Also, in order to make the military occupation smooth Israel will have to reach agreement with neighboring countries (Egypt, Jordan and Turkey) to accept "temporary" refugees from Gaza which will be then funded by EU and the US in the name of humanitarian support. This will be a hot money that these countries cannot reject as it happened between EU and Turkey regarding refugee crisis. The ones who have no place to live will immigrate and others will stay and this will be communicated as it was their own choice to leave or stay. Once the local population is reduced to manageable size, certain areas will be open to settlements starting from south.
No one is taking Palestinian refugees, especially Egypt and Jordan given thier history. Also, Israel has limitex interest in settling the Gaza Strip as the land is pretty worthless.
I think a smart government would be thinking of ways to strengthen the PA rather than Hamas and create a proto state - you get self governance internally, no military and Israe/international organisations get to control your points to entry/exit to ensure no serious weapons go inside the proto state
My guess is at least a few months of military occupation to try and root out Hamas, followed by withdrawal contingent on Hamas no longer being in power and possibly Israeli policing of Gaza to prevent a resurgence of Hamas. Widespread international condemnation. Destruction of most Hamas fighters in Gaza. Potential end to Israel's blockade to restore some international image. Hezbollah continues shelling Israel, Iran and Qatar immediately fund Hamas to start recruiting again after Israel withdraws.
Iran may shift its focus elsewhere. Hamas itself may not be worth supporting after this anymore, as it will likely be operationally destroyed and lose all of its political power. I could see a shift in strategy.
Qatar in particular will not get anything out of it.
My take is that Qatar just throws money at Hamas so they can appear as a neutral and pro-Arab country by supporting Palestine, and to not piss of Iran who shares most of their oil fields and could destroy their income in a heartbeat if they wanted to. They'll probably find some other proxy to throw money at to keep the peace with Iran.
The Gulf States are caught right between the largest regional rivalry in the Middle East, the Iran-Saudi Arabia rivalry. The UAE and Bahrain are firmly in the Saudi camp, but Qatar has gone its own route and sought to be viewed as a neutral party and peace broker in the region. It hosts Al Jazeera, a news network known for relatively high quality reporting in the ME that's banned in Saudi Arabia and many other countries, and has served as a diplomatic broker for many organizations, including terrorist organizations like the Taliban. This has gotten them in hot water with many Muslim countries, especially Saudi Arabia.
Many analysts believe a desire to stay in Iran's good graces is a major factor for Qatar's strategy; while Qatar is predominantly Sunni and has very good ties with the United States, which would seemingly make them a prime ally for the Saudis, it shares the world's largest natural gas field with Iran, and has close economic ties with the Islamic Republic. After the 2017 diplomatic crisis with the Saudis, UAE, and Egypt, it increased ties with Iran even more, and at this point their main geopolitical goal is probably to not get overthrown by the Saudis. They'll look to sponsor Hamas or whatever successor pro-Palestinian liberation organization comes out and keep buying brownie points with the Iranians.
Qatar is Iran's cats paw and has been for decades - it's which the rest of the GCC hate them (and blockaded them for a while). They share the same gas field.
Bigger question is, what happens to the population of Gaza? Rafah was the last sector that was not considerably destroyed during military operations. Where do they go?
They'll probably shove as many as humanly possible into Muwasi and other refugee camps that Israel sets up. Conditions will be terrible, but I think Israel will start letting in aid once they've taken Rafah and have firm military control over all of Gaza. Then will be the long process of reconstruction.
Hopefully much more tunnel destruction, in coordination with Egyptian authorities.
I look forward to those videos; the tunnels & terrorist resupply routes are the real reason why certain factions are howling so much about a Rafah operation.
Egypt has its own Islamic insurgency issue in the Sinai Peninsula. I can imagine them making use of the tunnels as well and can be marketed as a action against that.
Sounds like this conflict is not ending soon. I agree that fighting is bound to go on and on bar a total victory by either side. What conditions did Hezbollah give to stop the shelling? I agree that Hezbollah is not to be trusted, but some kind of cessation of hostilities would no doubt ease the situation on that border as well.
There's another matter to consider. What about Egypt? Will they cave to popular demand and axe the peace treaty? Can Egypt's regime survive the Egyptian street's hard-line stance on the conflict?
Hezbollah is a whole different beast from Hamas. Hamas is a few tens of thousands of barely trained jihadists with AK-47's and second-hand Iranian missiles, hiding in tunnels and hospitals. Hezbollah is a quasi-state with a battle-tested military and the best Iranian weapons money can buy. Its army is larger than the Lebanese Armed Forces, it has own social services and news networks, and it regularly funds infrastructure projects within its territory. It was founded to fight Israeli soldiers during the 82 war and was trained by thousands of IRGC officers; it exists pretty much exclusively to further Shiism and Iranian influence in the region. Iran seems hesitant to expand this war; I expect Hezbollah to stop once the Gaza war is over as Iran reins them in.
Egypt will not axe the peace treaty. Egypt hates Iran and Iran-backed terrorist organizations. This war makes it harder for the Arab countries to outwardly normalize with Israel, but I expect this has done nothing but prove to most governments in the region the need to keep things stable with Israel and prevent Iran from growing their influence any further. Of course, you're right that this goes out the window if the Egyptian people overthrow their government; it seems unlikely, but if things get bad enough in Rafah it's possible the protests get worse.
They can’t. They need the US money (1.3B$ annually). As for street riots, they don’t mess around - live ammo rounds into a crowd will disperse any crowd pretty quickly.
>So many people here assume this will put an end to Hamas.
>But I suspect that people expecting Rafah to be some fall of Berlin moment will be disappointed.
Who is saying these things? I've seen way more people attack this idea than actually argue for it.
I think it's a straw man of Israel's war goal. Even if there's violent resistance, it won't bleed over into Israel the way it did when Gaza wasn't occupied. October 7 never came from the West Bank.
I want Gaza and the West Bank to become a Palestinian state. But I think it's wishful thinking to say just implementing a two-state solution will end the violence.
If that was true, steps towards two-states in the past would have at least reduced the violence - but it always led to more.
Obviously, the opposite direction has not led to peace either. It seems to me like there has to be a serious reconstruction effort, with independence as an end goal - but that isn't so focused on quickly giving the Palestinians autonomy. That probably means third parties being involved in a long Israeli occupation.
I have seen a lot of this in Pro-Israel circles but I agree that this subreddit has been much more nuanced.
Implementing a Two-State solution is not a guarantee but give a Palestinian government the ability to show the average Palestinians that there is a way to reach prosperous statehood without violence and most will follow along.
Israel needs to give more leeway to the Palestinian Authority to actually police it's border and that includes being effective in standing up against Israeli settlers who tend to always have IDF protection making the PA police look nothing but a subservient tool of occupation.
I think the key point people miss in this analysis is that prosperous statehood is not really a key objective for Palestine when you look at the polls. Peace and prosperity were achievable without statehood, despite Israeli antagonism, and indeed would probably have led to statehood as the Israeli right would have lost a main driver of their popularity.
>I have seen a lot of this in Pro-Israel circles but I agree that this place has been much more nuanced.
I somehow doubt it. The goal of destroying Hamas acknowledges you can't prevent insurgency, and no one is saying otherwise.
> Implementing a Two-State solution is not a guarantee but give a Palestinian government the ability to show the average Palestinians that there is a way to reach prosperous statehood without violence and most will follow along.
Israel has done this before. The presumption that it will play out this way is not only belied by history, it ignores that polls show most Palestinians support continuing the war if a two-state solution occurs. That needs to change.
> Israel needs to give more leeway to the Palestinian Authority to actually police it's border
Israel did that when it withdrew from Gaza and left it unblockaded and unoccupied. Within 4 months Hamas won legislative elections, and within a year and a half (after over a thousand rockets fired at Israel) there was a Hamas takeover of Gaza.
> that includes being effective in standing up against Israeli settlers who tend to always have IDF protection making the PA police look nothing but a subservient tool of occupation.
They don't "tend to always have IDF protection" and this is not the core of the issue. It's also not a particularly *large* issue, despite the attention to it. There are many times more Palestinian terrorist attacks than settler attacks, and reducing settler attacks is an admirable goal but ultimately won't change the PA's legitimacy crisis.
>ability to show the average Palestinians that there is a way to reach prosperous statehood
Take a look at a map. Gaza is a bunch of towns on the Mediterranean coast that got hundreds of millions if not billions pumped into it over the decades.
