Gaza and the Hostage Issue (Hard Questions, Tough Answers- December 16, 2024)
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
Q. Following upon the defeat of Hezbollah, the fall of Assad in Syria and multiple setbacks for Iran, the prospects for an Israel-Hamas hostage deal appear to be improving. And after the deal: what fate awaits the Gaza Strip itself?
A. All relevant parties--Israel, Hamas, Egypt, Qatar, the US--have stepped up the pace of multilateral negotiations over a hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza. A resurgent Turkiye, after its Islamist allies triumphed over Assad in Syria, is bidding for a role. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu appears finally to be pushing a majority of his right-messianic coalition toward agreeing to the prolonged ceasefire that will be necessary for a prisoner-for-hostage exchange. The heads of Mossad, Shin Bet and the IDF have been in Egypt for talks.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan just visited Israel, Egypt and Qatar and expressed optimism that a deal could be finalized before President Biden leaves office on January 20, and possibly even this month. US President-elect Donald Trump, waiting in the wings, has threated Hamas that it will “have hell to pay” if it does not free the hostages before he takes office (though what new punishment he could possibly inflict on Gazans after more than a year of death and destruction is not clear). Trump’s designated hostage affairs envoy, Adam Boehler, will arrive in Israel this week.
US pressure and incentives, by both Biden and Trump, appear to be having some effect. It is fascinating to note the degree of apprehension and expectation in Israel projected by Trump’s impending second term when most likely, beyond bluster, he himself has little idea what he will do in the Middle East.
Q. Do we know the outlines of a hostage deal?
A. Not really. This time around, the negotiators are avoiding leaks. Based (cautiously) on informed speculation, it would appear that the deal will play out in stages. It will begin with release of women, children and elderly and ill hostages--sadly, those that Hamas can locate in the ruins of Gaza. Israel will withdraw at least temporarily from some occupied territory such as the Philadelphia Strip separating Gaza from Egyptian Sinai.
At least some of the Hamas prisoners Israel frees will be repatriated not to Gaza but to the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority will possibly play a role supervising a reopened Rafah crossing to Egypt. Augmented humanitarian aid will flow.
The hostage-release phases are expected to generate further negotiations regarding IDF withdrawal. But this is where the picture gets murky.
Q. Why? What is Israel’s strategic plan for post-war Gaza?
A. Officially, there is none. This reflects the weakness of Israeli governance in general, along with dissent within the governing coalition where extremists demand to remain in the Strip. Yet in historical context, the absence of a viable strategy for Gaza follows an Israeli-Palestinian tradition that goes all the way back to the War of Independence. The fate of this strip of sandy land, 25 miles (41 km.) long and 10 km wide, has been uncertain ever since it filled up with Palestinian refugees from Jaffa, Beersheva and nearby villages in 1948.
Q. Can you illustrate the failed strategies for Gaza?
A. Here are a few brief and tragic examples. In 1949-50, PM Ben Gurion offered to take over the Strip, then held by Egypt and understood since the 1948 War as the launch point for an Egyptian attack on Tel Aviv, and absorb an Arab population of one or two hundred thousand refugees in return for peace with the Arab world. There were no Arab takers. In 1956, Israel conquered the Strip from Egypt along with the neighboring Sinai Peninsula. International pressure forced Israel’s withdrawal and Egypt returned. Until 1967, Egypt used the Strip as a base for Palestinian guerilla attacks on Israel.
In 1967, Israel again conquered the Strip and occupied it militarily. Recognizing Gaza’s overcrowding, Israel launched a clandestine scheme to encourage emigration from the Strip to South America. This ended violently when disgruntled Gazan immigrants attacked the Israel embassy in Paraguay. In 1977-81, when Egypt and Israel negotiated peace and Israel withdrew from Sinai, PM Begin offered the Strip to Egypt. President Sadat refused, noting that Gaza, as part of Mandatory Palestine, was an issue for Israel to solve.
Meanwhile the Gazan population was growing apace. And Israeli settlements had arisen in Gaza. Thus did demography now complicate the Strip’s fate. When in 1992 the Oslo Process began, Yitzhak Rabin wistfully (and not seriously) suggested that the Strip should sink into the sea, while Shimon Peres, ever the visionary, saw Gaza as a future Singapore on the Mediterranean. Gaza, minus its settlements, became a patchwork part of the PLO-administered Palestinian Authority.
Then, in 2000, came the Second Intifada with its suicide bombings. Within a few years, PM Ariel Sharon decided to dismantle all the Gaza settlements and turn over control of the Strip to the PLO. Israel even withdrew from the Philadelphi Strip and gave the PLO/PA/Fateh movement sovereign control over passage from Gaza to Egypt.
From 2005 to 2023, this unfettered link between a Palestinian entity and the Arab world was the greatest dimension of sovereignty ever enjoyed by the Palestinians in the history of the conflict. With Israel having completely withdrawn, between 2005 and 2007 international aid flowed to Gaza in an effort to assist Palestinian state-building there.
