Current Events, Episode 175
israel at war, EXPLAINED: Reoccupy Gaza?
february 18, 2024
BLOG VERSION below | PODCAST VERSION HERE
Should Israel reoccupy Gaza eighteen years after leaving it? And if not, does the government have a better vision?
There is a lot of talk right now about Israel re-occupying Gaza 18 years after leaving. We’ll get into whether this might be a good idea or a bad idea. The idea itself speaks to a lack of clarity right now from the Israeli government about a postwar plan. What does the Israeli government envision can and should happen in Gaza, and the West Bank, when this war ends? This lack of vision is imperiling the war effort because the IDF lacks a firm direction on which to conduct its operations.
One of the problems here is politics. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reluctant to even openly debate a postwar plan because he is too cautious to make a move. Any decision on returning Gaza to the Palestinians and moving towards Palestinian statehood risks losing the support of the extremists in his coalition, who he needs to hold on to power. They are the ones pushing for the re-occupation. Yet other politicians, like Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, members of the war cabinet, are publicly discussing ideas for a postwar plan that will give the IDF a strategic direction.
The dilemma over the hostages is also dividing the Israeli public. Hamas is demanding a permanent cease-fire, full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the release of thousands of terrorists back to the battlefield, all in exchange for a slow release of the remaining hostages over a period of several months. After which Hamas vows to repeat October 7. A small but vocal minority is pushing the government to take this deal, at least for now. They argue that the hostages’ lives are under dire threat, and bringing them home now is the greater imperative, especially as there seems to be a deal on the table. But a majority of Israelis argue that the country won’t be safe until the terrorist threat is eliminated. They argue that the hostages will be freed by continued military pressure. That when Hamas is down to its last bunker, surrounded by the IDF with no way out, they’ll trade their lives for the hostages. Both of these moves — taking the deal or keeping up the campaign — are incredibly risky. It’s impossible to know whose analysis is the correct one.
So at the moment the IDF is poised to invade Rafah, the large city on the southern edge of the Strip next to Egypt. It’s Hamas’ last remaining holdout and likely where its leaders and the hostages are. But it’s also where more than a million Palestinians have fled. There’s nowhere left for them to go, really. Egypt has thus far refused to take them in. Trying to move them back to the north of Gaza, which Israel controls, will just move Hamas with them. There doesn’t seem to be an effective way to separate civilians from Hamas. It’s an urban warfare nightmare and a humanitarian disaster. So far, except for a few targeted operations, the IDF is sitting tight.
The problem with not having a plan is that it cedes the space to those who do have a plan. When there’s no government policy, individual actors will push forward their own agenda, which risks becoming policy by inertia and ambiguity. And so we now have a prospect which once seemed laughably ridiculous: Israel re-occupying Gaza 18 years after leaving it. Netanyahu’s Religious Zionist ministers are pushing to resettle the Strip with Jews and encourage, persuade, and incentivize Palestinians to leave, what they call “voluntary migration.” They argue this is the only way to ensure Israel’s security. One poll puts about a third of Israelis supporting this move.
So let’s do something bold and ask whether there actually are any good reasons for Israel to re-occupy Gaza? What good could possibly come from this? And if this remains a laughably bad idea, then what else might be on the table right now besides an invasion of Rafah and a last, bloody push to crush Hamas?
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And now on to today’s episode. I’m your host Jason Harris, and this is Jew Oughta Know.
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Let’s ask a bunch of questions here. Who is advocating for reoccupation? Why? Are there actually any benefits to reoccupying Gaza? What are the downsides? And if Israel isn’t going to take over, then what is the plan?
Quick historical recap. Israel captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt in 1967, and administered the territory until 2005. That year, Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza — that is, they completely ended the occupation without any peace agreement with the Palestinians. At the time there were about nine thousand Jews living in 17 settlements amongst about 1.3 million Gazans. Some of the settlers left voluntarily, but others actively fought the IDF when the troops showed up to forcibly remove them. It was a melee of shoving and screaming broadcast live on TV around the world. I remember watching it on an airplane, when JetBlue was pioneering live TV in the video seatbacks.