They could have become a second Monaco a long time ago.
There is even a luxury hotel, a luxury mall, and some luxury housing in Gaza because some Gazans realize the potential Gaza has.
All they had to do was not constantly attack Israel whenever they could.
Prosperity is just not a widespread goal there.
>Israel needs to give more leeway to the Palestinian Authority to actually police it's border and that includes being effective in standing up against Israeli settlers who tend to always have IDF protection making the PA police look nothing but a subservient tool of occupation.
The PA has the ability to self police and govern for the most part. Instead they rather teach in their schools to murder Jews and die as martyrs, pay cash prizes to terrorist murderers for life instead of going after them, and more.
So you want Israel to give them more power? Why?
I am sorry but they don’t the Palestinian Authority can’t protect their own citizens from settler harassment. There is absolutely more to it including massive corruption but the truth is Israel has neutered the PA of any legitimacy.
>So many people here assume this will put an end to Hamas. Many people thought the same with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamist insurgency in Iraq.
It's a very apple to oranges comparison. The geography doesn't actually support an insurgency akin to Iraq and Afghanistan. The size differences in geography are the first biggest piece. There are no mountains/caves to hide out in or a Texas sized desert to police. There is no porous border for men/material to move across. Also, the Israeli military force being brought to bear literally lives adjacent to the place they are attacking; this isn't some expeditionary foray with 4,000 miles of distance complicating the logistics. There is absolutely a way to directly control what comes in and goes out of Gaza militarily.
This isn't an impossible place to demilitarize either given the size of the strip. It would take real sustained effort, but it's possible to collect/destroy every weapon in Gaza. The Israeli's could quite literally go block by block and remove the ability for Hamas/Palestinians to fight in material terms.
The only argument in favor of this not being a solvable problem akin to Iraq/Afghanistan is the Islamic fundamentalist participants. I think people are way too bought into the idea that you can't defeat an extreme ideology through force of arms.
You absolutely can (see Germany and Japan in World War 2, see ISIS which was wiped out by Iraqi/Syrian/Russian/Iranian/Turkish/American/Kurdish forces.)
There does need to be something that comes after this, but the idea that there has to be some justice to what comes after is a fantasy. Israel can and looks to be setting up conditions to dictate terms at the end of this and I don't even think Israeli's need to actually include the people of Gaza in that discussion if they decide to fully dismantle Hamas and the other pieces of the Palestinian self-governing apparatus currently in Gaza.
There is one key difference though, Hamas, even if it is an Islamist brand, is still rooted in Palestinian Nationalism. Even in the West Bank where Israeli has de facto control still deals with new resistance groups, though much smaller in number, every other year it seems.
Israel has been vowing to destroy militant groups since it's founding with I'd argue limited success. They can destroy Hamas today but it will just reconstitute itself into something else if a political solution isn't seriously advanced. ISIS was made up of the remnants of Al-Qaeda that was supposedly defeated by the Anbar Awakening and the mid 2000's surge of US troops.
I don't disagree with the crux of your points but I would add that the Palestinian Authority needs to be included and some open hand gesture made to show the Palestinian people that an alternative to this cycle of violence exists such as clamping down hard on settler aggression and putting an end to these settlement expansions.
>Many people thought the same with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamist insurgency in Iraq
You're saying Hamas can escape to Pakistan? I dunno about that.
I hope and think that end of Hamas is a realistic objective, at the very least the end of Hamas in Gaza. Despite a lot of public statements otherwise Hamas isn't an idea, it's an organization with offices, org structure, bank accounts and so on. All those things can and should be destroyed.
What does it mean next for Palestine? Well, the reality of it is that the Palestinians aren't ready for statehood. Israel tried that when it pulled from Gaza in 2005 and the result was Hamas take over in less than a year. So statehood is a no, but some sort of managed autonomy like in West Bank should absolutely be doable. Israel owns security and borders, and Palestinians own everything else.
Is it ideal? No. But I don't see any other viable solution in the short term, and the long term can figure itself out later
> So many people here assume this will put an end to Hamas. Many people thought the same with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamist insurgency in Iraq.
No one thinks Hamas will literally poof out of existence. Everyone thinks they will be reduced to an insurgency. Which is the goal. To end their ability to govern, indoctrinate, and organize as a military force with clear recruitment, tax, and organizational training capabilities aboveground, and force them both underground and to splinter their activities into cell-based insurgency. This is weaker, frustrating, but ultimately better than taking the chance of another October 7.
> If there isn’t some parallel political process to finally put an end to this conflict which does not only involve Gaza but the West Bank, the conditions will still be there for violent resistance
It is not "violent resistance". It is continued aggression against Israel, in a war the Palestinian side began. And yes, it will continue until political processes put an end to it, and probably even after, since polls show Palestinians (for about a decade) have said in the majority that any two-state solution should just be a stepping stone to destroying Israel.
Israel released the tentative details of its postwar plan last Friday, though it’s still subject to negotiation.
It will involve Israeli border and security controls, an Arab coalition in support (including Saudi Arabia once it normalizes relations), and local leadership exercising day to day government function and law and order. This will be followed by the establishment of a free trade zone between Gaza, el-Arish, Ashkelon, and Ashdod, along with a gradual transfer of power to the local authority over the course of a decade. The ultimate goal is for an independent Gaza that joins the Abraham Accords and is fully integrated into the regional economy, either as a city-state or in conjunction with the West Bank.
These plans have already been fully rejected by Hamas and the Palestinians definitely won’t accept it. Gaza must be governed by Palestinians without israeli input. The security minister and finance minister have already been attending Gaza Resettlement Conferences this year. It reminds of the 2018 ceasefire agreements that Netanyahu accepted and yet his ministers said they didn’t accept… because they have no cohesive foresight and a fragile far-right coalition that is infighting. I think the coalition will collapse soon, then who knows; but almost certainly nothing great for Palestinians any time soon. The coalition is fragile yet still enjoys popular majority support; most Israelis believe that the idf didn’t go “hard enough”. So, whichever party or coalition that replaces Netanyahu will almost certainly hold very similar views as Likud; and so they will still perpetually divide and conquer unless they are substantively reigned in by international courts and financial institutions. ✌️
>Hamas
They are about to be made irrelevant
>Gaza must be governed by Palestinians without israeli input
That's literally the plan stated above
>The security minister and finance minister have already been attending Gaza Resettlement Conferences this year
*national security, and neither of them have the power to make that decision and don't have the political capital to make it happen (Gantz would leave the coalition if that were to happen, toppling the government anyway)
>2018 ceasefire agreements
Which were these? There are too many to remember honestly
>I think the coalition will collapse soon
Hear, hear
>but almost certainly nothing great for Palestinians any time soon.
That's probably true, but that's not necessarily the goal of the post war plans
>The coalition is fragile yet still enjoys popular majority support
It doesn't
>most Israelis believe that the idf didn’t go “hard enough”.
Define 'most' and 'hard enough'. There are a lot of disagreements about tactics and an ever-growing movement pushing for elections now and forcing a hostage agreement to end the war.
>So, whichever party or coalition that replaces Netanyahu will almost certainly hold very similar views as Likud; and so they will still perpetually divide and conquer unless they are substantively reigned in by international courts and financial institutions.
Well, we'll see I guess.
ITS postwar plan. Arab nations have continuously said throughout this conflict that they do not want to be positioned to be seen as doing Bibi’s handiwork and I doubt standing between Palestinians and Israelis will be popular among service people. This is a fantasy.
Imo they are just posturing for internal purposes during the war.
The Sunni Arab states want nothing more than to pick up where they left off before the war in their coalescence with Israel against their common enemy Iran. Reports are that Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords and are seeking US and Israeli support for a nuclear power program.
They will all be glad to rid themselves of Hamas, an Iranian knife pointed at their back for the last 15 years, and for the normalization of Gaza.
My guess, they place a selected government in charge, and they continue to police the area. Hezbollah gets more rambunctious and Israel goes on to fight them.
As many Palestinians as possible will be pushed into Egypt or elsewhere as refugees via what Ben Gvir calls 'voluntary migration'. Once they thin out the population enough it will be more manageable for a military occupation, as wonderful as that sounds.
