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The Palestinians no longer have any communication
Item information
- Author: Paul Adams
- Role: BBC Diplomatic Correspondent
8 hours ago
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to “transform the Middle East.” American President Joe Biden said there was “no turning back”. But as Israeli forces step up their attacks on the Gaza Strip and issue new and urgent warnings to Palestinians to move south, the question is where is the war going and what comes next?
Israel continues to claim that it intends to destroy Hamas “militarily and politically.”
But beyond the use of unrelenting and overwhelming military force, it is unclear how this unprecedented goal will be achieved.
“You can’t take such drastic measures without a plan for the next day,” said Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestine study group at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center.
Milshtein, a former member of Israeli military intelligence, fears that this planning did not exist.
European diplomats say they are in intensive talks with Israel about the future, but nothing is clear so far.
“You can sketch some ideas on paper, but putting them into action requires weeks, months of diplomacy,” said one of them, who wished to remain anonymous.
There are military plans from destroying Hamas’s military capabilities to taking over large parts of the Gaza Strip. However, sources interviewed by the BBC with many years of experience in crises of this type say that planning does not go beyond that.
“I don’t believe that there is a viable and working solution for Gaza after the evacuation of our troops,” said Haim Tomer, a former member of the Israeli secret service Mossad.
Israelis are virtually unanimous in their desire to defeat Hamas and no longer allow it to rule Gaza.
But Hamas, says Milshtein, is an idea not something that can simply wipe out Israel.
He draws a parallel to Iraq in 2003, when USled forces sought to eliminate all traces of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The plan was a disaster, he says.
This left hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civil servants and military personnel unemployed, laying the foundation for a devastating uprising.
American veterans of that conflict are in Israel speaking to Israeli military personnel about their experiences in places like Fallujah and Mosul.
“I hope they explain that they made some big mistakes in Iraq,” Milshtein says.
“Israel must not have the illusion of eliminating the ruling party or changing people’s minds. That will not happen.”
“Hamas is a popular grassroots organization,” said Mustafa Barghouti, president of the Palestinian National Initiative. “If they want to drive out Hamas, they have to ethnically cleanse the entire Gaza Strip.”
This idea that Israel wants to expel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Egypt awakens the deepest Palestinian fears.
For a population already largely made up of refugees those who fled or were driven from their homes when Israel was founded the idea of another mass exodus brings back memories of the traumatic events of 1948.
“Running away means a oneway ticket,” says Diana Buttu, former spokeswoman for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Giora Eiland, former head of Israel’s National Security Council, says the only way for the country to realize its military ambitions in Gaza without killing many innocent Palestinians is to evacuate civilians.
Joe Biden’s request for congressional funding to support Israel and Ukraine is another factor causing fear among Palestinians.
So far, Israel has not officially stated that it wants Palestinians to cross the border. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has repeatedly urged civilians to move to unclearly defined “safe areas” in the south.
But Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah elSissi warned that Israel’s war in Gaza “could be an attempt to force civilian residents to migrate to Egypt.”
Assuming there are still Palestinians in Gaza after the war ends, who will govern them?
“That’s the milliondollar question,” Milshtein says.
Israel, he says, should support the creation of a new government led by Gazans, with the support of local leaders and the backing of the United States, Egypt and perhaps Saudi Arabia. The new government should also include leaders of Fatah, the Palestinian group that now controls the Palestinian Authority (PNA) in the West Bank and drove Hamas out of Gaza.
Today, however, the ANP and its president Mahmoud Abbas are unpopular among Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Diana Buttu says the ANP may even want to return to Gaza, but not “on the back of an Israeli tank.”
Palestinian veteran Hanan Ashrawi, who was a member of the ANP in the 1990s, bristles at the idea that foreigners, including Israel, will again try to dictate how Palestinians live their lives.
“People think it’s a chessboard and they can move a few pawns back and forth and end up with a checkmate. That’s not going to happen,” she says.
Among those who have studied wars in Gaza, there is deep concern and a sense that almost everything has been tried before.
Former Mossad officer Haim Tomer said he would suspend military operations for a month to first get the hostages out.
In 2012, after a previous round of fighting in Gaza, he accompanied the Mossad director to Cairo for talks that led to a ceasefire. Hamas representatives were present and the Egyptian authorities acted in the middle, he says. A similar mechanism should be used again, he says, even if Israel has to release prisoners.
“I don’t care if we release a few thousand Hamas prisoners. I want the hostages to go home.”
Israel could then decide whether to resume fullscale military operations or opt for a longterm ceasefire.