That international effort crash-landed in 2007 when Hamas brutally ousted the PLO and its main component, Fateh. Hamas continued until the current war to control the Gaza-Egypt international border. But as is today crystal clear, Hamas devoted whatever funds it could recruit--from Qatar (encouraged by Israel), from Iran, from UN and other agencies and internationally-sponsored projects--to building a terror state. Now that strategy too is in tatters.
Q. Every scheme failed. And today?
A. Today, perhaps more than ever, the need for a viable strategy for Gaza is intertwined with both international and local Israeli and Palestinian politics. Nearly everywhere on the international and inter-Arab scene, and despite decades of failure, the demand is for Gaza to become part of a Palestinian state that includes all or part of the West Bank. Nearly everywhere, the designated sovereign in Gaza is the PLO.
Nowhere is there a readiness in the Arab world or, for that matter, elsewhere, to take in Palestinians from war-torn and overcrowded Gaza. About 100,000 (out of some 2.3 million) Gazans with means have managed, since October 7, 2023, to buy or bribe their way into Egypt. But Cairo is absolutely adamant in its refusal to absorb Gazans and resettle them, say, in Sinai, whether in wartime or as part of a peace plan: it is the Israelis’ and the Palestinians’ problem.
As for the PLO, between 1994 and 2007 it failed spectacularly (as the Palestinian Authority) to rule a semi-autonomous Gaza Strip. Today, under an aging and faltering Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the PA barely rules over areas A and B of the West Bank. It needs new leadership and a rejuvenated security apparatus before it can hope to transplant itself into Gaza with its residual Hamas movement and Islamist and tribal traditions.
As matters stand, there is no viable Palestinian strategy for ruling and rebuilding the Strip. Indeed, Fateh and Hamas recently failed yet again to negotiate an agreed governance plan for post-war Gaza. Fateh, like everyone else, insists that Hamas disarm completely in favor of a single internationally-approved security force. Yet Hamas survives, both politically and (however weakened) militarily.
Additional Arab volunteers? The UAE is mentioned as an interim presence, but only to keep order while a permanent scheme of governance is put in place. Former Gaza security chief under the PLO, Mohammad Dahlan, now in exile in Dubai, is mentioned as a possible UAE-sponsored facilitator. But none of this implies the formulation of a viable long-term strategy.
Q. And on the Israeli scene?
A. The increasingly dominant messianic right in the Netanyahu government, in the settlement movement and in society at large has its own strategic plan for Gaza: thinning or even eliminating the Arab population, particularly in the northern Strip, and rebuilding settlements there. It is that same messianic right that seeks to annex all or most of the West Bank--at least Area C, comprising 60 percent of the territory. Finance Minister Smotrich, who is increasingly in charge of Israeli plans for the West Bank, envisages 2025 as the year of annexation in both the West Bank and Gaza.
Is this a viable strategy? As noted, no one in the Arab world will absorb Palestinians ‘transferred out’ by extremist ministers Ben Gvir, Smotrich and Strook. The entire international community will oppose such a plan. A few Israeli settlements in the northern Strip, if built, will be lightning rods for Palestinian opposition. Not to mention the disastrous effect settling Gaza and/or expelling its Palestinians would have on international and Israeli ambitions to expand normalization to include Saudi Arabia, to say nothing of the economic boycotts and war-crimes accusations that can be anticipated.
There are other schemes on the Israeli right, such as renewing post-1967 military government, which even the IDF and Shin Bet oppose as counter-productive. Indeed, Israel’s security establishment opposes all the right-wing and messianic schemes, citing long-term damage to Israel’s overall security and regional relations.
So there is no viable Israeli strategy, either.
Q. And the US, Europe and others who never tire of pointing out that a two-state solution is the only truly viable strategy, even when Israel and Palestine are deep in the throes of war and extremism?
A. In his previous term as president, Donald Trump presented Palestinians and Israelis with a map for a two-state settlement. The map was dismally out of touch with realities on both sides. But at the strategic level it did the trick of facilitating normalization between Israel and three Arab states: Morocco, the UAE and Bahrain (Sudan too, but it has since fallen apart), all geared to buy into Trump’s transactional style of diplomacy even without a Palestinian solution.
Will Trump try again, perhaps in the hope of persuading the Saudis, too, to normalize with Israel? Trump is of course unpredictable, and not a strategic thinker. But if nothing else, he seems to be better at intimidating the Netanyahu government than Biden has been. Still, thus far there is no viable strategic thinking about Gaza on either side of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
Q. Bottom line #1: why has Gaza failed?
A. Lack of resources, over-population, absence of civil society foundations, Israeli mismanagement, Arab insistence that Gaza’s refugees remain refugees, abysmal failure of state-building by any and all, and isolation from the Arab world--reinforced, paradoxically, by neighboring Egypt. None of this bodes well for the future.
Q. Bottom line #2: what will release of hostages, even in prolonged stages, mean for Israelis?
A. For those Israelis who cling to the foundational values of Zionism--in other words, all but Haredim, messianics, and Netanyahu’s many groupies--it will mean confronting the abject failure of the state and its institutions on October 7, 2023 to live up to those values. It will mean prolonged, gut-wrenching months of reckoning, crisis and meltdown.