A question about the policy of Israel that leads to the endgame in the war in Gaza concerns how much Israel may be moving away from the scenario that the NATO countries, especially the United States, envision for the area even as they endorse financial and military aid to the country.
Samia Nakhoul, Matt Spetalnick and Alexander Cornwell reporting for Reuters noted that some of U.S. President Joe Biden's aides are concerned that while Israel may craft an effective plan to inflict lasting damage to Hamas, it has yet to formulate an exit strategy.
Trips to Israel by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin this past week had stressed the need to focus on the post-war plan for Gaza, the source added.
Arab officials are also alarmed that Israel hasn't set out a clear plan for the future of the enclave, ruled by Hamas since 2006 and home to 2.3 million people.
"Israel doesn't have an endgame for Gaza. Their strategy is to drop thousands of bombs, destroy everything and go in, but then what? They have no exit strategy for the day after," said one regional security source.
An Israeli invasion has yet to start, but Gaza authorities say 3,500 Palestinians have already been killed by the aerial bombardment, around a third of them children - a larger death toll than in any previous conflict between Hamas and Israel. (Nakhoul et al., 2023)
Biden, on a visit to Israel on Wednesday, told Israelis that justice needed to be served to Hamas, though he cautioned that after the 9/11 attacks on New York, the U.S. had made mistakes.
The "vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas", he said. "Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people." (Nakhoul et al., 2023)
Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Biden's visit would have given him a chance to press Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to think through issues such as the proportional use of force and the longer-term plans for Gaza before any invasion.
Miller, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator, expressed deep skepticism about the potential for establishing a post-Hamas government to rule Gaza.
"I could paint you a picture more appropriate to a galaxy far, far away and not on planet Earth on how you could combine the U.N., the Palestinian Authority, the Saudis, the Egyptians, led by the U.S. marshalling the Europeans, to basically convert Gaza from an open-air prison to something much better," he said.
In the meantime, calls for the creation of humanitarian corridors within Gaza and escape routes for Palestinian civilians have drawn a strong reaction from Arab neighbors.
They fear an Israeli invasion will spark a new permanent mass wave of displacement, a replay of the 1948 Israeli war of independence and 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Millions of Palestinians who were forced to flee then have remained stranded as refugees in the countries that hosted them.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said he rejected the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land into the Sinai peninsula bordering Gaza, adding that any such move would turn the area into a base for attacks against Israel. He said Egyptians in their millions would protest against any such move. (Nakhoul et al., 2023)
Evan Dyer of CBC News reports that the Israeli leader and Hamas are deadly enemies — and allies in opposing a 2-state solution. President Joe Biden spoke about what the U.S. wants to see after the war.
"When this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next," he said. "And in our view, it has to be a two-state solution." (Dyer, 2023)
Dyer comments that neither Hamas nor Netanyahu share that vision.
As Netanyahu has pointed out, Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist and lays claim to all of the land "from the river to the sea."
And just twelve days before the Hamas massacres in southern Israel, Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly, holding a map of what he called "The New Middle East" that showed all of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights, as parts of an enlarged Israel, with no Palestinian state in sight. (Dyer, 2023)
A report by Amy Teibel of The Associated Press was published by CTV News identifying an Israeli ministry 'concept paper' that proposes transferring Gaza civilians to Egypt's Sinai, with Canada as a possible final destination.
An Israeli government ministry has drafted a wartime proposal to transfer the Gaza Strip's 2.3 million people to Egypt's Sinai peninsula, drawing condemnation from the Palestinians and worsening tensions with Cairo. In its report, the Intelligence Ministry -- a junior ministry that conducts research but does not set policy -- offered three alternatives "to effect a significant change in the civilian reality in the Gaza Strip in light of the Hamas crimes that led to the Sword of Iron war." The document's authors deem this alternative to be the most desirable for Israel's security. (Teibel, 2023)
Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said the paper threatened to damage relations with a key partner.
"If this paper is true, this is a grave mistake. It might cause a strategic rift between Israel and Egypt," said Guzansky, who said he has consulted for the ministry in the past. "I see it either as ignorance or someone who wants to negatively affect Israel-Egypt relations, which are very important at this stage."
Egypt is a valuable partner that cooperates behind the scenes with Israel, he said. If it is seen as overtly assisting an Israeli plan like this, especially involving the Palestinians, it could be "devastating to its stability."
Egypt would not necessarily be the Palestinian refugees' last stop. The document speaks about Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates supporting the plan either financially, or by taking in uprooted residents of Gaza as refugees and in the long term as citizens.
Canada's "lenient" immigration practices also make it a potential resettlement target. (Teibel, 2023)
The NATO countries who are supplying financial and military aid to Israel need to be active in Overcoming the Failed Tunes of the Netanyahu relationship with Gaza and carefully Assessing the Piper’s tune for signs of collective punishment and possible removal of Palestinians from Gaza.
References
Dyer, E. (2023, October 28). How Netanyahu's Hamas policy came back to haunt him — and Israel. CBC. Retrieved November 1, 2023, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/netanyahu-israel-gaza-hamas-1.7010035
Nakhoul, S., Spetalnick, M., & Cornwell, A. (2023, October 19). What is Israel's endgame in Gaza invasion? Reuters. Retrieved November 1, 2023, from https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-endgame-no-sign-post-war-plan-gaza-2023-10-18/
Teibel, A. (2023, October 30). Israeli paper proposes transferring Gazans to Egypt's Sinai. CTV News. Retrieved November 1, 2023, from https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/israeli-ministry-concept-paper-proposes-transferring-gaza-civilians-to-egypt-s-sinai-with-canada-as-a-possible-final-destination-1.6623901
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