It’s Not Just Gaza That’s Waiting for the Day After Israel Achieves Its Goals
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, earlier this month.
We’re two months into the war, but there’s still no clear picture, no plan, not even a hint of how the Gaza Strip will look on the day Israel decides it has achieved its goals and ends the war. Who will control Gaza?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel doesn’t intend to occupy Gaza or control it, but he also vehemently rejects having the Palestinian Authority run it. He doesn’t even want the PA managing Gaza’s civilian affairs.
Will the Israel Defense Forces remain in Gaza in large numbers, and for how long? Who will be in charge of rebuilding Gaza‘s destroyed infrastructure? Who will rebuild the hospitals, the schools, the water and power lines? Will there be any countries or institutions willing to fund Gaza’s reconstruction?
Even on the assumption, as yet unproven, that Israel will succeed in finishing off Hamas – demolishing all its tunnels, cellars and rocket launching facilities and killing its leadership – 2 million Gazans will still be “the enemy” lying in wait across the border.
This is a huge population that is already under existential threat. It has been economically and medically wiped out, with no housing and no sources of income. And human beings who have nothing left to lose will serve as fertile ground for a new incarnation of the threat, which will no longer be called Hamas, but “greater Gaza.”