What happens after Israel invades Gaza?

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What happens after Israel invades Gaza?

The country has four options and none of them are good
James Cowan22 October 2023
WEST END FINAL

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The only unifying theme of the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations was a desire to withdraw from the Middle East and focus on the Asia-Pacific rim. And yet for the fourth time in 22 years Islamist fighters have inflicted a strategic shock on the West: on the first occasion with 9/11; secondly, with the ISIS Caliphate; thirdly, with the Taliban’s capture of Kabul; and lastly with Hamas’s attack into southern Israel.  

Two weeks ago, Israel still lived under the comfort blanket of its Iron Dome missile system, a country seduced by the false security of its very own Truman Show. Forced to focus on the security of West Bank settlements by the right of Netanyahu’s coalition, the Israeli Defence Force was made to strip troops away from Gaza and transfer them to the West Bank. After all, there was no intelligence to suggest anything untoward in Gaza: the US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan himself had said that "the Middle East Region is quieter than it has been in two decades”.

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Rockets fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza City are intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome
AFP via Getty Images

What a difference a fortnight can make. In the fourteen days since the Hamas attack, 1,400 Israelis have been killed, 200 have been taken hostage and a mass mobilisation of reservists has taken place. On the Palestinian side, two million people face displacement from North Gaza and entrapment in South Gaza; the whole Gaza population faces food, water and medical shortages and the very real possibility of death and injury from Israeli military action, or at the hands of other Palestinians – the explosion at the Ahli Arab hospital now seems almost certainly to have been a failed Islamic Jihad rocket.

Military planning in such circumstances is usually a choice between something bad and something worse. The presumed objective given to the army by Israel’s government is to defeat Hamas and deny Gaza as a base for Islamic extremism. The Israeli military leadership knows that there is a gross mismatch between these grand political objectives and the military instrument’s capacity to deliver. Indeed, far from liquidating Hamas, the Israelis may be falling into a well-set trap that might bring in Hezbollah from Southern Lebanon, cause an Intifada on the West Bank, and outrage in the broader Islamic world.  

In extremis, Israel’s fourth option would be to occupy all of Gaza and fight Hamas to the end

Given this, Israel’s minimalist option is to sit on the defensive and invite the sympathy of the world, mounting raids to rescue hostages. This would have allowed the grand strategic prize of rapprochement with Saudi Arabia still to be delivered. The sheer scale of the Israeli fire plan (now under way) which will precede the ground assault indicates this option has sadly been rejected. The second option would be to mount a punitive, largescale raid with limited objectives and a swift withdrawal. Thirdly, Israel might choose to occupy Northern Gaza, instructing the civilian population to leave, permanently occupying the area as a depopulated buffer zone. In extremis, Israel’s fourth option would be to occupy all of Gaza and fight Hamas to the end.  

The last three options range from the very undesirable to the extremely undesirable. It seems the Israelis have already decided that the moment for restraint has passed and are willing to accept the international opprobrium that will accompany Palestinian casualties.  

Given that military reality, led by the United States, the international community’s duty is twofold: first, America needs to prevent the conflict escalating into a regional war, by restraining Israel, containing Iran, blocking Hezbollah from opening a second front, and offering extensive aid to Fatah on the West Bank. President Biden should be congratulated for the relative success of his short visit, but there is much work still to do.

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Smoke over Gaza city
AFP via Getty Images

Secondly, the duty to minimise harm to innocent civilians in Gaza must be paramount. The crossing from Egypt into Gaza at Rafah must be fully open and the aid must flood, not trickle in. The likelihood is that Gaza hospitals are already well beyond capacity and so failsafe humanitarian corridors for the sick and injured to leave the city must be agreed.  Both sides must act within the law of armed conflict and respect its four principles of humanity, military necessity, distinction between civilians and combatants and proportionality. Humanitarian actors need safe space to operate, and that will require regular cease-fires.

When the dust settles, there is a high risk that Israel will leave behind a worse problem than it began with. The Palestinian population may be left desperate, radicalised and angry. To stop this, the international community needs to find salvation in this tragedy by taking seriously a Middle East Peace Process that leads to a two-state solution, the seeds of which may be found within the Abraham Accords. If not, the Middle East will find new ways of inflicting further strategic shocks on a world that must learn to pay attention.

James Cowan is chief executive of the Halo Trust but writes for the Standard in a personal capacity as a former army general

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