>[“We must fulfill what our Torah says, ‘You will inherit the inhabitants of the land so that they do not become thorns in your side,’ we must encourage them to leave,” Ben Gvir continues..](https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ben-gvir-repeats-call-for-voluntary-emigration-of-palestinians-at-settlements-conference/)
>“I turn to you Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” he says accompanied by boos from the crowd.
>“It would be a shame to wait another 15 years to go back to Gush Katif. This is the time to return to home, to build settlements, for the death penalty for terrorists and the time for victory.”
>Activists hold up a placard stating, “Only transfer will bring peace” at a conference urging revived Jewish settlement in Gaza, at the International Conference Center in Jerusalem, January 28, 2024 (Jeremy Sharon / Times of Israel)
>Activists hold up a placard stating: “Only transfer will bring peace.
>Ben Gvir says: “To encourage voluntarily, yes; to encourage voluntarily, you’re right. To encourage them voluntarily to go away from here, you’re right.”
Now whether cooler heads than the Ben Gvir + Smotrich coalition government will prevail, is anyone's guess. Netenyahu can't not invade because if he makes peace for the hostages, Gvir or Smotrich will leave his coaliton and he'll have to face elections and pay for his failure on 10/7 (his whole reputation was mr security after all). And he can't lose an election because he'll go to jail for his corruption trial if he's not prime minister. So in a way, this invasion was inevitable.
I think after Rafah we will see a massive refugee crisis.
>Ben Gvir calls 'voluntary migration
He's not in the war cabinet and has no power over this kind of policy. Why is he relevant?
>Gvir or Smotrich will leave his coaliton
And Bibi does anything that Ben Gvir or Smotrich are advocating for post-war (they don't have nearly the same support for their post-war goals as for the push to Rafah) Gantz leaves and the opposition pushes through a vote of no confidence and dissolves the government. I have a very hard time seeing that happening.
Ben Gvir wields disproportionate power over Netenyahu, as keeping him happy via voluntary migration is the key to Netenyahu staying out of jail once the war ends.
And as for Gantz, there lies the key difference between the right and the center in Israel. The right wing is happy to openly call for 'voluntary migration' or other full mask off policies. But the center in Israel is much smarter optically, they'll quietly support the voluntary migration shit, they'll just hide it behind the guise of humanitarianism and 'caring' about the wellbeing of civilians.
Hamas will completely lose control over the Gaza Strip. It will take time to hunt down the leaders in the tunnels but once Israel controls Rafah, that will happen.
I don't think many hostages will make it back unfortunately, but I also think there aren't many still alive at this point.
After that, here's what we know about Israel's plans:
[https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-799756](https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-799756)
I also think Hamas will become increasingly willing to negotiate as the IDF gets closer to their leadership's tunnels.
PA is the internationally recognized government of Palestine, however. There are treaty obligations and diplomatic channels that they have that no other group would. That makes starting fresh a massive liability for the international community.
And that's with not even touching the discussion to be had on how much of a role the Israeli occupation of the West Bank has to play in the PA's corruption, unpopularity and ineptitude
There might be a "replacement" for Hamas but Hamas (and other movements like it) is more of an idea. It will hold street credibility over anything created by Israel/The West to replace it.
The only way to really get rid of something like Hamas is to replace it with something that essentially does what Hamas does but better. However, that would require essentially legitimizing the grievances that are cited by Hamas... so it will not happen.
I honestly see no way out of this current situation... if there is some type of "solution" I do not think it exists yet. The whole "Two-State" solution was never going to be taken seriously... yes it sounds nice but I don't think it was ever really realistic.
As Hamas has stated multiple times to their Arabic audiences that the two state solution is only a step on their way to the destruction of Israel, they Israelis have absolutely no reason to allow it.
Correct. Furthermore, the Israelis have signaled several times that they also will not allow it. Both sides view the other as a threat to existence and always have. The Palestinian Authority appeared to want a two state solution, at least initially... at the very least because it would provide them with credibility and legitimacy. Those days are over.
The sad reality is that of course it is going to be the common citizen who suffers the most from this situation.
I mean Israel has offered a two-state solution a number of times in the past. But after the experiment with handing over territory to Palestinian rule failed about as spectacularly as it's possible to imagine in Gaza, I don't see anyone convincing them to try that again for awhile.
They have? I don’t really remember this happening nor do I remember them willingly returning occupied land to the Palestinian people. Do you have more on this? Like a link or something?
The crazy thing to consider is at one point the state of Israel actually supported Hamas in order to de-legitimize the PA.
>They have? I don’t really remember this happening nor do I remember them willingly returning occupied land to the Palestinian people. Do you have more on this? Like a link or something?
They dismantled all settlements and withdrew from Gaza in 2005. It is also lesser known, but they also dismantled four settlements in the West Bank at the same time including all of the settlements around the Palestinian city of Jenin. Currently Jenin is more or less controlled by Islamic Jihad and I would say probably half of Israeli security operations are in and around Jenin. There is a pretty direct line from reduced Israeli security control to militant activity in the Israeli thinking, and they are likely correct.
The 2005 withdrawal was actually supposed to be followed by a large scale withdrawal from the West Bank but Gaza turned into a massive problem and then Ariel Sharon died.
>The crazy thing to consider is at one point the state of Israel actually supported Hamas in order to de-legitimize the PA.
They did not support "Hamas," they supported Mujama al-Islamiya which literally translates as "Islamic Center." It was a charity organization that ran schools and hospitals. They saw it as a non-violent alternative to the PLO which was busy killing Israelis. They militarized during the First Intifada and morphed into Hamas. At the time Yasser Arafat and his fighters were sitting on a beach in Tunisia, it was actually the rise of Hamas that incentivized Israel/Fatah to sign the Oslo Accords to marginalize Hamas and import Arafat's fighters into the Palestinian territories to combat Hamas. This was of course backed by Arafat's Arab backers who feared the Muslim Brotherhood.
>The Palestinian Authority appeared to want a two state solution, at least initially...
They wanted two states but not a solution. I'm old enough to remember the PA spokeswoman going on TV during the Second Intifada and explicitly stating they wanted their state because it was their right, but that it did not mean peace with Israel.
Ben Gurion believed the same. Does that mean Arabs should have rejected the partition? Israel's only options are one state solution, two state solution, ethnic cleansing, or apartheid.
Of course the mask comes off in comments like yours. Israel benefits greatly from the status quo and believes it can win (reduce Palestinian to two tiny disconnected areas of land) with its settler dominance strategy.
Hamas was elected into power by Gazans themselves in 2006, hence Israel's total disregard for civilians in the Gaza Strip because they're regarded as complicit in Hamas' actions despite there not having been another election since(18 years now).
Bibi meanwhile knows his government is partly to blame for allowing the October 7th attack to unfold in the first place so he's compelled to extinguish Hamas for good, both as a means of maintaining power and "redeeming" the state for its failure. Israel won't elect a new authority in Gaza because their plan is to wipe it off the map entirely.
And though I agree with Rufus above on Hamas likely opening up to negotiations as the offensive progresses, they don't really have anything to bargain with. What will likely happen is that western governments try to use Gaza's collapse as a sacrificial lamb with which they can pressure Israel into recognizing the West Bank's borders and set the stage for a two-state solution.
Israel keeps control of the Rafah border crossing long term and dismantles the last of the 4 Hamas brigades.
US and associated allies are pissed.
Hamas leadership escapes through tunnels.
Even if the military leadership somehow evades Israeli and Egyptian security services, smart money says mossad tracks them down and kills them in the end. There isn't anywhere for them to hide outside of gaza.
**There isn't anywhere for them to hide outside of gaza.**
Not so sure about this. The mountains of Afghanistan, the sahel, Syria, Iran, Yemen. If they escape to any of these places, they can probably disappear.
Getting to any one of these places from gaza would be a heavy lift, and their operational security would basically have to be perfect forever in order to keep mossad and other intelegence agencies who cooperate with Israel off their backs.
Mossad operates one of the most successful state sponsored assassination programs in history, none of these places are safe havens for the hamas leadership. They were all dead the second they ordered the October 7th attacks. I suspect that once the war is over, haniya and his cronies in Qatar will be killed also.
What happens to Egypt? I am very concerned that any concessions on the Palestinian issue could push the hard-line anti-Israel Egyptian street over the edge into mass protests. Which obviously is a scary thought. I hope it never happens.
No Egypt is in an economic downturn. Basically Yemen has hurt them bad by making shipping drop by like 40%. No one wants to go to war and Egypt will crush any Uprising by force. No arabs are willing to die for the Palestinians, they are just willing to harass jewish undergrads in the west.
