Yes, Israel's leader has the brains of a six-panel door.
OK, can you name one occupation in human history that's worked out well? The Israelis are going to take over a burned-out cinder inhabited by a bunch of folks with limited work skills, no exports or GDP, and take responsibility. What could possibly go wrong? It won't cost much to rebuild this heap of rumble into something that can sustain a reasonable life for residents.
And when this place descends into hell on earth? Will they blame Hamas? No, they won't! They'll blame us.
I'm a Jew who loves Israel and hates the goofballs running this war. Their ineptitude left Gaza's border completely unprotected in the first place, else this incident would have been shut down before significant casualties. Now their mishandling will rekindle anti-Semitism the world over and sadly accomplish in the long run.
Israel will take ‘overall security responsibility’ of Gaza for ‘indefinite period’ after war, Netanyahu says
U.S. Pushes Back on Israel’s Security Plan in Gaza After War
Israeli officials aim to ward off rise of new militant groups, but say they have no plans to govern enclave
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has left widespread devastation in the Palestinian enclave.
By Dov Lieber and David S. Cloud, WSJ
Updated Nov. 7, 2023 4:53 pm ET
Israel says it intends to retain security control of Gaza for an indefinite period once its war with Hamas ends, a proposal that prompted U.S. officials to stress their opposition to a reoccupation of the enclave.
Senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel will likely keep military control of Gaza, and it has no intention of creating an interim government to run civilian life. The plan, which was suggested for the first time since the start of the Oct. 7 war, raised concerns from the Biden administration.
“We’re having active discussions with our Israeli counterparts about what postconflict Gaza looks like,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. “The president maintains his position that reoccupation by Israeli forces is not the right thing to do,” he said.
“One thing there’s absolutely no daylight on is Hamas can’t be part of that equation,” he added.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, in his first interview with a foreign media outlet since the start of the war, said Israel has no desire to impose a civilian administration on Gaza. Once Hamas is toppled, Israel is looking at turning over responsibility for governing the territory to an international coalition, including the U.S., the European Union and Muslim majority countries, or to local political leaders in Gaza, he said.
“We don’t want to govern Gaza. We don’t want to run their lives. We just want to protect our people,” Cohen said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel planned to assume overall security responsibility in Gaza after the war. Photo: Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Netanyahu first suggested that Israel will have security responsibility for “an indefinite period” in an interview with ABC News on Monday evening.
Cohen and Netanyahu were careful not to describe Israel’s future role in Gaza as a military occupation, suggesting the details of the postwar security arrangements are still in flux. They also left unanswered many important questions, including whether the Israeli military plans to control the whole strip or just a portion of it.
The Biden administration, citing the U.S. experience in Iraq, has argued for a limited, surgical military campaign, saying it would ease the dire humanitarian conditions and make it possible for Israel to hand off control of Gaza to some sort of civilian administration relatively quickly.
“Our viewpoint is that Palestinians must be at the forefront of these decisions, and Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters Tuesday.
“Generally, we do not support reoccupation of Gaza, and neither does Israel—Secretary Blinken was fairly clear about that during his travels,” Patel said. “We’re working with partners on various scenarios—on interim governance, on security parameters, on security situations in Gaza—for once this crisis recedes, but I’m not going to get ahead of that process.”
The Biden administration is also calling on Israel to allow for a pause to let more civilians reach safe zones and improve the humanitarian situation in the enclave.
Cohen said Israel would reject any pause in the fighting until Hamas releases the some 240 hostages it and other militants took on Oct 7. “For us there is only one way we will agree to a humanitarian pause—the release of hostages,” he said.
Washington has said the Palestinian Authority—the Western-backed government that governs most Palestinians in the occupied West Bank—should take control of Gaza once Hamas’s rule is ended. Hamas violently pushed the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza in 2007.
But Netanyahu’s government has an antagonistic relationship with the Palestinian Authority, and when asked when the Palestinian Authority could govern Gaza, Cohen declined to answer, saying the subject would have to be discussed by Israel’s cabinet.
As long as Israel controls security in Gaza, it also will be difficult to persuade the Palestinian Authority to resume civilian control of Gaza, as it did before Hamas pushed it out, analysts and former Israeli officials said. Nor will Arab governments or even the United Nations be likely to step in to underwrite a temporary civilian administration if Israel is continuing to attack pockets of Hamas cells still operating in the densely populated areas of Gaza City and other areas of the strip, they say.
“Nobody wants to come in—that’s the situation we are facing,” said Tzipi Livni, a former Israeli foreign minister and deputy prime minister. At the same time, “it’s not in Israel’s interest to stay in Gaza long term.”
Cohen didn’t say which Muslim countries Israel would consider potential partners to govern Gaza after Hamas. Arab and Muslim governments have been intensely critical of Israel’s war against Hamas. Cohen said behind the scenes, many countries in the region are quietly rooting for Israel to defeat Hamas, but wouldn’t say which.
Many in Gaza who have fled the fighting for safety or who have sought temporary refuge are concerned they may not return to their homes, residents there say. Much of the enclave’s population are descendants of Palestinians displaced from their homes during the 1948 war that followed Israel’s establishment and are worried that, once again, they won’t be allowed back.
Hamas has also amplified the idea that Israel is intentionally trying to displace Gazans, an effort Israel says is aimed at keeping civilians in Gaza City as human shields to discourage attacks on Hamas’s military command centers and underground tunnels.
Cohen said Gazans who leave the enclave or those who have been internally displaced during the war will be allowed to return once the fighting is over. “After we eliminate Hamas, everyone can go back to their homes,” he said.
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has left widespread devastation. Two-thirds of the enclave’s 2.2 million people have fled their homes, while over two-hundred thousand Israelis near the Gaza and Lebanese borders have been evacuated.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza health authorities Tuesday said at least 10,328 people have been killed in the enclave in the month since the war between Israel and Gaza began, most of them women and children. They don’t distinguish between militants and civilians and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants in Gaza during the war. Israel launched its assault on Gaza after an incursion by Hamas on Oct. 7 that Israeli officials say killed more than 1,400 Israelis, the majority of them civilians.
For Israel, there are few good options about what to do with Gaza in the long term, say current and former Israeli officials. In the past, Israel didn’t push for decisive control of the strip, instead tolerating Hamas as a necessary evil on its southern border to prevent more militant groups taking root there. The Oct. 7 attacks changed that paradigm.
A boy waiting at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in the southern Gaza Strip. PHOTO: IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA/REUTERS
Even if Israel can secure Gaza and exit relatively quickly, it may need to keep substantial forces there or on the perimeter of the strip with the option to go back in, in order to prevent Hamas or a successor militant group from regenerating, analysts said.
With Hamas’s civilian administration gone, the task of providing food and shelter to its displaced residents would fall at least partly on Israel if its troops occupy Gaza, but Israel itself has shown little interest in assuming responsibility for governing Gaza once the conflict is over.
“I really don’t think that is our job,” said Shimrit Meir, a former Israeli foreign policy official, referring to the calls for Israel to answer how it plans to administer Gaza after the war. “If the international community is worried about Gaza, it should take care of Gaza.”
Margherita Stancati, Tarini Parti and William Mauldin contributed to this article.
Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com and David S. Cloud at david.cloud@wsj.com
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