For the settler movement, the 2005 Disengagement under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is considered the darkest day in their history. For them, it was an extraordinary act of betrayal: political, historical, and spiritual. Much of the movement subscribes to the ideology of Religious Zionism, which sees Israel playing a role in the divine redemption of humanity. Essential to that concept is Jewish sovereignty over all the ancient Land of Israel as promised by God in the Hebrew Bible. The land itself is holy, with the goal of possessing a Land of Israel made whole by the permanent return of the Jews to every inch. This is the key to bringing forth the Messiah to achieve redemption. So not only does Religious Zionism view settling the land as a religious imperative, it thus also views giving up any land as an abomination. There was — and remains — incredible anger at the Israeli government for what the settlers saw as a betrayal of their most closely held ideals, and from a right-wing prime minister who had been a steadfast promoter of the settler movement for decades. There has also been a hope for a return someday to rebuild the Jewish settlements that were given up.
Even if we don’t subscribe to the messianic idealism of the settlers, we know how this 2005 Disengagement story turned out: it was a disaster. Hamas soon took over the Strip and used Gaza as a platform to wage war against Israel, culminating in October 7.
We can tease out in this story several reasons in favor of re-occupying Gaza. The first is a big-picture righting of an historic wrong. Disengagement in 2005 was a huge mistake. It was a disaster for Israel and a disaster for the Palestinians, condemning them to the tyrannical rule of Hamas and multiple waves of war that has only brought destruction. An Israel that is in full control of Gaza is an Israel that isn’t bombing Gaza. It’s an Israel that allows in all the necessary food, medicine, electricity, and building supplies, secure in the knowledge that weapons aren’t being smuggled in. It’s an Israel that can ensure education isn’t driven by a curriculum that glorifies antisemitism and martyrdom, and that international organizations and the media can work unimpeded by, not beholden to, and not comprised by, Hamas. A more secure Israel is a less dangerous one. And so if we’re tracing the problem back to the Disengagement in 2005, then maybe let’s turn back the clock to 2004 when Israel had greater security control inside Gaza.
That’s not to argue that everything was always peaceful and calm before 2005. It was still an occupation. There was violence, and the Israeli military was a ubiquitous presence, aggressive in its defense of a few thousand Jews amongst more than a million Palestinians. But the violence wasn’t on the scale of what’s happened since Hamas took over.
So this idea of reoccupation is appealing from a security perspective. Having even small Jewish settlements there requires a major military presence. But that means those settlements act as a kind of buffer zone around Israel proper, much in the way that the West Bank settlements do today. Having the army embedded in Gaza means that threats can be stopped before they reach the border — and the Israeli communities which were so brutally wrecked on October 7.
So we have this terrible mistake in which Israel vacated Gaza. Now, in the post-October 7 world in which everything is on the table, there is an opportunity to rectify that mistake in order to increase Israel’s security. What could go wrong?
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A lot can go wrong with reoccupying Gaza. For one thing, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are still there. Even if the Israeli military is able to lock down Gaza, they’re looking at a lasting insurgency. Until every last tunnel and bunker is destroyed, terrorists will pop in and out to wreck havoc in a guerrilla war designed to wear Israel down and force the military into ever-harsher treatment of the civilian population. Total disaster.
And even without the insurgency there is the wider Palestinian population that will never accept Israeli control again. Part of the problem with Gaza’s future right now is that there really isn’t anyone who can credibly take over the Strip after the war is over. But for sure the Palestinians don’t want Israel there.
Then there is the political and economic situation. If Israel occupies Gaza, it owns it. That means taking responsibility for all government functions, rebuilding what’s been destroyed, managing the economy, and figuring out how the Palestinians will fit into the local political system. That will impose a huge burden on Israel’s government and taxpayers, and the soldiers and their families who will be forced to serve in a hostile environment protecting several thousand Jews.
And, of course, there is the hit to Israel’s global reputation. Look how the world reacts to the West Bank occupation. Does Israel really want to add another one? We can argue that Hamas started this war, lost, and Israel gets to take control until something stable and peaceful comes along. But we know what a blow that will be to Israel’s image.
So, yes, there is some appeal to the idea of fixing this historic mistake of disengagement by reoccupying Gaza to get back the security Israel had before 2005. We can also see that it’s not so clear-cut. Israel’s border with Gaza might become more secure, but it’s overall security might not. Re-occupation will engender more resentment, more frustration, and more hatred. Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran have all said they never intend to stop attacking Israel until it is completely destroyed, and re-occupation provides them yet another excuse. So maybe the right question isn’t whether re-occupying Gaza is good for Israel’s security right now, but whether it’s in Israel’s long-term interest to do so.
