Almost three months have passed since the bloodiest war in half a century broke out in the Holy Land. Israel is already preparing for the day after the conflict, continuing to systematically bomb the Gaza Strip and stationing troops on the border with Lebanon. The Palestinian coastal enclave has been devastated, leaving more than 22,000 dead, but the Hamas militia, which sparked the conflict by killing 1,200 people in Israel, has not been eradicated. The only one of their leaders eliminated since October 7 last year, Saleh al Aruri, fell on Tuesday in a drone operation in Beirut, 340 kilometers north.
Facing a war scenario that will last “as long as necessary”, foreseeable “months”, despite the beginning of the withdrawal of battalions with thousands of reservists, the Israeli Defense Minister, former General Yoav Gallant, announced on Thursday evening the implementation of a third phase of the war plan, which is similar to an exit strategy. Once the military objectives are achieved, Israel plans a Gaza Strip with a limited Palestinian administration based on “local committees” of mere administration, without mention of the Palestinian Authority, but under the control of the army, which has full “freedom of operation.” reserves the right to intervene in the strip.
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The Security Cabinet, a Sanhedrin of ministerial and senior military and intelligence officials that sets the course of Israel's wars, met on Thursday evening to study the document presented by the defense minister hours earlier, with the main lines for the Posts in the Gaza Strip were designed. War future. Although the territory's civilian government would remain in the hands of the Palestinians, the minister's report does not mention the Palestinian Authority, which governs part of the Israeli-militarily occupied West Bank and which was vetoed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. to rule the enclave. “The residents of Gaza are Palestinians and therefore the Palestinian authorities will bear responsibility [de la administración]on the condition that there are no hostile acts or threats against the State of Israel. (…) Hamas will not rule Gaza, Israel will not rule the civilian population of Gaza,” says the document quoted by the Hebrew press.
Secretary Gallant also envisions a Gaza Strip “without an Israeli civilian presence” once the fighting has ended. The plan threatens to cause divisions in Netanyahu's right-wing coalition government, in which four ultra-conservative ministers have already advocated for the return of Israeli settlers to Gaza, from which they were evacuated in 2005. The minister of national security, the radical Itamar Ben Gvir, called on Monday for settlers to return to Gaza after the war and to “encourage” the Palestinian population to emigrate. Something that the finance chief, the religious ultra-nationalist Bezalel Smotrich, also supported. According to Hebrew media, Netanyahu's security cabinet meeting had to be interrupted due to internal disputes. A possible withdrawal of support by MPs Ben Gvir and Smotrich would result in the executive branch, the most conservative in the Jewish state's three-quarters-century history, remaining in the minority in the Knesset (Parliament).
For now, Israel is limited to announcing a combat strategy focused on specific targets in the north of the Gaza Strip, a devastated and almost unpopulated area, and on the pursuit of Hamas' political and military commanders in the south of the enclave, which the army suspects are together went into hiding with the 136 hostages captured in Israel almost three months ago. In the southern part, the majority of Gaza's more than two million residents are now overcrowded and find themselves in precarious conditions in the middle of winter. According to Israeli military forecasts, the displaced people will not be able to return to their homes in the north until the hostages are released.
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Amid growing international pressure to reduce the intensity of attacks in Gaza, the defense minister announced a new phase of combat “based on the objectives achieved on the ground,” focused on destroying tunnels and command centers of the Ezedín al Qasam militia, the armed wing of Hamas, through the use of army special forces. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 163 Palestinians died between Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon.
Deployment of international armed forces
The document of the third phase of the conflict, which still needs to be approved by the entire government, calls for the deployment of an international force with troops from Western and moderate Arab countries to rebuild the enclave, coordinated by the United States. Gallant expects Egypt to play “an important role” in Gaza's future, but declined to provide details on plans being negotiated with authorities in Cairo, which include a reinforced technological border in the south of Gaza . Israel would also reserve the right to control imports of goods through customs.
Israel remains hopeful that Hamas will not rule after the war in Gaza, where it seized power by force in 2007 after defeating Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party in elections the previous year. Even if the Islamic resistance movement loses control of the area, Hamas-affiliated officials and public employees are expected to remain in their positions to ensure the provision of essential services.
The announcement of Israel's vision for postwar Gaza comes on the eve of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's tour of the Middle East, his fifth since the conflict began. On Monday he plans to visit Israel to find out first-hand the plans for the day after the fight, a date that Netanyahu appears to have no political or personal interest in carrying out in the near future, both due to the unstable parliamentary balance on his record coalition and the corruption trial in which he has been sitting on the judge's bench for three years.
“To date, the war has not achieved any of its goals. There have been operational successes on the ground, but there is no exit strategy,” warned Israeli analyst Nahum Barnea this Friday on the pages of the newspaper Yediot Ahronot. “The army expects the same rules of the game to apply as in the northern West Bank, where it enters cities at will and relies in part on the cooperation of the Palestinian civil administration,” argues this veteran columnist, “but Gaza is not Jenin,” writes “And with the collapse of the Hamas government, it will become a black hole, the same one that aerial photographs of the Gaza Strip show,” he concludes.
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