Israel Likely to Establish Military Administration in Gaza After Hamas Attack: Expert

An IDF soldier reacts and covers his face before removing the body of a civilian killed days earlier in an attack by Hamas terrorists in Kfar Aza, Israel, on Oct. 10, 2023. Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images

Israel will likely seek to establish a military administration over Gaza as it seeks to erode the Hamas terrorist group’s ability to operate there, according to one expert.

Destroying Hamas’s presence in the Gaza Strip would likely not be possible without a prolonged Israeli military occupation of the region, said Jonathan Lord, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security think tank.

As such, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) appear to be readying a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

“It’s going to be very likely that the IDF is going to have to reestablish administration of Gaza for some time,” Mr. Lord said during an Oct. 12 talk.

The operation is in response to the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history. Hamas terrorists surged into Israel on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,200 people and committing acts of rape and torture before taking dozens of hostages back to Gaza.

It was the most deadly attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Israeli leadership has characterized the event as a 9/11 moment that requires an unprecedented military response.

The IDF occupied parts of Gaza following its taking of the territory from Egypt in 1967. It ended its presence there in 2005, however, one year before Hamas seized power over the local government.

Israel Seeks to ‘Eradicate’ Hamas in Gaza

In the likely event that Israel moves into Gaza, Mr. Lord said that the fighting there would be among the most complex seen in the 21st century.

“The fighting will be house to house, block to block, if, in fact, Israeli forces plan to go in and clear territory of Hamas control,” Mr. Lord said.

“Gaza is a highly dense urban environment of 2.3 million people in a land mass about twice the size of Washington, D.C. As far as a counter-insurgency campaign goes, this is going to equal in difficulty anything we have seen thus far in modern military history.”

Israel will additionally need to continue deterring other regional powers, such as Lebanon and Iran, from overtly entering the conflict, according to Danny Citrinowicz, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israel-based think tank.

“They’re expecting other fronts to be opened,” Mr. Citrinowicz said of Israeli leadership.

“The question is what Iran will do.”

On this front, Israel is not alone. The United States has directed two aircraft carrier groups to the region to deter other nations from seeking to exploit the chaos.

For now, Mr. Citrinowicz said, Israel will need to come to terms with the fact that the continued coexistence of the nation with Hamas is no longer viable.

“We thought of Hamas as a jihadi Palestinian progress movement. We knew that. But we thought it prioritized the well-being of the Gaza Strip population,” Mr. Citrinowicz said.

“Hamas is actually a jihadi terrorist movement [and] we have no ability to work with them other than to eradicate them.”