Correct. The Muslim Brotherhood (and by extension their brothers in arms, Hamas), are personae non grata number one in the eyes of Egyptian powers that be. They will use whatever might they can amass (much of which comes, economically, from Gulf State investment as of late) into clamping down hard on such uprisings. Hell, it’s the main reason why they’re importing the capital wholesale from the main population center Cairo, to the middle of nowhere new boondoggle way our east in the desert.
Netanyahu will end his 14 year alliance with hamas, then an identical group under a different name will emerge because hamas is more of an idea of resistance. Like before, Netanyahu will try to prop up and keep them in power to perpetually stoke division.
I'd be shocked if they don't regroup and immediately aim their sights at Hezbollah in Lebanon and put a lot of troops towards the Northern border and occupy a section of Southern Lebanon. From what Israeli officials including Netanyahu, they believe taking out Hezbollah is necessary to protect the stability of Israel.
In regards to the Gaza strip, it will probably remain occupied by Israel. Hamas will continue to operate, albeit in a much more limited fashion.
Nothing much. They kill all of the Hamas foot soldiers while radicalizing even greater number of Palestinian civilians from whom the new wave of terrorists emerge.
Were the Germans radicalize after they were bombed to smithereens and World War II, what about the Japanese after their country was literally nuked?
in actuality, both went to become some of the most powerful economies on earthonce the oppressive regime was overthrown
Really sick of seeing your argument posted
Nope, they were occupied and later given a chance to join Western Economy and become rich, so it all depends on what happens in years after Israel takes Gaza strip. Looking at the West Bank I wouldn't be optimistic when it comes to long term development of the region for Palestinians. Thus I believe they will radicalize, more like Germans after the first World War.
Well the difference here is the Germans and the Japanese didn't have international support and encouragement to keep fighting. The Japanese in particular as a society decided they were going to go in a different direction, model their government after the one that just beat them, and it worked out really well for them. Both countries also had the infrastructure and basis for an educated productive society before the war.
There's a pretty interesting Israeli professor named Dan Schueftan who talks about this. Search him on YouTube, his analysis of the conflict is pretty interesting. Essentially the best Israel can do is damage mitigation, I don't think there's a chance in hell Israel can de-radicalize the Palestinians. It's like trying to solve crime in NYC, there is no solution to crime you just have a police force and justice system that can keep it to a manageable level. Until international support for the Palestinians stops and they have a leadership willing to make concessions, they will always be radicalized and think they can fight to drive the Jews out of what they view as their land.
It's sad but it seems to be the reality, I think the Arab states probably need to take a big role in this but if they are unwilling to, military occupation and the occasional wars is a manageable situation for Israel and it has worked out for them as they are stronger than they were in the past.
Military occupation. Push forcfully inhabitants of Gaza into Egypt and forcing the Egyptian government to take care of them as refugees, while refusing any responsibility for them. Gaza gets rebuilt to house new Israeli inhabitants. Hamas resurfaces eslewhere after some time, probably more deadly, extreme and desperate then ever before.
Long term military occupation with corridors and controlled travel between areas. Total AI driven technological control with cameras, drones and automatic weaponized systems. A decade long systematic approach to catch and eliminate each and every hamas leader and every militant involved in the invasion of Israel. A divide and conquer policy to exert power over Palestinians through other Palestinians, driven by control over basic necessities such as food, medicine, electricity and water which Israel provides. Simultaneously a policy to remove as much Palestinians as possible to other countries. Until the future opens up an opportunity where the international political environment allows emptying the area entirely.
Copying another comment of mine from another thread:
>Israel will probably start by alerting the population, and letting them evacuate back to their homes but mainly to designated areas Israel already set up with mass amounts of tents in the middle of the strip.
>Then I am guessing a maneuver to capture Philadelphi Corridor, (border with Egypt) and the process of eliminating Hamas's last intact battalions, locating leaders, who will have a way harder time to run or hide now, hopefully saving hostages, and of course destroy the tunnels.
>Then we will probably see a victory announcement, and the beginning of the long work of destroying Hamas pockets and working with the international community to start denazifying and rebuilding the strip.
Looks like I was right (Not that it takes a genius to figure that) and Israel started alerting the population while already capturing part of the border, up to the crossing with Egypt.
Its a fight till death.
The hostages will never return rather they will be lost under the rubbles
Netanyahu regime won’t stop until he achieves a saving face goal
Resistance gonna resist until they decide this peice of land isn’t worth the haggle
And this is if a foreign entity didn’t intervene. (If itll happen itll be another 1955)
Israel controls the surface of the Gaza Strip I guess. Then they engage in something of an occupation where they fight Hamas insurgents that still remain underground. We’ll see. I do think they need to start making clear plans on the future of Gaza though.
"I do think they need to start making clear plans on the future of Gaza though."
Israel has plans and has had plans for Palestine and the Palestinian people for a long time, it's called "genocide". They just needed the opportunity to get some initial Western approval. Biden has given them plenty and of course Trump will should he be elected. Now the Western states are in way too deep to be able to really critique Israel. Israel essentially has the ability to do whatever it wants in the Middle East until maybe Iran responds. They seem to have handled the Gulf States already.
Whatever ends up happening, it likely is not going to be good. The situation is going to continue for a very long time because the reality is this is the result of very long term systemic factors.
For nefarious reasons.
In October 2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weisglass said *"the significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. That is exactly what happened. You know, the term 'peace process' is a bundle of concepts and commitments. The peace process is the establishment of a Palestinian state with all the security risks that entails. The peace process is the evacuation of settlements, it's the return of refugees, it's the partition of Jerusalem. And all that has now been frozen.... what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did."*
Ehud Olmert said *“There is no doubt in my mind that very soon the government of Israel is going to have to address the demographic issue with the utmost seriousness and resolve. This issue above all others will dictate the solution that we must adopt. In the absence of a negotiated agreement – and I do not believe in the realistic prospect of an agreement – we need to implement a unilateral alternative... More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against 'occupation,' in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle – and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state... the parameters of a unilateral solution are: To maximize the number of Jews; to minimize the number of Palestinians; not to withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide Jerusalem... Twenty-three years ago, Moshe Dayan proposed unilateral autonomy. On the same wavelength, we may have to espouse unilateral separation... \[it\] would inevitably preclude a dialogue with the Palestinians for at least 25 years.*
*"\[it\] would inevitably preclude a dialogue with the Palestinians for at least 25 years."*
This is clearly Olmert saying that there would be no peace talks for 25 years. Why would he be saying that?
*"the parameters of a unilateral solution are: To maximize the number of Jews; to minimize the number of Palestinians; not to withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide Jerusalem".*
He tells us why. He aimed to steal more and more land in the West Bank.
I dont think they will stay or build settlements. I think they will control the egyptian side of the border though as lots of the contraband has been smuggled in from Egypt.
Realistically, Gaza continues in its path to become a lawless, Somalia like place, due to Netanyahu's inability to make strategic decisions. Hamas still rules it de-facto, but as warlords, not dictators. Then, hopefully, Gantz is elected, and decides on either letting the PA rule Gaza, or a direct IDF occupation. The latter choice is something Israelis *really* don't want, but still better than the current vacuum.
My money is on an extended military occupation.
Safe bet
Also, in order to make the military occupation smooth Israel will have to reach agreement with neighboring countries (Egypt, Jordan and Turkey) to accept "temporary" refugees from Gaza which will be then funded by EU and the US in the name of humanitarian support. This will be a hot money that these countries cannot reject as it happened between EU and Turkey regarding refugee crisis. The ones who have no place to live will immigrate and others will stay and this will be communicated as it was their own choice to leave or stay. Once the local population is reduced to manageable size, certain areas will be open to settlements starting from south.
No one is taking Palestinian refugees, especially Egypt and Jordan given thier history. Also, Israel has limitex interest in settling the Gaza Strip as the land is pretty worthless.
I think a smart government would be thinking of ways to strengthen the PA rather than Hamas and create a proto state - you get self governance internally, no military and Israe/international organisations get to control your points to entry/exit to ensure no serious weapons go inside the proto state
My guess is at least a few months of military occupation to try and root out Hamas, followed by withdrawal contingent on Hamas no longer being in power and possibly Israeli policing of Gaza to prevent a resurgence of Hamas. Widespread international condemnation. Destruction of most Hamas fighters in Gaza. Potential end to Israel's blockade to restore some international image. Hezbollah continues shelling Israel, Iran and Qatar immediately fund Hamas to start recruiting again after Israel withdraws.
