On the aid industry – Zvi Bar'el in Haaretz:
‘Under this plan – which Netanyahu convened a meeting about on Sunday evening – the IDF would buy products stored in warehouses near the Gazan border. They would then be sent through the Kerem Shalom border crossing and another crossing to distribution centers in Gaza on IDF trucks. Finally, the goods would be distributed to Gazans by IDF soldiers.
The IDF, Shin Bet security service and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant all oppose this plan on the well-founded grounds that it would put soldiers at risk and that instead of managing the war, the IDF would have to allocate troops to hand out food. But it seems unlikely that either the IDF or the defense minister will be able to hinder Smotrich from realizing his dream.
The plan's estimated cost – $5.4 billion per year for food alone – should also have led to it being shelved by Smotrich, who ostensibly serves as finance minister.
But beyond that, the real danger is that this plan would put Israel on a collision course with the U.S. administration in particular and the international community in general. And it's highly unlikely that it could even achieve its goal of ending Hamas' participationin the profitable aid industry.’
(…)
‘Its "red lines" document from 2008, which the media was allowed to report on only years later on orders from the Supreme Court, is still fondly remembered. This "scientific" document calculated the number of calories a person needs to avoid starving (2,279 per day). Based on this data, it calculated the amounts and types of food that would be allowed to enter Gaza.
It then proceeded to calculate the number of trucks that would be allowed in to carry out this mission. The figure came to precisely 170.4 trucks five days a week, excluding the 68.8 truckloads that were equivalent back then to Gaza's own food production, which today is virtually nonexistent.’
(…)
‘Somebody – that is, IDF soldiers – would also obviously have to keep detailed records to prevent people who have already gotten their daily ration from getting duplicate or triplicate handouts, lest the surplus be given to Hamas.
The possible avenues for friction and danger this system would create are endless. And nobody should envy the officers who would have to inform bereaved families that their son fell while fulfilling his duty to distribute food to Gaza's residents or guard the truck that brought cans of tuna to Jabalya.’
(…)
‘A full, direct occupation is a luxury that only wealthy countries can afford. But even they have recognized the need to set up mechanisms for local administration that would bear the burden of day-to-day maintenance of the system.
Israel has no such mechanisms in Gaza, and it refuses to allow the Palestinian Authority to return to the Strip. The dream of setting up a military government that would replicate the "worthwhile occupation" in the West Bank can't be achieved in devastated Gaza without repairing its economic infrastructure – rebuilding hundreds of factories and restarting production, exports, and employment that could produce taxes for the occupying power.’
Read the article here.
The dream of reoccupying Gaza is just another disaster in the making.
Even if you believe that deterrence had to be restored after October 7, 2023, even if you believe that part of the Gaza war was just an attempt to buy some time in the absence of any peace effort that’s worthy of that name, even then it should be clear that restoring deterrence is not the same as the forever war.
A direct occupation might be a luxury, it’s a luxury that is in the long run unaffordable, and it might not even be a luxury.