In an early hint of his vision of a postwar Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country would assume the “overall security” of the war-torn enclave for an “indefinite period” to ensure its freedom from Hamas’s terror.
Gaza should be governed only by “those who don’t want to continue the way of Hamas,” and such a government won’t be able to stand without the backing of Israeli firepower, Mr. Netanyahu said on Nov. 6 on ABC News.
“I think Israel, for an indefinite period, will have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it,” he told ABC host David Muir in his first interview with a U.S. news network since the war broke out on Oct. 7.
“When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine,” he said.
In 2005, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the full withdrawal of military forces and settlers from Gaza, putting a formal end to settlements that started after Israel gained control of the region from Egypt as the result of the Six-Day War in 1967. The process involved Israeli troops bulldozing homes and forcefully evicting thousands of Jews, whose mere presence in Gaza had prompted intense riots, attacks, and suicide bombings.
The Israeli government has since been repeatedly telling the world that it has zero interest in Gaza’s reoccupation. Most recently, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog said that his country has “no desire” to rule the densely populated enclave.
“So, we have no desire to occupy or reoccupy Gaza,” he said in an Oct. 15 interview on CNN. “We have no desire to rule over the lives of over 2 million Palestinians.
“And, certainly, we want people to go back to their homes.
“We’re talking about innocent civilians. And we are doing everything we can to keep them out of harm’s way, while Hamas is doing everything it can to keep them in harm’s way. That’s the situation we are at.”
The White House, with its stated “rock-solid and unwavering support” for Israel’s military campaign aimed at uprooting Hamas, has also made clear that it doesn’t want to see Israel occupying Gaza.
“I think it would be a mistake for Israel to occupy Gaza again,” President Joe Biden said on Oct. 15 during an interview with CBS, when he was asked if he would support Israeli occupation of Gaza at that point of the war. “In my view, Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people.
“But [Israeli forces] going in [and] taking out the extremists—the Hezbollah is up north but Hamas down south—is a necessary requirement.”
The Biden and Netanyahu administrations’ stance has led to speculations of a gradual return of the Palestinian Authority (PA) once the Israel–Hamas war is over. The Palestinian governing body, dominated by Hamas’s rival faction, Fatah, still rules parts of the West Bank after it was kicked out of Gaza in 2007.
The PA, headed by Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, recognizes the state of Israel and supports a two-state solution. However, its popularity among Palestinians has suffered a decline over the past years because of corruption, diplomatic failures, and the lack of ability to improve the West Bank’s struggling economy.
With that in mind, Washington has signaled that it’s open to the idea of a multilateral force handling Gaza’s administrative and security tasks on the PA’s behalf until the post-Hamas government becomes strong enough to manage those matters on its own.
“At some point, what would make the most sense would be for an effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority to have governance and ultimately security responsibility for Gaza,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at an Oct. 31 congressional hearing.
“Whether you can get there in one step is a big question that we have to look at,” he told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“And if you can’t, then there are other temporary arrangements that may involve a number of other countries in the region,” Mr. Blinken said. “It may involve international agencies that would help provide for both security and governance.”
The bottom line, according to the secretary of state, is that neither the United States nor Israel will allow Hamas to continue to rule over Gaza.
“Here’s what we know and, I think, is agreed among everyone: There cannot and must not be a return to the pre-Oct. 7 status quo,” Mr. Blinken said. “That’s unacceptable. It’s not tolerable for Israel; it shouldn’t be acceptable or tolerable by anyone else.”