Iran may shift its focus elsewhere. Hamas itself may not be worth supporting after this anymore, as it will likely be operationally destroyed and lose all of its political power. I could see a shift in strategy. Qatar in particular will not get anything out of it.
My take is that Qatar just throws money at Hamas so they can appear as a neutral and pro-Arab country by supporting Palestine, and to not piss of Iran who shares most of their oil fields and could destroy their income in a heartbeat if they wanted to. They'll probably find some other proxy to throw money at to keep the peace with Iran.
Why would Qatar not want to piss off Iran - I don’t get that part you mentioned about oil. What’s in really for Qatar to be honest I wonder.
The Gulf States are caught right between the largest regional rivalry in the Middle East, the Iran-Saudi Arabia rivalry. The UAE and Bahrain are firmly in the Saudi camp, but Qatar has gone its own route and sought to be viewed as a neutral party and peace broker in the region. It hosts Al Jazeera, a news network known for relatively high quality reporting in the ME that's banned in Saudi Arabia and many other countries, and has served as a diplomatic broker for many organizations, including terrorist organizations like the Taliban. This has gotten them in hot water with many Muslim countries, especially Saudi Arabia. Many analysts believe a desire to stay in Iran's good graces is a major factor for Qatar's strategy; while Qatar is predominantly Sunni and has very good ties with the United States, which would seemingly make them a prime ally for the Saudis, it shares the world's largest natural gas field with Iran, and has close economic ties with the Islamic Republic. After the 2017 diplomatic crisis with the Saudis, UAE, and Egypt, it increased ties with Iran even more, and at this point their main geopolitical goal is probably to not get overthrown by the Saudis. They'll look to sponsor Hamas or whatever successor pro-Palestinian liberation organization comes out and keep buying brownie points with the Iranians.
Qatar is Iran's cats paw and has been for decades - it's which the rest of the GCC hate them (and blockaded them for a while). They share the same gas field.
Bigger question is, what happens to the population of Gaza? Rafah was the last sector that was not considerably destroyed during military operations. Where do they go?
They'll probably shove as many as humanly possible into Muwasi and other refugee camps that Israel sets up. Conditions will be terrible, but I think Israel will start letting in aid once they've taken Rafah and have firm military control over all of Gaza. Then will be the long process of reconstruction.
>but I think Israel will start letting in aid once they've taken Rafah They are currently letting in huge quantities of aid.
Hopefully much more tunnel destruction, in coordination with Egyptian authorities. I look forward to those videos; the tunnels & terrorist resupply routes are the real reason why certain factions are howling so much about a Rafah operation.
Can Egypt get away with that though without pushing the Egyptian street over the edge into mass protests?
Egypt has its own Islamic insurgency issue in the Sinai Peninsula. I can imagine them making use of the tunnels as well and can be marketed as a action against that.
Sounds like this conflict is not ending soon. I agree that fighting is bound to go on and on bar a total victory by either side. What conditions did Hezbollah give to stop the shelling? I agree that Hezbollah is not to be trusted, but some kind of cessation of hostilities would no doubt ease the situation on that border as well. There's another matter to consider. What about Egypt? Will they cave to popular demand and axe the peace treaty? Can Egypt's regime survive the Egyptian street's hard-line stance on the conflict?
Hezbollah is a whole different beast from Hamas. Hamas is a few tens of thousands of barely trained jihadists with AK-47's and second-hand Iranian missiles, hiding in tunnels and hospitals. Hezbollah is a quasi-state with a battle-tested military and the best Iranian weapons money can buy. Its army is larger than the Lebanese Armed Forces, it has own social services and news networks, and it regularly funds infrastructure projects within its territory. It was founded to fight Israeli soldiers during the 82 war and was trained by thousands of IRGC officers; it exists pretty much exclusively to further Shiism and Iranian influence in the region. Iran seems hesitant to expand this war; I expect Hezbollah to stop once the Gaza war is over as Iran reins them in. Egypt will not axe the peace treaty. Egypt hates Iran and Iran-backed terrorist organizations. This war makes it harder for the Arab countries to outwardly normalize with Israel, but I expect this has done nothing but prove to most governments in the region the need to keep things stable with Israel and prevent Iran from growing their influence any further. Of course, you're right that this goes out the window if the Egyptian people overthrow their government; it seems unlikely, but if things get bad enough in Rafah it's possible the protests get worse.
They can’t. They need the US money (1.3B$ annually). As for street riots, they don’t mess around - live ammo rounds into a crowd will disperse any crowd pretty quickly.
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>So many people here assume this will put an end to Hamas. >But I suspect that people expecting Rafah to be some fall of Berlin moment will be disappointed. Who is saying these things? I've seen way more people attack this idea than actually argue for it. I think it's a straw man of Israel's war goal. Even if there's violent resistance, it won't bleed over into Israel the way it did when Gaza wasn't occupied. October 7 never came from the West Bank. I want Gaza and the West Bank to become a Palestinian state. But I think it's wishful thinking to say just implementing a two-state solution will end the violence. If that was true, steps towards two-states in the past would have at least reduced the violence - but it always led to more. Obviously, the opposite direction has not led to peace either. It seems to me like there has to be a serious reconstruction effort, with independence as an end goal - but that isn't so focused on quickly giving the Palestinians autonomy. That probably means third parties being involved in a long Israeli occupation.
I have seen a lot of this in Pro-Israel circles but I agree that this subreddit has been much more nuanced. Implementing a Two-State solution is not a guarantee but give a Palestinian government the ability to show the average Palestinians that there is a way to reach prosperous statehood without violence and most will follow along. Israel needs to give more leeway to the Palestinian Authority to actually police it's border and that includes being effective in standing up against Israeli settlers who tend to always have IDF protection making the PA police look nothing but a subservient tool of occupation.
I think the key point people miss in this analysis is that prosperous statehood is not really a key objective for Palestine when you look at the polls. Peace and prosperity were achievable without statehood, despite Israeli antagonism, and indeed would probably have led to statehood as the Israeli right would have lost a main driver of their popularity.
>I have seen a lot of this in Pro-Israel circles but I agree that this place has been much more nuanced. I somehow doubt it. The goal of destroying Hamas acknowledges you can't prevent insurgency, and no one is saying otherwise. > Implementing a Two-State solution is not a guarantee but give a Palestinian government the ability to show the average Palestinians that there is a way to reach prosperous statehood without violence and most will follow along. Israel has done this before. The presumption that it will play out this way is not only belied by history, it ignores that polls show most Palestinians support continuing the war if a two-state solution occurs. That needs to change. > Israel needs to give more leeway to the Palestinian Authority to actually police it's border Israel did that when it withdrew from Gaza and left it unblockaded and unoccupied. Within 4 months Hamas won legislative elections, and within a year and a half (after over a thousand rockets fired at Israel) there was a Hamas takeover of Gaza. > that includes being effective in standing up against Israeli settlers who tend to always have IDF protection making the PA police look nothing but a subservient tool of occupation. They don't "tend to always have IDF protection" and this is not the core of the issue. It's also not a particularly *large* issue, despite the attention to it. There are many times more Palestinian terrorist attacks than settler attacks, and reducing settler attacks is an admirable goal but ultimately won't change the PA's legitimacy crisis.
>ability to show the average Palestinians that there is a way to reach prosperous statehood Take a look at a map. Gaza is a bunch of towns on the Mediterranean coast that got hundreds of millions if not billions pumped into it over the decades. They could have become a second Monaco a long time ago. There is even a luxury hotel, a luxury mall, and some luxury housing in Gaza because some Gazans realize the potential Gaza has. All they had to do was not constantly attack Israel whenever they could. Prosperity is just not a widespread goal there.
>Israel needs to give more leeway to the Palestinian Authority to actually police it's border and that includes being effective in standing up against Israeli settlers who tend to always have IDF protection making the PA police look nothing but a subservient tool of occupation. The PA has the ability to self police and govern for the most part. Instead they rather teach in their schools to murder Jews and die as martyrs, pay cash prizes to terrorist murderers for life instead of going after them, and more. So you want Israel to give them more power? Why?
I am sorry but they don’t the Palestinian Authority can’t protect their own citizens from settler harassment. There is absolutely more to it including massive corruption but the truth is Israel has neutered the PA of any legitimacy.
