impact on each option on national resilience, though in my view this is included in each consideration). It would be better for these considerations to affect the means of carrying out the preferred option and less the actual choice.
Now that the seven main considerations have been defined, the five alternatives can be defined and examined:
The Hamas alternative: In this option, the fighting in Gaza stops and the IDF withdraws from it in exchange for the release of the abductees and the cessation of fighting in the north. A militarily weakened Hamas returns to control the Strip. This option is being promoted by some of the families of abductees and several opposition elements to the government, and the American administration may also support it for internal political reasons. In examining this choice against the balance of considerations, it is clear that while it might achieve the release of the abductees and the cessation of fighting in the north and might be perceived as a good move in terms of relations with the United States, it would substantially harm Israel’s core strategic need to destroy Hamas’s military capacity and abolish its control in Gaza. The notion that this option would lead to a comprehensive solution to the issue of the abductees and the Hezbollah challenge is questionable. It is more likely that the fighting would resume under less favorable conditions for Israel.
The revitalized Palestinian Authority alternative: In parallel with continued military damage to the military capabilities of Hamas and its government, a governmental and security alternative would be built that would include a revitalized Palestinian Authority with the integration of local elements and the backing and involvement of a coalition of Arab and Western countries. This “nation-building” alternative is being promoted by the United States and European countries in apparent collaboration with Arab countries, as well as by elements in Israel who give too much weight to the official American position. This option promotes American and possibly regional considerations (it is too early to say whether the Arab position is real or the artificial product of American pressure), but there is a big question mark over how much it would be able to provide a real answer to the core considerations of harming Hamas and preventing its re-establishment. It also provides no broad response to the issues of the abductees and the challenge in the north.
The military-civilian alternative: In this option, Israel continues to hit the Hamas organization, both in its military capabilities and in its governance, until it is sufficiently weakened to allow local Palestinian elements to replace it on the ground, with considerable regional and international backing. This alternative is being promoted by Prime Minister Netanyahu, and is reflected in key components of the cabinet’s decisions. This option provides a good answer to the core considerations of harming Hamas, and might even be tacitly accepted by the Americans and Arab and international actors. It does not, however, provide a solution to the problems of freeing the abductees and the fighting in the north.
The “chaos” alternative: Here, Israel continues to strike at the Hamas organization, both in its military capabilities and in its governance, and at the same time allows local, regional, and international parties to create governmental alternatives on the ground that may mature into a comprehensive governmental alternative. This option was given expression in the opinion that called (at least at the beginning of the war) for the “Somalization” of Gaza, meaning a kind of supervised, partially independent nation-building. This alternative would allow Israel to define what would not happen, and others to decide what is possible. It provides a good answer to Israel’s core considerations in terms of Hamas, but would be difficult for the Americans and the regional and international actors to digest. It also does not solve the problems of the abductees and the north.
The sovereignty alternative: Israel imposes a total military government on Gaza, applies its full military and security control over the Strip, and perhaps occupies and even annexes parts of it. This option is being promoted by the right wing of the government. While it provides a good answer to the core considerations in terms of Hamas and might even bring gains on the issue of the abductees, it would make relations with the United States as well as other considerations very difficult.
The alternatives for the future of Gaza clearly entail a complex discussion. It is likely possible to move between alternatives and merge them according to developments. As of today, the option that best balances Israel’s considerations is the military-civilian one. The most problematic are the Hamas option and the sovereignty option. It is appropriate and correct to continue a complex comparative discussion on Israel’s considerations and the alternatives to achieve them and to avoid perceptual and political attachment to any one of them.
Col. (res.) Shay Shabtai is a senior researcher at the BESA Center and an expert in national security, strategic planning, and strategic communication. He is a cyber security strategist and a consultant to leading companies in Israel. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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University of Minnesota President Admits Agreeing to Anti-Israel Terms to End Protest Despite Not Understanding Language
University of Minnesota Interim President Jeff Ettinger in a message posted on June 12, 2023. Photo: Screenshot
University of Minnesota interim president Jeff Ettinger told the state senate on Tuesday that he signed an agreement to appease pro-Hamas student activists and end their illegal occupation of the campus despite not understanding the inclusion of an Arabic word justifying the use of violence against Israel.
The protesters and the university reached an agreement last month to end a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment — a collection of tents in which the students lived for several weeks and refused to leave unless the administration agreed to boycott and divest from Israel. In a statement issued by the university, school officials used the term “thawabet,” a key component of the ideology of the anti-Zionist movement, which asserts its intention to eliminate Israel and establish a Palestinian state in its place.
“That was a mistake by our administration,” Ettinger told Sen. Ron Latz (D), who questioned him about the decision on Tuesday. “The way things transpired that day, we ended up doing the final versions of that document at five in the morning. Those had been the topics — I mean they were kind of characterized by the students as their ‘demands’ — we looked at them as topics. But clearly, I didn’t even know what that word meant, so clearly to repeat that word then in a communication back was a mistake by the administration.”
