Israel’s Gaza Operation Nears the Endgame
Dismantling the Hamas regime is proving to be a hard task, but establishing a new one will be even harder.
By: Kamran Bokhari
The seven-month-old war between Israel and Hamas appears to have reached a decisive stage.
While an end to the fighting remains elusive, it is time to begin considering what a post-conflict Gaza will look like and its implications for the region.
The political order that prevailed in the Gaza Strip for close to a generation has ended.
Almost 2 million Palestinians have been displaced, and more than 30,000 reportedly have died.
Hamas’ control over Gaza has been severely diminished, creating a dangerous political vacuum that will be difficult to fill.
Israel’s prosecution of the war has created major disagreements between the Netanyahu and Biden administrations.
Last week, the White House for the first time in the conflict withheld a shipment of thousands of smart bombs that it feared Israel would use in its planned invasion of Rafah, Hamas’ last major stronghold in southern Gaza.
U.S. officials, who preferred to call the delayed weapons shipment a “pause,” are optimistic about cease-fire talks taking place in Cairo and want to avoid any last-minute escalation that could scuttle a deal.
On Monday, Hamas endorsed a plan that would see it gradually release Israeli hostages (believed to number more than 130) while both sides work toward a “sustainable calm.”
The deliberately vague term is intended to paper over disagreements between Israel and Hamas about the agreement’s purpose and the war’s future.
A day later the Israeli military seized control of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
But according to a report by the Israeli daily Haaretz, Israel told the U.S. and Egypt that it would limit the goals of its operation in Rafah to denying Hamas control of the border crossing.
After the operation, the report said, the three governments agreed that a private U.S. security firm would take responsibility for managing the crossing.
Washington has not confirmed these claims but the question of who controls the Rafah crossing is emblematic of the much bigger problem of the governance of postwar Gaza.
In the Egyptian capital, representatives from Israel, Hamas, the U.S., Qatar and Egypt are still working on a deal to at least pause the fighting.
Led by CIA Director William Burns, the U.S. side shares Israel’s desire to see the conflict end with Hamas’ destruction, but the human cost of the war is provoking serious backlash within President Joe Biden’s Democratic base less than six months from a presidential election.
Similarly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under relentless public pressure to bring back the hostages held by Hamas.
In many ways, Israel's imperative to secure the release of the hostages is at odds with the goal of dismantling the Hamas regime because the former requires a cease-fire.
And Netanyahu’s right-wing allies – whose support is essential for his political survival – want to press the Israeli offensive until they have defeated the remaining Hamas fighters in the Rafah region, a goal that has broader appeal well beyond the Israeli far-right.
On the other side, Hamas knows that the war has already so degraded its military and political capabilities that it will be years at least before it can dominate Gaza again.
However, Hamas still hopes to salvage what it can of its combat potential and political authority.
Woefully outmatched on the battlefield, it believes its Israeli hostages, along with enormous and growing international criticism of Israel’s actions, are its only leverage to prevent Israeli forces from imposing military defeat on the group.
Thus, Hamas negotiators are seeking a six-week truce, followed by a permanent cessation of hostilities (the so-called sustainable calm) and, finally, a multiyear process of rebuilding Gaza.
The group expects it will have to share power with a revitalized Palestinian Authority, led by rival group Fatah, as part of a U.S. pitch to reunite Gaza and the West Bank under one government.
Its priority is to make it out of the war strong enough to secure a place in a subsequent regime.
Considering the mounting global pressure for a cease-fire, it is unclear how much more progress Israel can make militarily against Hamas and quickly.
If Israel is unable to deal a decisive military blow to Hamas, then it can still translate its gains on the battlefield into an improved bargaining position.
Regardless of when a cease-fire takes place, Israeli troops are extremely unlikely to relinquish their presence in Gaza in the near term.
From the Israeli point of view, they committed that error in 2005 when they unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, a decision that led to Hamas consolidating its hold over the territory, which eventually paved the path to the Oct. 7 attack and the current conflict.
Nevertheless, this history will not sway global opinion to endorse another Israeli occupation of Gaza, and whatever peace is established will be fragile.
Likewise, the West Bank-based PA is poorly prepared to take over in Gaza.
The PA hasn’t governed Gaza since 2007, the year Hamas took the area by force.
It has been crippled by corruption and infighting, which will not be helped by the dilatory transition from its unpopular leader, 88-year-old Mahmoud Abbas.
The Israelis have floated the idea of a multinational Arab task force to provide security in Gaza in the interim.
Leading Arab states dismissed the suggestion, though proximity and historical ties will likely force some, such as Egypt, to assume a role in policing the region.
However and whenever the war ends, Gaza will need a new political and security architecture.
The shape of this settlement will determine the future of the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not to mention the security and stability of the wider region.
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