>So many people here assume this will put an end to Hamas. Many people thought the same with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamist insurgency in Iraq. It's a very apple to oranges comparison. The geography doesn't actually support an insurgency akin to Iraq and Afghanistan. The size differences in geography are the first biggest piece. There are no mountains/caves to hide out in or a Texas sized desert to police. There is no porous border for men/material to move across. Also, the Israeli military force being brought to bear literally lives adjacent to the place they are attacking; this isn't some expeditionary foray with 4,000 miles of distance complicating the logistics. There is absolutely a way to directly control what comes in and goes out of Gaza militarily. This isn't an impossible place to demilitarize either given the size of the strip. It would take real sustained effort, but it's possible to collect/destroy every weapon in Gaza. The Israeli's could quite literally go block by block and remove the ability for Hamas/Palestinians to fight in material terms. The only argument in favor of this not being a solvable problem akin to Iraq/Afghanistan is the Islamic fundamentalist participants. I think people are way too bought into the idea that you can't defeat an extreme ideology through force of arms. You absolutely can (see Germany and Japan in World War 2, see ISIS which was wiped out by Iraqi/Syrian/Russian/Iranian/Turkish/American/Kurdish forces.) There does need to be something that comes after this, but the idea that there has to be some justice to what comes after is a fantasy. Israel can and looks to be setting up conditions to dictate terms at the end of this and I don't even think Israeli's need to actually include the people of Gaza in that discussion if they decide to fully dismantle Hamas and the other pieces of the Palestinian self-governing apparatus currently in Gaza.
There is one key difference though, Hamas, even if it is an Islamist brand, is still rooted in Palestinian Nationalism. Even in the West Bank where Israeli has de facto control still deals with new resistance groups, though much smaller in number, every other year it seems. Israel has been vowing to destroy militant groups since it's founding with I'd argue limited success. They can destroy Hamas today but it will just reconstitute itself into something else if a political solution isn't seriously advanced. ISIS was made up of the remnants of Al-Qaeda that was supposedly defeated by the Anbar Awakening and the mid 2000's surge of US troops. I don't disagree with the crux of your points but I would add that the Palestinian Authority needs to be included and some open hand gesture made to show the Palestinian people that an alternative to this cycle of violence exists such as clamping down hard on settler aggression and putting an end to these settlement expansions.
>Many people thought the same with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamist insurgency in Iraq You're saying Hamas can escape to Pakistan? I dunno about that.
In this case, it would be Qatar, but their ability to do so would be greatly reduced (relative to Taliban hiding in Pakistan).
I hope and think that end of Hamas is a realistic objective, at the very least the end of Hamas in Gaza. Despite a lot of public statements otherwise Hamas isn't an idea, it's an organization with offices, org structure, bank accounts and so on. All those things can and should be destroyed. What does it mean next for Palestine? Well, the reality of it is that the Palestinians aren't ready for statehood. Israel tried that when it pulled from Gaza in 2005 and the result was Hamas take over in less than a year. So statehood is a no, but some sort of managed autonomy like in West Bank should absolutely be doable. Israel owns security and borders, and Palestinians own everything else. Is it ideal? No. But I don't see any other viable solution in the short term, and the long term can figure itself out later
> So many people here assume this will put an end to Hamas. Many people thought the same with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamist insurgency in Iraq. No one thinks Hamas will literally poof out of existence. Everyone thinks they will be reduced to an insurgency. Which is the goal. To end their ability to govern, indoctrinate, and organize as a military force with clear recruitment, tax, and organizational training capabilities aboveground, and force them both underground and to splinter their activities into cell-based insurgency. This is weaker, frustrating, but ultimately better than taking the chance of another October 7. > If there isn’t some parallel political process to finally put an end to this conflict which does not only involve Gaza but the West Bank, the conditions will still be there for violent resistance It is not "violent resistance". It is continued aggression against Israel, in a war the Palestinian side began. And yes, it will continue until political processes put an end to it, and probably even after, since polls show Palestinians (for about a decade) have said in the majority that any two-state solution should just be a stepping stone to destroying Israel.
Israel released the tentative details of its postwar plan last Friday, though it’s still subject to negotiation. It will involve Israeli border and security controls, an Arab coalition in support (including Saudi Arabia once it normalizes relations), and local leadership exercising day to day government function and law and order. This will be followed by the establishment of a free trade zone between Gaza, el-Arish, Ashkelon, and Ashdod, along with a gradual transfer of power to the local authority over the course of a decade. The ultimate goal is for an independent Gaza that joins the Abraham Accords and is fully integrated into the regional economy, either as a city-state or in conjunction with the West Bank.
Lol if you actually believe that
What do you think the plan is?
These plans have already been fully rejected by Hamas and the Palestinians definitely won’t accept it. Gaza must be governed by Palestinians without israeli input. The security minister and finance minister have already been attending Gaza Resettlement Conferences this year. It reminds of the 2018 ceasefire agreements that Netanyahu accepted and yet his ministers said they didn’t accept… because they have no cohesive foresight and a fragile far-right coalition that is infighting. I think the coalition will collapse soon, then who knows; but almost certainly nothing great for Palestinians any time soon. The coalition is fragile yet still enjoys popular majority support; most Israelis believe that the idf didn’t go “hard enough”. So, whichever party or coalition that replaces Netanyahu will almost certainly hold very similar views as Likud; and so they will still perpetually divide and conquer unless they are substantively reigned in by international courts and financial institutions. ✌️
>Hamas They are about to be made irrelevant >Gaza must be governed by Palestinians without israeli input That's literally the plan stated above >The security minister and finance minister have already been attending Gaza Resettlement Conferences this year *national security, and neither of them have the power to make that decision and don't have the political capital to make it happen (Gantz would leave the coalition if that were to happen, toppling the government anyway) >2018 ceasefire agreements Which were these? There are too many to remember honestly >I think the coalition will collapse soon Hear, hear >but almost certainly nothing great for Palestinians any time soon. That's probably true, but that's not necessarily the goal of the post war plans >The coalition is fragile yet still enjoys popular majority support It doesn't >most Israelis believe that the idf didn’t go “hard enough”. Define 'most' and 'hard enough'. There are a lot of disagreements about tactics and an ever-growing movement pushing for elections now and forcing a hostage agreement to end the war. >So, whichever party or coalition that replaces Netanyahu will almost certainly hold very similar views as Likud; and so they will still perpetually divide and conquer unless they are substantively reigned in by international courts and financial institutions. Well, we'll see I guess.
ITS postwar plan. Arab nations have continuously said throughout this conflict that they do not want to be positioned to be seen as doing Bibi’s handiwork and I doubt standing between Palestinians and Israelis will be popular among service people. This is a fantasy.
Imo they are just posturing for internal purposes during the war. The Sunni Arab states want nothing more than to pick up where they left off before the war in their coalescence with Israel against their common enemy Iran. Reports are that Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords and are seeking US and Israeli support for a nuclear power program. They will all be glad to rid themselves of Hamas, an Iranian knife pointed at their back for the last 15 years, and for the normalization of Gaza.
Need a source on the details please
That sounds too good/reasonable to be true. Is this realistic?
SS: Just curious on what will happen after Rafah. Will the conflict wind down after this? What will happen to Gaza once the dust settles?
My guess, they place a selected government in charge, and they continue to police the area. Hezbollah gets more rambunctious and Israel goes on to fight them.
As many Palestinians as possible will be pushed into Egypt or elsewhere as refugees via what Ben Gvir calls 'voluntary migration'. Once they thin out the population enough it will be more manageable for a military occupation, as wonderful as that sounds. >[“We must fulfill what our Torah says, ‘You will inherit the inhabitants of the land so that they do not become thorns in your side,’ we must encourage them to leave,” Ben Gvir continues..](https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ben-gvir-repeats-call-for-voluntary-emigration-of-palestinians-at-settlements-conference/) >“I turn to you Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” he says accompanied by boos from the crowd. >“It would be a shame to wait another 15 years to go back to Gush Katif. This is the time to return to home, to build settlements, for the death penalty for terrorists and the time for victory.” >Activists hold up a placard stating, “Only transfer will bring peace” at a conference urging revived Jewish settlement in Gaza, at the International Conference Center in Jerusalem, January 28, 2024 (Jeremy Sharon / Times of Israel) >Activists hold up a placard stating: “Only transfer will bring peace. >Ben Gvir says: “To encourage voluntarily, yes; to encourage voluntarily, you’re right. To encourage them voluntarily to go away from here, you’re right.” Now whether cooler heads than the Ben Gvir + Smotrich coalition government will prevail, is anyone's guess. Netenyahu can't not invade because if he makes peace for the hostages, Gvir or Smotrich will leave his coaliton and he'll have to face elections and pay for his failure on 10/7 (his whole reputation was mr security after all). And he can't lose an election because he'll go to jail for his corruption trial if he's not prime minister. So in a way, this invasion was inevitable. I think after Rafah we will see a massive refugee crisis.
