Here we go again. The “international community,” led by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff of the Trump administration, alongside the EU and a panoply of questionable Arab “allies,” is rushing in to stabilize the Middle East.
A convoluted and fantastical array of “technical” and “security” structures is supposedly going to bring good governance, deradicalization, and demilitarization to Gaza.
Poppycock. Especially the part about disarming Hamas. Nobody but the Israeli army is truly going to clear the Gaza Strip of weapons aimed at Israel, from guns to rockets to terror attack tunnels. Nobody but the IDF is going to confront and crush Hamas’s remaining 30,000 or so troops.
Nobody but the Israeli military can prevent Hamas from rearming or reimposing its reign of terror on Palestinians in Gaza. And no state but Israel can thwart the flow of money to Hamas, whether from Turkey, Qatar, or Iran.
In fact, the fanciful concept of a “Riviera” in Gaza, an Eden-like oasis of hi-tech progress and high-end living, may already be serving as conduit for a surge of cash to the same corrupt and venal Palestinians who have occupied and destroyed Gaza over the past generation.
Israel presented a dazzling, dizzying gobbledygook
THROUGH US President Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, Israel has been presented with gobbledygook – a dazzling and dizzying assortment of new-old guarantors of stability with serious-sounding acronyms: EUBAM, GAC, NCAG, ISF, PSF, CMCC, DDDR, and more.
The European Border Assistance Mission (EUBAM), and its counterpart EU Mission for the Support of Palestinian Police and Rule of Law (EUPOL COPPS), is meant to guard the Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza and prevent bad guys and bad goods from entering.
It is convenient but reckless to forget that EUBAM officers (along with Palestinian Authority policemen) hastily fled Rafah with their pants around their ankles when Hamas violently grabbed Gaza in 2007.
There is no reason to believe that these European cops will today show any more spine in the face of Hamas threats than they have in past.
The Gaza Administrative Committee (GAC), also known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), is theorized as a “non-partisan, technocratic body to manage civilian affairs” in Gaza, made up of “non-affiliated” Palestinian bureaucrats, that is, people who don’t owe their lives and livelihoods to Hamas; even though these will be the same Palestinians who worked in the Hamas-ruled administration before October 7.
There is no reason to believe that such “non-affiliated,” fearless Palestinians exist in Gaza.
The International Stabilization Force (ISF) is posited on troops from countries around the world (There are currently no serious volunteers for this other than the Turks) who are to train and oversee the Palestinian Security Force (PSF) drawn from Mahmoud Abbas’s various armies and militias in the West Bank, as well as decommissioned and deradicalized Gazan fighters.
There is no reason to believe that such an international force (if it ever materializes) or such Palestinian forces will act to strip Hamas fighters of their weapons or oust Hamas leaders from their de facto nodes of control (even if behind the scenes) in Gaza.
No officer in such forces will dare intercept aid and money streams to Hamas or expose a new Hamas terror attack tunnel being dug under Shifa Hospital or the Philadelphi Corridor.
The Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), already operating in Kiryat Gat with hundreds of US army officers and representatives from other countries too, is expected to oversee all the above plus the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the planning of Gaza reconstruction, and the implementation of Disarmament, Demobilization, Deradicalization, and Reintegration (DDDR) in Gaza.
This all sounds nice. It amounts to an imagined paradise. But it is claptrap.
It is ridiculous to expect that Hamas will melt away in the face of this alphabet soup of international do-gooders. Rather, Hamas will bamboozle, threaten, buy off, or bump off any EU cop, American monitor, or Egyptian overlord who stands in its way.
And Hamas will have officials from Qatar and Turkey, its increasingly assertive Moslem Brotherhood backers, embedded in Trump’s grand “Board of Peace” (BoP) and Gaza Executive Board (GEB) to run cover for Hamas and to fill out the terror group’s coffers as needed.
EGYPT STANDS as a good example of double-dealing, which explains why Israel must never rely on Arab actors or on the international community for its core security.
Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel and claims to be a Western partner in stabilizing Gaza. However, it is one of the fiercest purveyors of anti-Israel and utterly antisemitic messaging in the Arab world, and Cairo is a great enemy of the Palestinians, too.
Egypt did nothing to stop Hamas from staging a coup against the Palestinian Authority and seizing control of the Gaza Strip. It allowed the Sinai Desert, under Egyptian control, which adjoins Gaza, to become the Middle East mecca for local and international terrorist group operations, and for weapons and drug smuggling into Gaza and Israel.
By turning a blind eye to and even benefiting from the massive smuggling industry, Egypt significantly contributed to transforming the Hamas-ruled Strip into a major base for Islamist terrorism, paving the way for the October 7 attack on Israel.
Over the past two years, the IDF discovered over 100 smuggling tunnels under the border between Gaza and Egypt. There is no way in the world that Egyptian police, army, and political officials did not know and approve of this.
It is important to remember that Egypt cares about the fate of Palestinians even less than it cares for Israelis. Cairo has kept Palestinians locked into Gaza for decades, even refusing medical treatment in Egypt for wounded Palestinians over the past two years of warfare, not to mention disallowing refuge in Sinai for Palestinians seeking to flee Gaza.
Therefore, the idea of once again placing the Gaza border (specifically the Rafah Crossing and the Philadelphi Corridor) under Egyptian supervision, alongside some flimsy-flabby EUBAM monitors with only a token Israeli presence, is both preposterous and dangerous.
Only full-scale and permanent IDF control of this border area will guarantee Israeli security.
Overall, only the obliteration of Hamas could bring some respite to Gaza and long-term security to Israel. And only the IDF can accomplish this.
All the fancy-shmancy mechanisms now being introduced will only get in the way or, far worse, will further fortify Hamas.
The writer is managing senior fellow at the Jerusalem-based Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy.
The views expressed here are his own. His diplomatic, defense, political, and Jewish world columns over the past 30 years are at davidmweinberg.com.