In 2010, a founder of the terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Bilal al-Hassan, explained thawabet in an interview with the anti-Zionist website Electronic Intifada.
Al-Hassan explained that the concept historically represents opposition to United Nations Resolution 181, a decision rendered by the nascent body in 1947 which partitioned British Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states and led to the establishment of Israel the following year. Thawabet, he continued, was central to the founding charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a terrorist organization which evolved to be recognized as the official representative and governing authority of Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank. For al-Hassan, “liberating” Palestinians meant reversing the 1947 settlement and expelling Jews from the area.
In 1996, the PLO — led at the time by Yasser Arafat — voted overwhelmingly to remove the call for mass terror and elimination of Israel from its charter to signal that it was negotiating a settlement to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in good faith. At the time, Arafat had met in person with two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, as part of the Oslo Accords, a peace process that was fervently supported by former US President Bill Clinton. Arafat lobbied for the move, saying, as reported by The New York Times in 1996, that failing to do so would harm efforts to establish a Palestinian state.
This, al-Hassan told Electronic Intifada, was an ideological and tactical failure.
“The PLO was destroyed with the alteration of the charter,” he said. “The reason that the thawabet now play an important role in our struggle is that it is now an expression of a politico-historical position against the path of the negotiated settlement — that we usually refer to as the Oslo process — and against the Palestinian Authority’s engagement with this process, its departure from thawabet, and its retreat in the face of the ongoing Zionist colonization of our country. It goes without saying that goals of the struggle such as the return of the refugees and the liberation of the land and people are central pillars of thawabet.”
It is not clear why the University of Minnesota incorporated what has been understand to mean a call for violence and rejection of peace between Israelis and Palestinians into an official statement which, in addition to apologizing to the pro-Hamas protesters, granted them amnesty and promised a meeting with top school officials to discuss the possibility of divesting from Israel. Latz noted during Tuesday’s hearing that the students had clearly stated their support for terrorism during the May encampment.
“I didn’t know what that word meant,” Ettinger repeated.
However, the University of Minnesota has given intellectual harbor to extreme anti-Zionist views before, appointing earlier this month an anti-Zionist scholar, Raz Segal, as director of the school’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies — a decision that Ettinger walked back after community organizations noted that Segal justified Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities less than a week after they were committed.
Ettinger, who was subjected to a faculty no-confidence vote revoking Segal’s appointment, will soon leave office. The University of Minnesota’s incoming president, Rebecca Cunningham, will be inaugurated in July.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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White House Adds Oct. 7 Rape Victims to Fact Sheet on War Zone Sexual Violence After Backlash From Jewish Dems
US Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) during a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, at the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, on June 4, 2024. Photo: Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The White House has added references to the rampant sexual assault perpetrated by Hamas terrorists during their Oct. 7 onslaught across southern Israel to a fact sheet it recently released on sexual violence in conflict zones following widespread outcry for making no mention of the Israeli rape victims.
The Biden administration updated the fact sheet to include references to Hamas, the Oct. 7 massacre, and the Palestinian terrorist group’s Israeli victims after Jewish Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff (CA) and Dan Goldman (NY) sent a letter to US President Joe Biden criticizing the omission.
On Wednesday, Schiff and Goldman sent a letter to Biden sharing their “deepest concern” that the Israeli girls and women raped and otherwise sexually brutalized by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists were not mentioned in the initial version of the fact sheet. The original version mentioned sexual assault victims in Ukraine, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Iraq, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria.
“Clearly missing from this list of victims are the women who experienced sexual violence on Oct. 7, 2023, as a result of the brutal attack by Hamas against Israel. There is substantial evidence that Hamas perpetrated sexual violence against Israeli women on that terrible day, as well as against the hostages they took in the ensuing days and weeks,” the letter read.
“Given the evidence of these horrific incidents, the brutal and vicious sexual violence committed by Hamas must not be omitted from the White House’s Fact Sheet,” the letter continued. “The administration and Congress must never lose sight of Hamas’ sexual violence against Israel or give Hamas special dispensation in seeking accountability for its actions.”
After receiving the letter from the Jewish lawmakers, the White House swiftly updated the fact sheet to include detailed references of the sexual violence committed against Israeli women on Oct. 7.
The new iteration of the fact sheet mentions the Oct. 7 sexual assaults in the first paragraph and outlines the various ways in which the administration has recognized them.
It also references a June 17 White House screening of “Screams Before Silence,” a documentary by former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg that examines the Oct. 7 rapes. US Vice President Kamala Harris hosted the screening with Amit Soussana, an Israeli woman who was taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7 and endured sexual assault, in attendance.