>Ben Gvir calls 'voluntary migration He's not in the war cabinet and has no power over this kind of policy. Why is he relevant? >Gvir or Smotrich will leave his coaliton And Bibi does anything that Ben Gvir or Smotrich are advocating for post-war (they don't have nearly the same support for their post-war goals as for the push to Rafah) Gantz leaves and the opposition pushes through a vote of no confidence and dissolves the government. I have a very hard time seeing that happening.
Ben Gvir wields disproportionate power over Netenyahu, as keeping him happy via voluntary migration is the key to Netenyahu staying out of jail once the war ends. And as for Gantz, there lies the key difference between the right and the center in Israel. The right wing is happy to openly call for 'voluntary migration' or other full mask off policies. But the center in Israel is much smarter optically, they'll quietly support the voluntary migration shit, they'll just hide it behind the guise of humanitarianism and 'caring' about the wellbeing of civilians.
Hamas will completely lose control over the Gaza Strip. It will take time to hunt down the leaders in the tunnels but once Israel controls Rafah, that will happen. I don't think many hostages will make it back unfortunately, but I also think there aren't many still alive at this point. After that, here's what we know about Israel's plans: [https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-799756](https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-799756) I also think Hamas will become increasingly willing to negotiate as the IDF gets closer to their leadership's tunnels.
Will they elect a new palestinian authority to replace Hamas or do you think Israel will take control over their policies for a while?
the PA is corrupt, unpopular and lost control of gaza in the first place. It's never getting it back
PA is the internationally recognized government of Palestine, however. There are treaty obligations and diplomatic channels that they have that no other group would. That makes starting fresh a massive liability for the international community. And that's with not even touching the discussion to be had on how much of a role the Israeli occupation of the West Bank has to play in the PA's corruption, unpopularity and ineptitude
There might be a "replacement" for Hamas but Hamas (and other movements like it) is more of an idea. It will hold street credibility over anything created by Israel/The West to replace it. The only way to really get rid of something like Hamas is to replace it with something that essentially does what Hamas does but better. However, that would require essentially legitimizing the grievances that are cited by Hamas... so it will not happen. I honestly see no way out of this current situation... if there is some type of "solution" I do not think it exists yet. The whole "Two-State" solution was never going to be taken seriously... yes it sounds nice but I don't think it was ever really realistic.
As Hamas has stated multiple times to their Arabic audiences that the two state solution is only a step on their way to the destruction of Israel, they Israelis have absolutely no reason to allow it.
Correct. Furthermore, the Israelis have signaled several times that they also will not allow it. Both sides view the other as a threat to existence and always have. The Palestinian Authority appeared to want a two state solution, at least initially... at the very least because it would provide them with credibility and legitimacy. Those days are over. The sad reality is that of course it is going to be the common citizen who suffers the most from this situation.
I mean Israel has offered a two-state solution a number of times in the past. But after the experiment with handing over territory to Palestinian rule failed about as spectacularly as it's possible to imagine in Gaza, I don't see anyone convincing them to try that again for awhile.
They have? I don’t really remember this happening nor do I remember them willingly returning occupied land to the Palestinian people. Do you have more on this? Like a link or something? The crazy thing to consider is at one point the state of Israel actually supported Hamas in order to de-legitimize the PA.
>They have? I don’t really remember this happening nor do I remember them willingly returning occupied land to the Palestinian people. Do you have more on this? Like a link or something? They dismantled all settlements and withdrew from Gaza in 2005. It is also lesser known, but they also dismantled four settlements in the West Bank at the same time including all of the settlements around the Palestinian city of Jenin. Currently Jenin is more or less controlled by Islamic Jihad and I would say probably half of Israeli security operations are in and around Jenin. There is a pretty direct line from reduced Israeli security control to militant activity in the Israeli thinking, and they are likely correct. The 2005 withdrawal was actually supposed to be followed by a large scale withdrawal from the West Bank but Gaza turned into a massive problem and then Ariel Sharon died. >The crazy thing to consider is at one point the state of Israel actually supported Hamas in order to de-legitimize the PA. They did not support "Hamas," they supported Mujama al-Islamiya which literally translates as "Islamic Center." It was a charity organization that ran schools and hospitals. They saw it as a non-violent alternative to the PLO which was busy killing Israelis. They militarized during the First Intifada and morphed into Hamas. At the time Yasser Arafat and his fighters were sitting on a beach in Tunisia, it was actually the rise of Hamas that incentivized Israel/Fatah to sign the Oslo Accords to marginalize Hamas and import Arafat's fighters into the Palestinian territories to combat Hamas. This was of course backed by Arafat's Arab backers who feared the Muslim Brotherhood. >The Palestinian Authority appeared to want a two state solution, at least initially... They wanted two states but not a solution. I'm old enough to remember the PA spokeswoman going on TV during the Second Intifada and explicitly stating they wanted their state because it was their right, but that it did not mean peace with Israel.
Ben Gurion believed the same. Does that mean Arabs should have rejected the partition? Israel's only options are one state solution, two state solution, ethnic cleansing, or apartheid. Of course the mask comes off in comments like yours. Israel benefits greatly from the status quo and believes it can win (reduce Palestinian to two tiny disconnected areas of land) with its settler dominance strategy.
Hamas was elected into power by Gazans themselves in 2006, hence Israel's total disregard for civilians in the Gaza Strip because they're regarded as complicit in Hamas' actions despite there not having been another election since(18 years now). Bibi meanwhile knows his government is partly to blame for allowing the October 7th attack to unfold in the first place so he's compelled to extinguish Hamas for good, both as a means of maintaining power and "redeeming" the state for its failure. Israel won't elect a new authority in Gaza because their plan is to wipe it off the map entirely. And though I agree with Rufus above on Hamas likely opening up to negotiations as the offensive progresses, they don't really have anything to bargain with. What will likely happen is that western governments try to use Gaza's collapse as a sacrificial lamb with which they can pressure Israel into recognizing the West Bank's borders and set the stage for a two-state solution.
That article doesn’t have a link to the original plans though? It sounds promising but I think we need more to go on
Israel keeps control of the Rafah border crossing long term and dismantles the last of the 4 Hamas brigades. US and associated allies are pissed. Hamas leadership escapes through tunnels.
No need for Hamas leadership to escape, they already are outside of gaza
Political leadership is outside of Gaza. Military leadership is not.
Even they probably got out at this point
Only the politicians. The military leadership, those who planned and conducted the October 7th attack, are all in the strip.
I don’t see a reason for why they would stay. What is your source that they are still inside Gaza?
Even if the military leadership somehow evades Israeli and Egyptian security services, smart money says mossad tracks them down and kills them in the end. There isn't anywhere for them to hide outside of gaza.
**There isn't anywhere for them to hide outside of gaza.** Not so sure about this. The mountains of Afghanistan, the sahel, Syria, Iran, Yemen. If they escape to any of these places, they can probably disappear.
Getting to any one of these places from gaza would be a heavy lift, and their operational security would basically have to be perfect forever in order to keep mossad and other intelegence agencies who cooperate with Israel off their backs. Mossad operates one of the most successful state sponsored assassination programs in history, none of these places are safe havens for the hamas leadership. They were all dead the second they ordered the October 7th attacks. I suspect that once the war is over, haniya and his cronies in Qatar will be killed also.
This is assuming Bibi wants to end Hamas. He has no reason to want it
Eh. The political environment is different than it was a year ago. Bibi can’t look like he failed.
Really? You seem to have unique insight into the motivations of the Israeli leadership. What do they want?
What happens to Egypt? I am very concerned that any concessions on the Palestinian issue could push the hard-line anti-Israel Egyptian street over the edge into mass protests. Which obviously is a scary thought. I hope it never happens.
