As early as the start of 2024, both Biden administration officials and the IDF high command tried to press Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss how Gaza would look in the “day after” the war ended.
To the extent Netanyahu viewed these efforts as ways to end the war “too early” – before taking apart Hamas’s battalions in Khan Yunis and Rafah, and before achieving certain broader concessions from Hamas – historians may view his refusal to engage on the issue as justified, at least up until the summer of 2024.
Certainly since the nearly two-month ceasefire from January to March at the start of this year and since Israel and Hamas were close to a deal in summer of this year, however, Netanyahu’s refusal to engage on the issue even with his preferred partner, the Trump administration, will likely come under criticism – and maybe even his earlier refusal.
The bottom line is that since Israel stopped firing on Hamas on October 4, the terrorist group has retaken control of all of the Gaza Strip’s population centers and executed many of the more moderate Palestinians who Israel and the world would have liked to have worked with in rebuilding its future.
This has been a strategic disaster, and it could have been avoided by having a set international force deploy wherever the IDF was withdrawing from before the IDF withdrew.
Only after the IDF stopped shooting and withdrew, and Hamas had already retaken much of Gaza, did Netanyahu start serious negotiations over what the new International Security Force (ISF) that will manage Gaza security will look like.
This past weekend, those negotiations started to bear some fruit, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio signaling that only countries Israel views as trustworthy will be involved in the new ISF.
The latest leaks have included Indonesia, Pakistan, or Azerbaijan, or a mix of those three, with earlier estimates referring more to Egyptian peacekeepers. According to the ceasefire, somewhere in the mix there are eventually supposed to be Palestinian Authority security officers.
There is no reason why Netanyahu could not have asked for more Indonesians, Pakistanis, and Azeris at the start of this year if he preferred more of them as opposed to more Egyptians and PA security officers.
The mix of who and how to roll them out quickly could have been a decision that was locked down long ago if only security considerations, not politics, was involved.
It is hoped that Israel and the US may still have enough power and leverage to dictate the makeup of this force, and possibly that force will roll out in the coming weeks and take security control back from Hamas without a major conflict.
But even in that golden scenario, Hamas will have run Gaza for more than a month.
That means it will have had virtually uninterrupted extensive time to: reorder its remaining fighters into new regional and subregional units, to collect and reorganizer its weapons, to kill off and intimidate much of its internal Gaza opposition, and to make it much harder for whoever comes in afterward to convince the broader Gazan public that “defecting” from loyalty to Hamas is a safe move.
Even if officially, Hamas gives control over areas to the ISF, the whole population of Gaza will recall that when the IDF pulled out, after long months of control, Hamas was powerfully efficient and brutal in rooting out and eliminating anyone who crossed it during the IDF control period.
Why would they think this time will be any different?
What will stop most Gazans from believing that regardless of whether the new ISF is around for weeks, months, or a few years, Hamas will come out on top in the end, and cooperating with the West, moderate Sunni countries, and Israel against Hamas would be signing a delayed death warrant?
The main chance the ISF has is if pressure, and sometimes continued targeted raids and drone strikes by Israel, actually roots out Hamas from portions of Gaza.
In those portions, if Gazans truly see that Hamas is gone, they might over time start to risk working with the West, moderate Sunni countries, and Israel on a Hamas-less future for Gaza.
Put differently, the one chance to fix the failure to preplan and deploy the ISF earlier will be more aggressive moves to rout Hamas again in a way that Israel and the ISF truly do provide other Gazans with security.
This is in lieu of the fantasy of Hamas completely disarming.
In that sense, more important than getting Hamas to commit to some limited symbolic disarmament moves, in which it chooses the time and place that works best for its plans, is for Israel and the ISF to dictate portions of Gaza where Hamas is truly no longer in control – even if it remains in charge of other portions of Gaza behind the scenes.
If these portions of Gaza where Hamas would truly be pushed out of are then rebuilt faster and flourish more than the portions of Gaza that remain dominated by Hamas, then over time, the 600,000 to 700,000 Gazan swing voters who are neither affiliated with Hamas nor Fatah may swing against Hamas and truly end the group’s hold on power.
These are a lot of “ifs.”
But being that Netanyahu did not plan and roll out the ISF before Hamas retook hold of Gaza, it is Israel’s and Gaza’s best chance.