Gaza: Everybody is Mediating, Nothing is Happening
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer.
Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
Q. The IDF is planning a new offensive in the Gaza Strip. That hardly qualifies as mediating.
A. The offensive is not intended to go into high gear until October. Meanwhile it is very much related to multiple mediating initiatives: the threat of a new IDF maneuver is assessed in some Israeli quarters to be generating pressure on Hamas to adopt more flexible positions vis-à-vis current mediation attempts.
That assessment is doubtful. IDF Intelligence has proven repeatedly to be incapable of understanding what makes Hamas tick, beginning on October 7, 2023. To his credit, IDF Chief of Staff Zamir has openly voiced his reservations about the Netanyahu government’s demand for another offensive, thereby calling into question just how serious and aggressive this prospective offensive will be.
Zamir apparently favors another round of hostage/ceasefire negotiations with Hamas rather than an offensive. He appears to identify with the assessment favored by the masses demonstrating against the government on Sunday this week, which holds that the war has spent itself, is dooming the remaining hostages, and is projecting Israel internationally as bent on starving Gazans.
This is where the international mediators enter the picture.
Q. By latest count, there are now no fewer than four active mediators between Israel and Hamas--Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the US--and two formulae for a deal: comprehensive and partial. Perhaps that is one of the reasons for lack of progress: too many cooks, too many soups.
A. I would argue that the reason for lack of a productive peace process is messianic religious extremism, both Islamist and Jewish. Hamas refuses to renounce aggression and political power, despite its military defeat and the suffering it has inflicted on Gazans–it cannot conceive of genuine coexistence with Israel. The Netanyahu government allows messianist Jewish ministers Smotrich and Ben Gvir to sacrifice the remaining 20 live Israeli hostages for the unattainable cause of total victory and the doubtful reward of territorial gain.
Under these circumstances it is hard for any mediator, much less four, to find an agreed formula for ending the Gaza conflict. Indeed, it is hard to conceive of any genuine resolution to the conflict in Gaza but rather, at best, an interim solution short of peace that enables both sides to cling to their extremist end goals.
Q. And the Israeli popular mood? Conducive to extending the war in Gaza?
A. While all this is happening, the manpower-deprived IDF is forcing a political confrontation over the conscription of some 50,000 Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) draft-dodgers who are encouraged and protected by the powerful Haredi factions in the Knesset. Growing numbers of IDF reservists, facing family and job pressures after hundreds of days of service, are refusing to report for duty when called up.
This is hardly an atmosphere conducive to promoting yet another pointless offensive in the Gaza Strip. Unless, of course, you ask the land-hungry hawks, the messianists, and the draft dodgers who still hold a Knesset majority and at least for the moment maintain a relatively stable coalition.
Q. Why does Israel seem to be successfully negotiating neutralization of the Hezbollah remnant in Lebanon and a modus vivendi with the new Islamist regime in Syria, but it is unable to resolve its dilemma in Gaza?
A. Here we return to observations regarding the strategic reality in Gaza that we have been making for years: Israel has no viable strategy for the Strip, while the Palestinians--Hamas as well as the PLO--have demonstrated no viable capacity for self-governance and state-building as peaceful neighbors. Under these circumstances, at least in the short term it is pointless for international interlocutors and neighbors of good will to project the goal of a Palestinian state as the immediate outcome of an Israel-Hamas hostage and ceasefire process.
Rather, an interim status is being readied. We are told that Egypt has commenced training 5,000 Palestinian policemen for interim rule in the Strip. A veteran West Bank businessman cum politician, Samir Hulileh, is being promoted as interim governor of Gaza.
Q. So will this be an interim ceasefire deal or an end-of-conflict deal? Does Hamas agree to step aside and welcome rule by Hulileh and 5,000 non-Hamas Palestinian policemen? Does Israel agree? Have any of the four mediators even asked Hamas and Israel? Or is all this just loose talk?
A. It turns out that if you strike a major strategic blow against Iran you can defeat Hezbollah and bring about regime change in Syria. With Iran weakened, there is someone to talk to in Beirut and Damascus. But in Gaza this appears to make no difference.
Q. Meanwhile we are informed by a variety of sources that Israel is planning not only to move hundreds of thousands of Palestinians south from Gaza City in preparation for its offensive, but is also negotiating – in the spirit promoted by US President Trump along with Israel’s own land-hungry messianists – to promote the migration of Gazans to South Sudan, or Somalia, or Somalia’s breakaway province of Somaliland, or Indonesia.
A. Gaza, bereft of viable strategies, is paradoxically so many things to so many diverse parties! For Trump, it is real estate--Mediterranean beach resorts for which it must be emptied out during rebuilding. (Though the US president seems for the moment to have lost interest.) For Netanyahu’s messianist coalition partners and their growing Israeli and Evangelical constituencies, Gaza is the promised land--if only it can be emptied of its Arab population.
For Egypt, which borders on Gaza, the Strip is a demographic threat whose population must at all costs be prohibited from emigrating toward Cairo. (100,000 or so people have indeed moved to Egypt over the past two years of war even though the Gaza-Egypt border is ostensibly closed.)
For Turkey and Qatar, both ruled by regimes that favor the Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood, a solution for Gaza should preferably leave not only Gazans in place, but Hamas too.
Any wonder that Egypt, where the regime strongly opposes the Muslim Brotherhood, is hard put to coordinate Gaza peacemaking efforts with Hamas and Turkey?
Q. Is forced emigration from the Strip a solution?
A. It is blatantly immoral and, under international law, illegal. But could it work? If enough dollars (Israeli? Evangelical?) are thrown at crisis-overwhelmed countries like South Sudan and Somalia, they could conceivably agree to absorb a few ‘excess’ Gazans. Needless to say, that would blacken Israel’s name yet further in the eyes of the civilized world. It would also plant ticking Arab bombs of anger and discontent in those countries.
‘Transfer’ is a formula for disaster. Thankfully, international pressure is likely to prevent it.
Q. Netanyahu, who used to favor a hostage-ceasefire solution in stages, now says he wants a comprehensive arrangement that ends the war. But he also wants to conquer Gaza City and remaining pockets of the Strip still held by Hamas? What to believe?
A. Netanyahu is also widely reported to be looking for ways to postpone Knesset elections, which must be held within a year and could be held earlier if his coalition continues to fray at the edges, particularly over the Haredi conscription issue.
Any means to kick the electoral can further down the road will, I fear, be considered perfectly kosher and democratic by Netanyahu, his followers and allied interested parties, possibly including Trump. This is important to understand in considering efforts to ‘solve’ Gaza.
In other words, yet another prism through which to consider ideas drawing out and delaying solutions for the Strip is Netanyahu’s fear of elections. What Gaza ‘solution’ serves Israeli election delay?
