Two weeks into the war, it is evident that Israeli policy towards Hamas and the Palestinian Authority over the past 16 years, particularly under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been an abject failure.
Israel’s avowed goal in this war is the “destruction” of Hamas. What that means is undefined and leaves open the key question of what happens the “day after.”
A bit of background: Under the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, in 1994 Yasser Arafat, as head of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, was allowed to move to Gaza City — now the focal point of the war. The PLO basically ran municipal affairs under overall Israeli control. In 2005, Israel unilaterally evacuated Gaza and Arafat’s Fatah faction of the PLO took full internal control there. But Fatah was corrupt and failed to provide adequate governmental services.
After Arafat died in 2004, a presidential election in the Palestinian Authority (which then encompassed both the West Bank and Gaza), was held in January 2005 and won by current President Mahmoud Abbas, head of Fatah. No presidential election has been held since.
Legislative elections were held in the West Bank and Gaza in January 2006. The PLO won in the West Bank and Hamas won in Gaza. In 2007, there was a bloody civil war in Gaza. Hamas took complete control of Gaza and killed, imprisoned or expelled hundreds of Fatah members. That ended the governmental unity between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu’s stated policy has always been in opposition to a two-state solution to the conflict, notwithstanding the 1998 Wye River Memorandum. Netanyahu castigated the Palestinian Authority, sought to reduce foreign aid to the PA, and ensured that no new elections would take place in the West Bank.
Netanyahu’s motivations were essentially three-fold: First, opposition to the PA made for great domestic political rhetoric; second, a weakened PA would ensure unrest and terror, thus bolstering his conservative brand of politics; and third, a weakened PA, coupled with Hamas in Gaza, enabled Netanyahu to effectively ignore Palestinian issues rather than deal with them.
Netanyahu’s policy, however, was in direct opposition to most of the Israeli defense and security establishment, which viewed cooperation with the PA to be in Israel’s security interest. Fans of the Netflix series “Fauda” will recognize that cooperation. Most security experts felt the PA needed to be strengthened, not weakened.
Since returning to power in 2009, Netanyahu made no secret of his desire to keep Hamas and the PA apart for his own political purposes. For example, in 2017, the PA and Hamas were negotiating a possible takeover by the PA of civilian control of the Gaza Strip. Even though the United States and Egypt supported this reconciliation, Netanyahu was adamantly opposed — lest it empower the PA.
Further, there were three “mini wars” with Hamas during Netanyahu’s last 14 years as prime minister. There was a not-so-tacit agreement between Hamas and Netanyahu that, after each round of fighting, Israel would allow funds from Qatar and elsewhere to flow back to Hamas. This was against the recommendation of much of his own security establishment. As has been seen, those funds were used by Hamas to build tunnels and stockpile weapons rather than build internal infrastructure for the people of Gaza.
The Israeli security apparatus often wanted to go after the leadership of Hamas in a concerted way during many of these mini-wars. They were kept from doing so by Netanyahu — because he needed Hamas as his foil against the PA. He had no long-term strategic objectives, only short-term political ones.
With Hamas in power in Gaza, coupled with a deliberately emaciated PA in the West Bank, Netanyahu could claim there was no Palestinian partner for negotiation, and he could continue to crisscross the West Bank with settlements.
In the aftermath of the bloody Black Shabbat, as it is now called in Israel, and an extensive aerial bombing campaign, Israel is poised “go after Hamas leadership” — whatever that means — in a costly ground offensive.
The key question is what happens the “day after” — something Netanyahu has never been adept at answering. His concept appears to be apres moi, le deluge — after me, chaos. There seems to be an almost giddy lack of preparation. The refrain “we’ll fight then we’ll plan” is no substitute for strategy.
Unfortunately, what happens in the “after-war” is arguably even more important than the fighting itself. Due to Netanyahu’s policies, there is no Palestinian leadership capable of replacing Hamas — even were Israel successful in its undefined aims. So what happens then?
The barbarity and scale of Hamas’s attack has caused a paradigm shift in the conflict, and where it takes us is still unknown. Black Shabbat has traumatized not only Israel but the most of the global Jewish diaspora as well. The ferocity of the Israeli response will traumatize Palestinians as well.
All concerned parties need to be focused on the day after the war ends. Who will govern Gaza? And how will Gaza be governed after the war? To that unenviable task, there is no answer — but we better start thinking about it.
Jonathan D. Strum is an international lawyer and businessman based in Washington D.C. and the GCC. From 1991 to 2005, he was an Adjunct Professor of International Law at Georgetown University Law Center.