TEL AVIV, Israel – A 28-page document laying out the clearest post-war plan for Gaza to date has been circulated to the highest level of Israel’s security apparatus. In the proposal obtained by The Dispatcha team of researchers looked to the past to chart a better future for the war-torn Strip.
The draft proposal, which has not yet been made public, seeks to address perhaps the most difficult question facing Israeli decision-makers today: how to create the conditions for Gaza to exist peacefully alongside the State of Israel. To do this, Israeli researchers Netta Barak-Corren of Hebrew University, Danny Orbach of Hebrew University, Netanel Flamer of Bar-Ilan University, and Harel Chorev-Halewa of Tel Aviv University analyzed historical examples of military occupation and attempts at social transformation to learn from successes and failures.
Although the academics’ conclusions were first distributed to government officials in February, momentum for such a plan has grown in recent weeks – especially as Israeli forces struggle to prevent Hamas from reappearing in areas of Gaza that were previously unoccupied. . While it is unclear how the document is being received, it has reached the highest levels of the Israeli government and military.
Calls for a post-war plan for Gaza, which has suffered widespread destruction and tens of thousands of deaths in the nearly nine-month war between Israel and Hamas, have increased recently as negotiations for a ceasefire and return of Israeli hostages stagnated. During Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s trip to Washington last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israel to present a reconstruction and security plan for Gaza and its 2.3 million residents.
“If we don’t bring something else to Gaza, ultimately we will have Hamas,” said Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. warned last month.
And that “next day” could come sooner than previously thought. As Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal noted in a recent report, Hamas has now lost 95 percent of its rocket arsenal, most of its smuggling routes and all of its ammunition production capacity. An esteemed 35 percent of the terrorist group’s fighters were killed, while an even larger number were injured and removed from the battlefield. The time to plan for Gaza after Hamas is now, argues the team of Israeli researchers that includes two Middle East experts, a military historian and a jurist.
The article, “From a Murderous Ideology to a Moderate Society: Transforming and Rebuilding Gaza After Hamas,” outlines a series of pragmatic steps that must be taken to reform a society shaped by its terrorist overlords for more than 15 years.
“Israel’s ability to achieve its objectives depends not only on the military and political campaign that is taking place today, but also on its ability to facilitate the reconstruction and transformation of a nation that was led by a murderous ideology,” the document states. , “in such a way that it will develop stable institutions and an Arab culture that does not educate for jihad and that is reconciled with the existence of Israel as a state.”
Although the report does not address military strategy, its initial condition is clear and controversial: the total defeat of Hamas. Rehabilitation under attack is not possible, and the authors point to the historical examples of the US campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Iraq, the initial failure of US forces to secure the borders allowed the flow of jihadists into the country, with these fighters eventually supported by locals disillusioned with the long American occupation. The military withdrawal of the Obama administration in 2011, in the midst of this instability, worsened the situation, fueling sectarian conflicts and, eventually, creating the conditions for the Islamic State to gain supporters and conquer territory.
A similar vacuum in Gaza could prove disastrous for Israel, as happened after Jerusalem withdrew its forces and settlements from the Strip following a wave of terrorist attacks in 2005. Hamas launched a bloody civil war to expel the Palestinian Authority just two years later and has been using the territory as a launching pad for attacks on Israel ever since.
“It should be expected that, even in the best case scenario, any governmental structure in Gaza will require guidance, security intervention from time to time, and even assistance from Israel and other partner countries,” the report notes. “The idea that it is possible to abandon Gaza and ‘throw the keys overboard’ proved to be a disaster in the years following the withdrawal and is also a dangerous illusion today.”
The phased phase of the USA withdrawal from Afghanistan, likewise, accelerated the collapse of the American-backed government in Kabul. By conveying to the Taliban the date that US forces planned to leave, Washington empowered jihadist fighters and undermined morale among its own allies. Thus, the report’s authors recommend measuring progress in the Gaza reform process through achievements, rather than establishing a strict timetable for the eventual withdrawal of occupying forces.
“If you want reform efforts to be successful, you need to focus on achieving qualitative measures and not adhering to a rigid timeline,” said Barak-Corren, one of the paper’s authors and a legal academic whose work focuses on conflict resolution. The Dispatch. Otherwise, “your allies know that you will abandon them at that moment and will have no one to trust, and your enemies know that they just need to survive and prepare for your departure.”