But the main proponents of re-occupying Gaza aren’t just appealing to the security side of the argument. They’re also appealing to the spiritual, the messianic.
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At the end of January, hundreds of people gathered in Jerusalem for a conference titled “Settlement Brings Security.” It was organized by a Religious Zionist settler group that advocates building Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and now has its eye on Gaza. Remember that Religious Zionism is a messianic ideology that believes in the coming redemption, in which Jewish control over all the land promised by God in the Hebrew Bible is the crucial linchpin. It’s a movement at the forefront of settlement activity. It has a small but powerful militant component that has gained a great deal of political influence in the last few years as Benjamin Netanyahu has brought its adherents into the government — most notably Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Minster for National Security, and Bezalel Smotrich, the Finance Minister who is also in charge of West Bank policy.
When it comes to Gaza, this Religious Zionist component has linked security with messianism. Settlements serve three functions: enhance Israel’s security as we’ve just discussed, right the wrongs of the 2005 Disengagement, and reclaim the land for Jewish sovereignty on the road to the redemption of humanity. Where it was a sin to have given up holy land in Gaza in 2005, now it is a virtue to return Jews to it. It’s a step further towards returning the Land of Israel to its sacred whole, that critical and necessary action to make humanity whole.
As for the Palestinians, the plan is what this movement calls “voluntary migration.” A mix of policies and actions designed to convince Palestinians to permanently leave Gaza. But everyone understands that this will be voluntary in euphemism only, that Palestinian life will be made so miserable that any decision to leave will be effectively forced displacement rather than genuine agreement. This would seem to solve much of the insurgency and instability problem. No Palestinians, no resistance.
Of course, when you’re looking towards the messianic redemption, you’re not concerned with the fate of the here and now: the Palestinians or state politics or global opinion. It’s not that the Religious Zionists are cynical about security. They see security tied into Jewish sovereignty, since the Jews cannot be sovereign if they’re not safe and secure. But security is also a way to make their religious agenda palatable to a wider audience. At the same time, they are opposed to a deal to return the hostages. They argue that anything less than a military victory leaves Israel vulnerable, which includes a long-term cease-fire in exchange for the hostages.
The January conference represents the most far-right agenda in Israeli politics today. It’s easy to dismiss these people as fanatics and their agenda as fantastical. The majority of Israelis oppose their goals. But around a third support this idea of re-occupation. That’s a fairly incredible number. Yet I also think it’s a soft number, that is, I don’t think that most of those who support re-occupation are looking at it from the messianic perspective. I think most are coming at it from the security standpoint. Anger towards Hamas, frustration with Palestinian support for violence, deep disappointment with the failures of the Israeli government that got us here, a determination to win the war by eliminating the threat of Hamas, and the realization that there is no possibility of a Palestinian state right now, since there is no way to prevent it from becoming a Hamas country. All this and more is contributing to a sense of grim resolve. Disengagement was a mistake. So let’s correct the mistake. If re-occupation is the only viable-seeming plan out there, then let’s go for it.
This, I think, is the problem. What is so compelling about the Religious Zionists here is their clarity. We can agree or disagree but you have to give them that they have a vision, a plan to execute it, and an elegant justification. This stands in contrast to the rest of the Israeli government, which has no compelling vision. Netanyahu won’t even open up a discussion beyond his promise to eliminate Hamas. We’ve seen this before: this was often how the West Bank settlement movement forged ahead in the 1970s. The government was ambiguous about its settlement policies, so individual actors or small groups took action, establishing settlements that forced the government’s hand to accept them, bringing along sympathetic politicians who supported settlement. In a vacuum, A plan beats out NO plan.
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So the Israeli government doesn’t really have a plan. The re-occupation conference drew about a dozen ministers from Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, along with another dozen or so members of his coalition government. The ultranationalists Ben-Gvir and Smotrich were there. This conference wasn’t in the style of an intellectual symposium but instead a celebratory rally, with music and dancing accompanying speeches laying out the group’s agenda.
