And meanwhile, Gaza civilians — living where thousands of Palestinians have been killed, injured, widowed, orphaned or made homeless — have had their entire world psychologically and physically devastated. Whether they grasp that Hamas is ultimately responsible for their fate, they too are drowning in sorrow.
Two people, two oceans of despair. How can they possibly move from that to “two countries for two peoples?” It is one thing for diplomats to insist, correctly, that ultimately the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be resolved only with two states living side-by-side, but it is quite another to conceive of how the parties can possibly get from where they are to where they must be.
The war will end at some point. But three main elements of a postwar transition — Gaza administration, Israeli political and psychological evolution — are each daunting.
As to Gaza’s administration, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a U.S. citizen from Gaza and a Middle East analyst, writes online: “Public sentiment in Israel supports the war effort, and most Israelis will initially tolerate high casualties as their military attempts to entirely destroy Hamas in Gaza. However, an indefinite operation or occupation is unlikely to be politically popular, especially without transitional steps and policies or a clear Israeli plan of what a post-war future might look like.”
Reoccupation of Gaza by Israel is untenable for the residents and for the Israelis (who do not want to be responsible for 2.4 million hostile Palestinians). As currently constituted, the Palestinian Authority is too corrupt and feeble to take over. Arab states want no part of overseeing Gaza, especially given the expectation that Israel’s military will need to intervene periodically to defuse security threats.
An interim entity to administer massive aid (which the United States, Saudi Arabia and UAE are willing to provide) is needed. “Issues such as societal chaos, criminal mobs, the rise of warlords or dominance of powerful clans, poverty, famine, diseases, the radicalization of a resentful and beaten population, and low-intensity insurgency would present enormous security, geopolitical, humanitarian, and international challenges and consequences,” Alkhatib observes. As such, rebuilding an administrative infrastructure for Gaza will be the first and most critical challenge.
Diplomat and scholar Dennis Ross, with deep Middle East experience, has suggested a trio of entities — Palestinian business leaders, an international humanitarian administrator (akin to that set up in Bosnia after the fighting ended in 1995 and in Cambodia in the early 1990s) and the contingent of civil servants already in Gaza who have remained on the PA’s payroll even during Hamas’s rule. (“The Hamas-run government in Gaza employs some 50,000 workers in various classifications and functions,” Alkhatib explains. “The group’s governance of the coastal enclave also entails a hybrid structure of its members in key posts, professional technocratic elements, PA employees who enjoy international recognition and legitimacy, and a diverse web of local charities and international NGOs.”)
Exactly how those three elements operated together would need to be negotiated. But there are international precedents. The arrangement would not be a permanent one, but rather, an interim step before a reformed PA can prepare to assume governmental authority.
But this technocratic evolution would need to be accompanied by political change in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition have lost the support of the country (only 15 percent of Israelis want Netanyahu to keep his job after the Gaza war). Indeed, Netanyahu is the focus of outrage and anger for the failure to prevent the Hamas massacre, the government’s delinquency in responding, the failure to address the humanitarian crisis in Israel (including the dislocation of roughly 130,000 people evacuated from southern Israel) and the apparent prioritization of hunting down the last Hamas fighters over the negotiated return of hostages held in Gaza.
What replaces the Netanyahu government — and what the public attitude toward separation from the Palestinians would look like — must be part of a robust national debate. The massive pro-democracy movement that took to the streets to protest Netanyahu’s attack on the judiciary (and which has taken up the cause of the hostages) might scramble the status quo, forming a new political force better able to navigate the future choices Israel faces.
Finally, over time two peoples immersed in their own suffering will need to come to terms with a simple reality: Neither is going anywhere. Contrary to Hamas’s genocidal fantasy, Israel is not going to disappear. Likewise, Israelis must acknowledge that the bigoted view held by Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich that Palestinians can be ignored and denied self-determination defies reality.
If that realization can emerge from the ashes of Oct. 7 and following the Hamas war, perhaps — with considerable effort from civil society groups — each side can find empathy for the other. At the very least, the horror of recent events might impress upon each side that denying the other side’s humanity results in interminable suffering.
No one imagines any of this will be easy. Administering and rebuilding Gaza will be challenging, to say the least. The Israeli political debate yet to unfold will be chaotic, difficult and divisive. And the psychological journey each side must undertake is hard to even comprehend. Still, there is no choice, because the alternative is one Oct. 7 after another, for eternity.
And equally true, none of this can proceed unless Hamas is defanged and its ability to project force eliminated. That need not require killing every single Hamas terrorist. The reported Qatari-backed plan for Israel to allow “the exile of Hamas leaders outside of Gaza in exchange for the gradual release of all of the remaining hostages as well as the IDF withdrawing entirely from the Strip” might be a feasible off-ramp for Israel.
Make no mistake, however: Unless and until Hamas is eliminated as a military force in Gaza, none of this is possible. Rid Gaza of the cancer of a genocidal terrorist group and maybe, just maybe, the two sides can begin traverse the ocean of agony, pain and suffering that threatens to drown them both.
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