The US’s unsuccessful efforts to transform Iraq and Afghanistan into liberal democracies should also serve as a warning to Israel, researchers argue. The key to change is some continuity, the report notes, arguing that Gaza must maintain aspects of its cultural character. But it also admits the difficulty of achieving deradicalization when religion – and in particular, Hamas’ brand of Islamic fundamentalism – plays a central role in Gaza society. “The close link between extremism and religion in Gaza makes it difficult to create an alternative narrative to the Hamas narrative.”
But history offers examples of successful religious reforms, even in recent years. In Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman led a top-down effort diminish the role of Wahhabism – an ultra-conservative form of Sunni Islam – in the daily lives of its people. The abandonment of this ideology included a relaxation of restrictions on women, crackdowns on imams for incitement, and revisions to the curricula taught in schools. Riyadh recently revised the country’s textbooks, removing denunciations of Zionism as a “racist” European movement and references to Israel as an enemy state.
Taking into account the steps taken by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states towards tolerance, the draft proposal advocates their close involvement in the rehabilitation of Gaza. In particular, it envisages strong participation by the Arab state in reformulating its educational system and religious order in a way that promotes peace but maintains the cultural character of society.
In the short term, a regional coalition could also help meet Gaza’s immediate humanitarian needs, thereby depriving Hamas of the opportunity to reconstitute itself under the auspices of a civilian administration. In the medium and long term, the continued engagement of moderate Arab countries is vital to reorienting Gaza away from the Iran-Qatar axis.
Strengthening the defeated regime’s ties to the American orbit was a key component in the two reconstruction success stories analyzed in the postwar report: West Germany and Japan after World War II.
The transformation of post-war Germany, which underwent dramatic de-radicalization, depended on the complete defeat and unconditional surrender of the Nazi regime. For many Germans, the humiliation of World War II undermined the very basis of the dictatorial and fanatical leadership that gave rise to it. Thus, when the Allies occupied and began the process of rebuilding and reforming Germany, they encountered very little resistance from the local population. Although researchers note an increase in Palestinian support for Hamas after October 7, they argue that public opinion can change quickly. The defeat of the terrorist group, in particular, could cause the collapse of its support base.
The German example also demonstrates the effectiveness of a phased occupation, especially if the ultimate goal of restored sovereignty is always in sight. Allied forces directly occupied West Germany for five years after the war, after which they switched to indirect occupation until 1955. From that moment on, Germany regained its independence, maintaining close political and security ties with the US and the its allies, thanks to NATO. Allowing the country to enter the regional framework ensured that it maintained its progress towards becoming a prosperous, Western-oriented liberal democracy.
Also in Gaza, researchers argue that there should be an interim period in which the Strip is governed by external forces – preferably an international and regional coalition, but possibly Israel – followed by a gradual return to Palestinian management and sovereignty. That ultimate goal may be something the Israeli government is starting to consider. In a speech before a joint session of Congress on July 24, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is supposedly expected to announce its support for a path towards the creation of a Palestinian state in exchange for an agreement that would allow for the normalization of ties with Saudi Arabia and the release of Israeli hostages from Hamas captivity.
Creating a positive horizon for independence and international acceptance is crucial to gaining buy-in from local populations, according to the researchers’ proposal. But so is some degree of continuity.
In postwar Japan, in many ways the closest parallel to Gaza today, allowing the emperor to continue his largely ceremonial role lent legitimacy to U.S. reform efforts. The symbolic figure blessed the demilitarization process, including through the adoption of a new constitution that enshrined the country’s democratic and pacifist character. The Japanese army and navy were blamed for imperial Japan’s descent into militarism, just as the authors of the postwar document argue that Hamas should be blamed for the war in the midst of Gaza’s eventual reconstruction process.
“Japan during World War II, under the auspices of an out-of-control army and navy, developed a suicidal and violent military culture of blind sacrifice that, in important ways, is actually very similar to jihadist culture, the cult of death of Hamas,” Barak-Corren said. “There are also many similarities in methods: indifference to human suffering, violations prevalent during war, brutal murders of both political opponents and enemies. The cruelty of the Japanese army was a well-known phenomenon during the war.”
“This makes the Japanese transformation even more fascinating, because the Japan we know today is pacifist,” he added.