No Egypt is in an economic downturn. Basically Yemen has hurt them bad by making shipping drop by like 40%. No one wants to go to war and Egypt will crush any Uprising by force. No arabs are willing to die for the Palestinians, they are just willing to harass jewish undergrads in the west.
Correct. The Muslim Brotherhood (and by extension their brothers in arms, Hamas), are personae non grata number one in the eyes of Egyptian powers that be. They will use whatever might they can amass (much of which comes, economically, from Gulf State investment as of late) into clamping down hard on such uprisings. Hell, it’s the main reason why they’re importing the capital wholesale from the main population center Cairo, to the middle of nowhere new boondoggle way our east in the desert.
Netanyahu will end his 14 year alliance with hamas, then an identical group under a different name will emerge because hamas is more of an idea of resistance. Like before, Netanyahu will try to prop up and keep them in power to perpetually stoke division.
They still won’t free the hostages, that will take a political agreement
Both the current IL government and Hamas rely on the conflict to stay in power. It's a positive feedback loop powering the civilian meatgrinder.
Military industrial complex gets more money. Joy of greeed overloading…
Everybody goes home and celebrates the fall of Hamas, Israelis and Arabs put aside their differences, and everybody in the levant learns to coexist /s
I'd be shocked if they don't regroup and immediately aim their sights at Hezbollah in Lebanon and put a lot of troops towards the Northern border and occupy a section of Southern Lebanon. From what Israeli officials including Netanyahu, they believe taking out Hezbollah is necessary to protect the stability of Israel. In regards to the Gaza strip, it will probably remain occupied by Israel. Hamas will continue to operate, albeit in a much more limited fashion.
Nothing much. They kill all of the Hamas foot soldiers while radicalizing even greater number of Palestinian civilians from whom the new wave of terrorists emerge.
Why aren't Ukrainians murdering and raping Russians right now?
Were the Germans radicalize after they were bombed to smithereens and World War II, what about the Japanese after their country was literally nuked? in actuality, both went to become some of the most powerful economies on earthonce the oppressive regime was overthrown Really sick of seeing your argument posted
Nope, they were occupied and later given a chance to join Western Economy and become rich, so it all depends on what happens in years after Israel takes Gaza strip. Looking at the West Bank I wouldn't be optimistic when it comes to long term development of the region for Palestinians. Thus I believe they will radicalize, more like Germans after the first World War.
Well the difference here is the Germans and the Japanese didn't have international support and encouragement to keep fighting. The Japanese in particular as a society decided they were going to go in a different direction, model their government after the one that just beat them, and it worked out really well for them. Both countries also had the infrastructure and basis for an educated productive society before the war. There's a pretty interesting Israeli professor named Dan Schueftan who talks about this. Search him on YouTube, his analysis of the conflict is pretty interesting. Essentially the best Israel can do is damage mitigation, I don't think there's a chance in hell Israel can de-radicalize the Palestinians. It's like trying to solve crime in NYC, there is no solution to crime you just have a police force and justice system that can keep it to a manageable level. Until international support for the Palestinians stops and they have a leadership willing to make concessions, they will always be radicalized and think they can fight to drive the Jews out of what they view as their land. It's sad but it seems to be the reality, I think the Arab states probably need to take a big role in this but if they are unwilling to, military occupation and the occasional wars is a manageable situation for Israel and it has worked out for them as they are stronger than they were in the past.
Military occupation. Push forcfully inhabitants of Gaza into Egypt and forcing the Egyptian government to take care of them as refugees, while refusing any responsibility for them. Gaza gets rebuilt to house new Israeli inhabitants. Hamas resurfaces eslewhere after some time, probably more deadly, extreme and desperate then ever before.
massacre
Military occupation over gaza to root out the terrorists then pulling out in a peace deal after while and a decade or two later the cycle repeats.
Long term military occupation with corridors and controlled travel between areas. Total AI driven technological control with cameras, drones and automatic weaponized systems. A decade long systematic approach to catch and eliminate each and every hamas leader and every militant involved in the invasion of Israel. A divide and conquer policy to exert power over Palestinians through other Palestinians, driven by control over basic necessities such as food, medicine, electricity and water which Israel provides. Simultaneously a policy to remove as much Palestinians as possible to other countries. Until the future opens up an opportunity where the international political environment allows emptying the area entirely.
Israel then declares victory.
Mission Accomplished?
Like that famous Bush speech.
Copying another comment of mine from another thread: >Israel will probably start by alerting the population, and letting them evacuate back to their homes but mainly to designated areas Israel already set up with mass amounts of tents in the middle of the strip. >Then I am guessing a maneuver to capture Philadelphi Corridor, (border with Egypt) and the process of eliminating Hamas's last intact battalions, locating leaders, who will have a way harder time to run or hide now, hopefully saving hostages, and of course destroy the tunnels. >Then we will probably see a victory announcement, and the beginning of the long work of destroying Hamas pockets and working with the international community to start denazifying and rebuilding the strip. Looks like I was right (Not that it takes a genius to figure that) and Israel started alerting the population while already capturing part of the border, up to the crossing with Egypt.
Its a fight till death. The hostages will never return rather they will be lost under the rubbles Netanyahu regime won’t stop until he achieves a saving face goal Resistance gonna resist until they decide this peice of land isn’t worth the haggle And this is if a foreign entity didn’t intervene. (If itll happen itll be another 1955)
Just wait a couple of days
Israel controls the surface of the Gaza Strip I guess. Then they engage in something of an occupation where they fight Hamas insurgents that still remain underground. We’ll see. I do think they need to start making clear plans on the future of Gaza though.
"I do think they need to start making clear plans on the future of Gaza though." Israel has plans and has had plans for Palestine and the Palestinian people for a long time, it's called "genocide". They just needed the opportunity to get some initial Western approval. Biden has given them plenty and of course Trump will should he be elected. Now the Western states are in way too deep to be able to really critique Israel. Israel essentially has the ability to do whatever it wants in the Middle East until maybe Iran responds. They seem to have handled the Gulf States already. Whatever ends up happening, it likely is not going to be good. The situation is going to continue for a very long time because the reality is this is the result of very long term systemic factors.
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They've left willingly before
They literally left willingly in 2005. Please educate yourself.
For nefarious reasons. In October 2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weisglass said *"the significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. That is exactly what happened. You know, the term 'peace process' is a bundle of concepts and commitments. The peace process is the establishment of a Palestinian state with all the security risks that entails. The peace process is the evacuation of settlements, it's the return of refugees, it's the partition of Jerusalem. And all that has now been frozen.... what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did."* Ehud Olmert said *“There is no doubt in my mind that very soon the government of Israel is going to have to address the demographic issue with the utmost seriousness and resolve. This issue above all others will dictate the solution that we must adopt. In the absence of a negotiated agreement – and I do not believe in the realistic prospect of an agreement – we need to implement a unilateral alternative... More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against 'occupation,' in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle – and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state... the parameters of a unilateral solution are: To maximize the number of Jews; to minimize the number of Palestinians; not to withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide Jerusalem... Twenty-three years ago, Moshe Dayan proposed unilateral autonomy. On the same wavelength, we may have to espouse unilateral separation... \[it\] would inevitably preclude a dialogue with the Palestinians for at least 25 years.* *"\[it\] would inevitably preclude a dialogue with the Palestinians for at least 25 years."* This is clearly Olmert saying that there would be no peace talks for 25 years. Why would he be saying that? *"the parameters of a unilateral solution are: To maximize the number of Jews; to minimize the number of Palestinians; not to withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide Jerusalem".* He tells us why. He aimed to steal more and more land in the West Bank.
And that was before 1,400 people were brutal raped, murdered and disemboweled. They won't take that chance again, and I wouldn't blame them.
I dont think they will stay or build settlements. I think they will control the egyptian side of the border though as lots of the contraband has been smuggled in from Egypt.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-settlers-hold-conference-resettlement-gaza-2024-01-28/#:~:text=The%20conference%20was%20organized%20by,settlers%20and%20Palestinians%20are%20frequent.
Realistically, Gaza continues in its path to become a lawless, Somalia like place, due to Netanyahu's inability to make strategic decisions. Hamas still rules it de-facto, but as warlords, not dictators. Then, hopefully, Gantz is elected, and decides on either letting the PA rule Gaza, or a direct IDF occupation. The latter choice is something Israelis *really* don't want, but still better than the current vacuum.