The document also noted Biden’s previous acknowledgments of the rapes perpetrated against Israeli women. “President Biden has been clear when it comes to highlighting Hamas’ horrific acts of sexual violence on Oct. 7,” the document reads.
Mounting evidence has revealed that Hamas carried out systematic sexual violence against the Israeli people, including torture and mass gang-rape, during its Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israeli, where the terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250 others. A recent United Nations report concluded that there is “clear and convincing information” of Hamas’ sexual violence against Israelis both on Oct. 7 and subsequently against those taken hostage into Gaza.
The New York Times also launched a two-month investigation into the sexual assault allegations and uncovered a “pattern of rape, mutilation, and extreme brutality” committed against Israeli women by Hamas.
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As Iran Votes for President, New Report Exposes How Regime ‘Rigs’ Elections Through Shadowy Group
Iranian presidential candidate Saeed Jalili votes at a polling station in a snap presidential election to choose a successor to Ebrahim Raisi following his death in a helicopter crash, in Tehran, Iran, June 28, 2024. Photo: Stringer/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
As Iranians headed to the polls on Friday to vote for a new president, an explosive new report exposed how the regime in Tehran has used a “shadowy arm” of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an internationally designated terrorist organization, to routinely “rig” Iran’s elections.
Using insider documents from the IRGC, the report by the advocacy organization United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) detailed how Iran’s so-called “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, established a new entity known as the Baqiatallah Headquarters to ensure election outcomes — including for the presidency — that match his Islamist, authoritarian agenda of removing any traces of Western influence from Iranian society.
Khamenei tasked the hardline former commander of the IRGC, Mohammad Ali Jafari, to lead the little-known department at the center of the regime’s “election engineering” and broader efforts to usher in a messianic “new Islamic civilization.” Before overseeing the Baqiatallah Headquarters, Jafari was responsible for expanding the IRGC’s “security and military capabilities, consolidating the IRGC’s asymmetric warfare capabilities to deter the likelihood of US military strikes, and brutally suppressing anti-regime protests,” according to the report.
The IRGC’s Baqiatallah Headquarters is so valued by Khamenei, the authors note, that it reports directly to him and “has the authority to demand the full use of other agencies’ capacities and resources.”
More importantly, however, according to the report, is the office’s “unique overarching strategy,” known as the “Middle Ring” strategy, of selecting and organizing members of the Iranian youth into local small groups tasked with executing “political and cultural operations” on behalf of the regime’s elite. Members of these small groups receive unparalleled access to the “upper echelons of power” in Iran such as the Office of the Supreme Leader.
“In essence, this entire [Middle Ring] strategy seeks to organize, mobilize, and empower the small but radical support base of the regime across Iran to control the masses,” at the local level and without involvement from the clunky Iranian bureaucracy, the report warns.
The Baqiatallah Headquarters has two primary objectives according to UANI’s report: “Islamizing culture to create an Islamic society, and assisting the regime to create Khamenei’s ideal Islamic government.” Electioneering became a central initiative in order to push this agenda.
“We will try to use the capacity of the Middle Rings [to interfere in elections] all over the country,” the report quoted Abdullah Moradi, director general of the Political Affairs Office of the Ministry of Interior, as saying last year.
During elections, the Baqiatallah Headquarters deploys its local Middle Ring networks to “manipulate political campaigns” and “help vet prospective candidates,” primarily through means of intimidation. Middle Ring groups also play a central role in engineering local elections, according to the report, essentially having a veto role for any candidate who does not meet their draconian Islamic standards.
Middle Ring groups, the UANI experts explain, also ensure that local Iranians vote in line with Khamenei’s wishes through a process of “intimidation and co-optation of voters; coordinated mobilization of networks; in person ballot manipulation, and voter rigging.”
The expected corruption of local groups, tasked by the Baqiatallah Headquarters, could be crucial in deciding Iran’s next president.
Iran held a snap presidential election on Friday after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian died unexpectedly in a helicopter crash in northwestern Iran last month. While the supreme leader is the country’s top decision-maker and has final say on important matters of state, it is likely that the next president will be closely involved in the eventual process of choosing a successor to Khamenei, who is 85.
Khamenei has ensured candidates sharing his hardline views dominate the presidential contest. Iran’s powerful Guardian Council, a 12-member vetting body of clerics and jurists aligned to Khamenei, formally approves candidates for Iranian elections and only allowed six to run out of dozens who applied.
Two of the candidates dropped out of the race just one day before the election after a poor showing in the latest poll, leaving four candidates.
Despite a strong public push by Khamenei encouraging Iranians to vote as a sign of support for the regime, voter turnout was reportedly low this year. According to Iranian opposition and dissident groups, many polling stations remained largely empty throughout Friday.
UANI is not the only voice to argue that Iran’s elections are corrupt. Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said in a message from Tehran’s Ervin prison that Friday’s vote would be a “sham” election.
The results of Iran’s presidential election were not finalized by press time.
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