As we enter the third week of our unplanned war against Hamas, the full picture of the reality, and the options for extricating ourselves from it, are starting to emerge. We were pulled into this war following a surprise attack by Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip on Israeli towns and kibbutzim across the border from the Gaza Strip, and on thousands of participants in the all-night Supernova music festival near one of the kibbutzim, which rapidly turned into a systematic massacre, involving the worst kind of atrocities imaginable.
We have known for many years that Hamas is a bitter Sunni-Palestinian enemy, whose long-term goal is to do away with the Jewish state and its people. However, we believed that we could tame the organization by economic and humanitarian means.
Since October 7 we have been forced to wake up to the fact that we were living in a pipe dream. Had our intelligence and military forces been alerted to Hamas’s plans in time, perhaps the massacre would have been averted, and the pipe dream might have continued to linger for a little longer.
As I wrote last week, today there are very few Jewish citizens in Israel who still maintain that the country’s reaction to what happened should not assume the dimensions of a massive retaliatory operation, with the goal of obliterating Hamas as a military force, a governing body, and even as a religious organization.
If, in the past, periodic rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip – to which we reacted with massive aerial attacks, and occasional ground invasions by the IDF – were considered tolerable, up to a point, today the game has changed.
It is not just the fact that Hamas terrorists, many of them fired up by Captagon tablets (the heroin of the poor), invaded Israel. It was that these men acted the way ISIS behaved wherever it established a presence. The fact that we experienced this sort of conduct firsthand, inside the Jewish state, was not only a horrific experience in itself, but it brought back vivid memories of the Holocaust, despite the many differences in circumstances and methods used by the perpetrators.
As the picture looks today, vast Israeli military forces are positioned along Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, ready for a massive ground attack. The Israel Air Force is preparing the ground for the necessary action inside Gaza City, which will include the destruction of Gaza’s “Metro.” This urban quarter, constructed underground, serves conceals Hamas’s rockets and its other weaponry, and is where heads of the organization, who reside in Gaza, can remain undetected.
In the lead-up to this operation, Israel has urged more than 1 million inhabitants of the northern Gaza Strip to move southward, to get them out of the way, and at the same time possibly save their lives when the Israeli invasion begins in earnest. In a situation that is non-humanitarian by definition, this is the least Israel could do.
Furthermore, under American insistence, humanitarian aid has started entering the southern Gaza Strip from the Rafa border crossing with Egypt, since the border crossings between Gaza and Israel have been closed by Israel, and are unlikely to be reopened. Israel would have rather used the humanitarian aid as a bargaining chip in the attempt to release the hostages, but this is part of the price Israel must pay for the US’s massive backing.
ONE REASON for the delay in Israel’s ground invasion is the question of the hostages who were abducted from Israel to the Gaza Strip by Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, as well as private persons from Gaza who accompanied the Hamas terrorists as they entered Israel on October 7. There are more than 200 hostages, some with dual citizenship (Israel and others), and some non-Israeli (e.g. Thai agricultural workers).
Hamas has so far released two American hostages, and might continue to release hostages in trickles, in an attempt to delay Israel’s ground attack for as long as possible. This is one of the most immediate dilemmas Israel faces: whether to try to save as many of the hostages who are still alive, at the cost of delaying its plans to wipe out Hamas in Gaza.
What will happen to Gaza after Israel obliterates Hamas?
However, the greatest dilemma Israel faces is to decide what it wants to achieve regarding the future of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s security concerns, beyond the obliteration of Hamas.
It appears that the outline of the solution preferred by the Israeli government today would entail a border between Israel and the Gaza Strip that includes a kilometer-wide security zone; no one from the Gazan side would be allowed to enter, under threat of being shot if they try. Such an arrangement would allow the Jewish population in the Gaza corridor to live in peace, free of any threat of a repetition of what happened on October 7.
Furthermore, a large number of the 2.1 million Palestinians who reside in the Gaza Strip would be moved elsewhere permanently. Israel would not return to rule over the Gaza Strip, as it did before the Oslo Accords, and Israel would in no way be responsible for Gaza’s welfare. However, Israel would maintain its ability to enter the area, if need be, for security purposes.
This leaves several unanswered questions, such as: Where will the Gazan population, which has left the Gaza Strip, go? (At the moment, no one seems interested in receiving them.) Who will govern the Gaza Strip, and under what sort of legal arrangement?
One of the original sins connected with the Palestinian issue is the fact that since 1949, the UN, under Arab pressure, has spent billions of dollars to perpetuate the problem of the Palestinian refugees from the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war, by means of UNWRA, rather than try to help solve it. About 70% of the population of the Gaza Strip today are the offspring of the original Palestinian refugees. Is there any hope of replacing this paradigm with something new?
However, not everyone in the government agrees with the outline mentioned above. There are those who want Israel to reoccupy the Gaza Strip for good. The Religious Zionist Party also advocates the reconstruction of the Jewish settlements of Gush Katif, dismantled by Israel in its 2005 unilateral disengagement from Gaza.
Unfortunately, it is not at all clear whether Israel will be able to attain whatever plan it finally opts for. That is also part of the picture of the reality.
The writer worked in the Knesset for many years as a researcher, and has published extensively both journalistic and academic articles on current affairs and Israeli politics. Her most recent book, Israel’s Knesset Members - A Comparative Study of an Undefined Job, was published by Routledge last year.