[The leaders who oversaw Israels Gaza policy for 15 years are
incapable of abandoning the erroneous ideas that collapsed on Oct. 7.
] [[link removed]]


ISRAEL’S WAR CABINET HAS LEARNED NOTHING FROM ITS FAILURES  
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Menachem Klein
October 26, 2023
972 Magazine
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_ The leaders who oversaw Israel's Gaza policy for 15 years are
incapable of abandoning the erroneous ideas that collapsed on Oct. 7.
_

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant speaks with Israeli soldiers at a
staging area not far from the Israeli-Gaza border, October 19, 2023,
Chaim Goldberg/Flash90

 

In 1991, American neoconservatives — many of whom would become part
of the administration of George W. Bush two decades later —
were unsatisfied
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Gulf War ended merely with the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi
occupation. What they really wanted was to topple President Saddam
Hussein and his Ba’ath Party, arguing that they needed to install a
democratic, Western-friendly regime in Iraq.

This unfinished agenda played a major role in the decision to invade
Iraq in 2003 under the framework of the “War on Terror.” The
United States crushed the Ba’ath establishment, but shattered the
country in doing so. The attempt to build a cross-sectarian coalition
in Iraq failed
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The global superpower folded.

U.S. President Joe Biden appears to have tried to instill this bitter
experience in the Israeli establishment during his visit
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week. Biden gave Israel a warm and loving embrace, yet asked it to
think reasonably. It was a meeting of an older, experienced, and
concerned president with a traumatized country and its frantic
leadership. And though the president hugged publicly, inside the
meeting room of the war cabinet, he asked Israel’s leaders tough
questions
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what it was trying to achieve with its latest war in the Gaza Strip.

The statements of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense
Minister Yoav Gallant [[link removed]], and IDF
Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi about a war that will “take months,”
“change the Middle East forever,” and “destroy Hamas” should
be taken not as empty rhetoric by leaders exposed in their nakedness,
but rather as a plan of action. Their plan is aimed at “restoring
deterrence,” yes, but it is also about saving their personal
prestige and postponing their dismissal from office, which many in
Israel are now calling for in light of the colossal failures that
enabled Hamas’ deadly assault
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What could this action plan look like? Even if it so desired, the
Israeli leadership cannot achieve the mass deportation
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Palestinian population into Egypt (in part because Cairo itself has
flatly rejected the idea), nor can it annihilate the strip’s two
million Palestinians.

[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with United States
President Joe Biden in Tel Aviv, October 18, 2023. (Miriam
Alster/Flash90)]
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with United States
President Joe Biden in Tel Aviv, October 18, 2023. (Miriam
Alster/Flash90)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with United States
President Joe Biden in Tel Aviv, October 18, 2023. (Miriam
Alster/Flash90)

Nevertheless, the war cabinet is made up of politicians and generals
who were responsible for formulating and managing Israel’s failed
policies toward the Palestinians for the past 15 years. And even
though their entire approach collapsed on Oct. 7, and despite hearing
Biden’s warnings, it appears that they will not propose any new
path.

SMALLER PRISON CELLS

Until Oct. 7, Israel’s policy was based on the idea of creating a
single regime
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River and the Mediterranean Sea, governed by Jewish-Israeli supremacy,
while separating the Palestinians
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different groups. Still driven by this principle, Israeli authorities
will likely try to filter the Hamas establishment out of Gaza’s
population and kill many of the movement’s members, since —
according to Netanyahu — they are “Nazis.”

Israel may choose to do this by slicing up the Gaza Strip; instead of
one large prison, in which Israel has kept two million Palestinians
since 2007, it will build several smaller prison cells. Using its
technology and surveillance systems, it could then identify Hamas
operatives through biometric information, photographs, information
from collaborators, and interrogation of prisoners.

Initially, Israel will try to implement this policy in the northern
Gaza Strip [[link removed]]. In
the southern strip
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army ordered residents of the north to evacuate to, Israel could
target Hamas members on a more specific basis. The government
apparently hopes that the Israeli hostages are being held in the
north, and that it will be able to reach most of them alive. In
general, this is uncertain.

