On the endgame – Pfeffer in Haaretz:

‘So, assuming Israel isn’t planning to remove the Palestinian population or reestablish a permanent presence in Gaza, there are three key dilemmas with regard to “the day after”: 1. How will Israel maintain temporary control of the territory after most of Hamas’ military infrastructure is destroyed? 2. To whom does Israel transfer control of Gaza when its forces leave? 3. Is there a realistic plan for Gaza’s future that could prevent it becoming once again a base for attacks on Israel? In the first interim stage, the IDF and defense establishment will have to bear responsibility for Gaza and its population. There have been some suggestions of similar mechanisms to those that existed in southern Lebanon during the IDF’s presence there between 1984 and 2000 – such as the establishment of a “security zone” within Gaza’s borders, and even a local militia that will help maintain security like the South Lebanon Army sought to do in the 1980s and ’90s.’

(…)

‘IDF generals are fully aware that in the interim stage, once the ground offensive has achieved its objectives, they will have to be in charge both of security and civilian matters in Gaza. The Defense Ministry is already starting to plan how to transfer some of the personnel of the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, which deals with civilian affairs in the West Bank, to temporary roles in Gaza.
Responsibility for Gaza will place a major burden on the IDF, which in the not-too-distant future may also find itself in another war in the north against Hezbollah, and there will be the need to try to shorten this interim period.
The only solution the defense establishment can see is the return of the PA to Gaza. But this will be a complex task and in no way an automatic process. The PA does not have the resources to take control of Gaza, and its political will to do so is also questionable.’ (…)

‘ From the perspective of [Palestinian President] Mahmoud Abbas, losing Gaza to Hamas in 2007 was his biggest personal failure. He will have an historic opportunity to preside over the great reconciliation of the Palestinian people.” But before that can happen, there will have to be yet another stage. It is highly unlikely that the handover can take place directly from the IDF to the PA. Abbas will not be prepared to be seen as returning to Gaza on Israel’s bayonets. In addition, the PA’s security apparatus will not be able to take over the entire Gaza Strip in one go and will need time to gradually deploy, as well as recruiting and training more men. There will have to be another force in Gaza, providing security in the interim and helping the PA build up.
One of the key questions that is already being asked quietly is whether, among the Arab governments with which Israel has relations, any will be prepared to contribute to a “peacekeeping force” that will manage the transition.’

(…)

‘But there is another obstacle to this stage. The return of the PA to Gaza after over 16 years of Hamas rule would almost certainly be possible only in the context of a wider agreement in which the Palestinian leadership would receive some kind of assurance of a “diplomatic horizon.” Abbas will demand an Israeli commitment to return to the moribund peace process. Israel will have to choose between continuing to spend its resources – and the blood of its soldiers – in controlling Gaza, or accepting this demand.
No one has any utopian illusions that a diplomatic process which failed to yield a solution for over three decades will suddenly succeed after the deep trauma inflicted on Israel by Hamas’ October 7 attack and the destruction being caused in Gaza with Israel’s resulting war to destroy Hamas.
However, to bring this war to an end, there will be no choice but to at least be open to such a possibility. Simply positing the two-state solution as a distant goal will not be enough. There will have to be serious thinking on how to solve the long-standing civilian problems of the Gaza Strip – an artificial geographical construct whose borders were determined by the cease-fire lines between the IDF and the Egyptian army at the end of the War of Independence in early 1949, when the original population of Gaza had more than quadrupled due to the influx of around 200,000 Palestinian refugees.’ (…)

‘In the long-term, there has to be more thought given to the possibility of expanding Gaza’s territory. One plan proposed in the past by Energy Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) was to build artificial islands off Gaza’s shore, which would house seaports and airports, electricity and water desalination plants.
Another way to expand the territory, previously outlined by former IDF colonel Yitzhak Ini Abadi (who served as Israel’s military governor of Gaza in the early ’70s), is international pressure on the Egyptian government to cede territory in Sinai. This could allow for the expansion of the Gaza Strip along the Mediterranean coast and inland in the peninsula.
Abadi insists that without a wider “vision” for developing Gaza, Hamas will return and only major civilian development can create an environment where “Hamas is dried-up from within.”’

(…)
‘For Israel to have any prospect of achieving long-term change in Gaza that will both reduce the threat to its security and not make Israel responsible for Gaza’s population, its own government must change first.’

Read the arricle here.

Forget an international peacekeeping force in Gaza. Neither Saudi-Arabia nor Morocco is willing to sacrifice their soldiers for a mission that can only fail.
The return of Fatah to Gaza is highly unlikely, the popularity of Hamas, even now, might not be huge in Gaza – a Palestinian journalist told me that Hamas is much more popular on the West Bank – but Abbas is almost irrelevant.

A security zone, just remember Lebanon, is asking for disasters.

Most probable outcome: Hamas remains in one way or another and might dry up from within one day, but only after at least the beginning of some sort of diplomatic solution. The irony of October 7: the two-state-solution is back on the menu again.

That the government in Israel must change first in order to get closer to any kind if solution is undoubtedly true. But the political Messianism that brought this government into existence will not fade away easily.