Gaza: What happens after the fighting stops?
By I’ve seen strikingly little discussion of this issue.
Once the IDF has either achieved its military objective — which is putatively the destruction of Hamas, even though even defining what that means is difficult (as a fighting force? as a functioning political entity? as an ideology?) — or given up on achieving it, what then? 2.4 million people lived in Gaza three months ago; 20,000 of them are dead now, and an enormous percentage of the rest are homeless and have nowhere to go. Much of Gaza’s infrastructure is destroyed, and much of the rest will be destroyed as the campaign to annihilate Hamas continues for however long.
But once that campaign ends, what next? These people aren’t going anywhere, because no one will take them, or any significant number of them, even if they wanted to leave, which of course many of them don’t. Does the Israeli government even have a plan, an exit strategy, anything at all? The historical record of counter-insurgencies is a series of almost unbroken disasters. Is there any reason to think it will be different this time?
To the objection that Israel had to do something in response to the October 7 terrorist attacks, the response is, something doesn’t mean anything. How has doing this thing done anything but create a gigantic disaster for both the Israelis and the Palestinians?