Israel’s allies in the United States and Europe were quick to condemn the rally. Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant declared that neither he nor the IDF will allow Israeli settlement inside Gaza. Netanyahu didn’t criticize the ministers who attended, since he needs their support, but he did acknowledge that they weren’t speaking for the government.
To be fair to Netanyahu, Israel is looking at multiple dilemmas. Every player here has competing interests that are seemingly irreconcilable. Israelis want the hostages returned but also won’t tolerate anything less than a slam-dunk victory over Hamas, which means eliminating the terrorists’ ability to conduct another October 7. Hamas wants to completely stop the war, declare victory, rebuild their army, maintain their control over Gaza, and free thousands of terrorists from jail so they can, as they have promised, repeat October 7. They are hoping to use the hostages to achieve all that. But Netanyahu refuses a deal on those terms as a price way too high.
Joe Biden is trying to thread the needle of his own domestic political situation. Election season is here. Biden’s support for Israel is alienating the left, as well as a crucial bloc of Muslim voters in the swing state of Michigan. Now we have leaks of Biden complaining about Netanyahu behind closed doors. Biden might well be sincere, but these leaks are also probably intentional, designed as a signal to the left that Biden is getting frustrated with Israel.
We can see this playing out in the United States’ stance on the IDF going into Rafah. The Biden Administration is saying they are not opposed to the operation, but are opposed if Israel doesn’t have a credible plan for how to spare Palestinian civilians; but are not sure what such a credible should be or what it could look like, and are therefore not going to tell Israel what to do. It’s a muddle, but this entire situation is a muddle.
Yet there are rumors of a postwar game plan that might inform the next few months. It seems there are two in the works: one coming from Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, two of the five members of the war cabinet, who are discussing things publicly. And another plan from Netanyahu, who is said to be secretly negotiating with the United States but not willing to tip his hand now, less it enrage his coalition partners like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. Both plans are similar. They envision a long cease-fire but not a permanent cessation of war; a period of several months in which the hostages will be released and Hamas will get breathing room to regroup and maybe even smuggle their leaders out of Gaza. After that, the IDF reserves the right to resume the war to continue destroying Hamas. So a deal is possible, but not at the price Hamas is demanding. Yet Hamas is so far refusing to budge.
The question is the timing for all this. It seems the Gantz-Eisenkot plan would take shape around June, which the White House has assessed as the best time, politically, for Joe Biden to claim credit for getting Israel to cease-fire. And in which the cease-fire clock won’t run out before the November election. Netanyahu wants a quick timeline, perhaps by early March, when Ramadan begins. Netanyahu is leaning harder on the military pressure, hoping that an IDF invasion of Rafah will force Hamas to make a deal. The Israeli journalist Ron Ben Yishai writes that, “Netanyahu is betting on a military decision that will give him all the objectives of the war without being forced to give up and confront his coalition partners over the price of releasing the abductees.” The problem with this, though, is that the IDF is still laying the groundwork for a full invasion of Rafah, which the army has suggested could take several more weeks.
If all this sounds really confusing, it’s because it is right now. And even if it all plays out, there is still Hamas and the Palestinian leadership question.
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Any plan Israel could come up with runs into the problem of Palestinian leadership, which is to say there isn’t one. There’s no specifics about how the Palestinian Authority might be reformed to enable it to take over an emerging Palestinian state. So far there is not much appetite for some kind of global coalition of Western and Arab countries to provide the necessary transition or support for Gaza, let alone a peacekeeping force to ensure that Gaza doesn’t turn back into a terrorist enclave. Netanyahu may not have a vision, but everyone else’s is long on statements and short on details.
Still, Netanyahu is not doing Israel any favors. He could stop picking fights with the American president. He could at least rule out extreme ideas like re-occupation, to signal that he’s still reasonable. That would also be a sign that he’s putting the national interest before his own. That he’s willing to call the bluff of the extremists, even if it risks losing his majority. That the future of Israel matters more to him than his own hold on power.
So, as usual, we’re all in a confounding situation. It’s a humanitarian disaster, compounded by no sense of what comes afterwards that will help Palestinians rebuild their lives. Some of that is on Israel, some of that is on the global community, and a lot of that is on the reckless vision of Hamas. Israel is fighting a war against an enemy that knows no rules, no boundaries, and no accountability. Every decision here might be a bad one. Yet decisions have to get made.
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© Jason Harris 2024