Alongside the massive forced population transfer, Israel will have to
go from house to house in northern Gaza while imposing curfews on
certain areas. This will likely be its method of finding Hamas members
with minimal losses to Israeli forces. Even if the confrontation with
Hezbollah in Lebanon stays confined to Israel’s northern border,
this method in Gaza will surely take months.

[Palestinians at the rubble of a destroyed building after an Israeli
airstrike in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, October 25, 2023.
(Atia Mohammed/Flash90)]
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Palestinians at the rubble of a destroyed building after an Israeli
airstrike in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, October 25, 2023.
(Atia Mohammed/Flash90)
Palestinians at the rubble of a destroyed building after an Israeli
airstrike in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, October 25, 2023.
(Atia Mohammed/Flash90)

A war of attrition is liable to develop in the northern strip, and it
is uncertain whether the Israelis who were evacuated from the Gaza
border region will be able to return to their homes. Israel would
eventually have to take over the management of northern Gaza. The
southern strip, Israel apparently hopes, will be managed by an
international body comprising members of Qatar, Egypt, the UN, and
other international aid agencies.

One can expect Israel’s national-religious government to push for
the establishment of settlements in the northern Gaza Strip,
ostensibly for “security reasons,” meaning, control. But every day
Israel imposes this order, it will generate resistance to it. This is
what we saw in Lebanon. In the first days of Israel’s invasion in
1982, some Lebanese residents welcomed the army with rice grains.
There will be no such reception in Gaza; the besieged Palestinian
residents there don’t even have rice to spare.

The Israeli ground invasion is expected to be conducted with great
force, with a large number of revenge-seeking soldiers
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a small battlefield. Hamas’ armed forces will have nothing to lose,
but other elements may join the resistance to Israel. It will neither
be easy nor quick. As the number of Israeli and Palestinian casualties
increases, public criticism in the country will increase, and internal
political divisions will widen accordingly.

AN ILLUSION

But a sharp internal divide is the living space of Netanyahu and his
ilk. The prime minister and his followers will intensify their
incitement and, under the guise of a state of emergency, may further
undermine the lame democracy that exists today. We are already seeing
signs of this in the media and academia, and in the persecution
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Palestinian citizens of Israel. And as the number of Palestinian
civilian casualties rises, international criticism will also increase,
as will pressure on Western heads of state to stop Israel.

The “preventive” detentions
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dozens of Palestinians whom Israel defines as Hamas members indicate
that Israel fears resistance in the West Bank, too. Already, armed
settlers are clashing
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Palestinians. These confrontations may only escalate. The Palestinian
Authority is weak, dysfunctional, and illegitimate in the eyes of its
residents [[link removed]]; the
chances that it will agree or be able to rule part or all of the Gaza
Strip under Israeli auspices are nil.

Israel may not even agree to a symbolic PA presence in Gaza, since
this will undermine the policy of separation
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Israel has maintained for decades. Alternatively, Israel may seek
local Palestinian collaborators, similar to the “Village Leagues
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Israel tried to establish in the West Bank in the 1970s to counter the
PLO.

But those efforts did not last, and in any case, there is a big
difference between villages in the West Bank, only some of which are
inhabited by refugees, and the Gaza Strip, most of whose residents
have been refugees since 1948. Public support for Hamas stems not from
the idea that it is ISIS, as Israel tries to portray it, but because
Hamas is a national-religious movement that actively resists the
occupation and advocates for the return of 1948 refugees. Hamas is not
just an authority establishment; it stands for an identity and
a cause. 

The assumption that most residents of Gaza want only quiet and
welfare, and that they will accept a regime imposed by Israel in the
form of limited autonomy, is an illusion. The war cabinet and its
spokespeople are incapable of freeing themselves from the erroneous
policy that guided them until Oct. 7, and thus will try to restore it.
They would do well to learn from America’s mistakes.

_A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local
Call. Read it __here_
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_Menachem Klein is professor of Political Science at Bar Ilan
University. He was an advisor to the Israeli delegation in
negotiations with the PLO in 2000 and was one of the leaders of the
Geneva Initiative. His new book, Arafat and Abbas: Portraits of
Leadership in a State Postponed, was just published by Hurst London
and Oxford University Press New York._

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_We are in an extraordinarily dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The
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wreaking destruction on the already besieged strip and killing a
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backed by the army, are seizing the opportunity to escalate their
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