Security remains Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's main obsession. The solution to all ills. Nothing has changed since the October 7 attack, the day the supposed fortress he had built around Gaza collapsed in the Hamas attack like a house of cards. More than a month later, with thousands of deaths on the table (more than 11,000 in the Strip and some 1,200 on the Israeli side), Gaza devastated and a war with an uncertain end, Netanyahu continues to bet everything on security and nothing but security. Behind the scenes, both in Israel and abroad, more and more voices are being heard claiming that manu militari alone will not pacify the Strip. Nor did it succeed in the previous battles fought in the Palestinian enclave after the departure of troops and settlers in 2005. Experts predict that the prime minister will not survive the crisis opened by the Hamas attack.
"You can't fight an ideology with guns. The ideology of Hamas must be confronted with a better ideology, and the best ideology to present to the Palestinians is that they can live for Palestine, not just die for Palestine," said Gershon Baskin, a columnist and peace activist known for having negotiated with Hamas in previous crises. Faced with this, and defending a discourse in a clear minority in Israel, he assures during an interview at his home in Jerusalem: "Palestine has to be a reality. The idea of Palestinian independence, liberation and an end to Israeli occupation has to come to life to replace the ideology of death."
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Israel-Gaza war, live
Israel insists on continuing to control Gaza's security after the war, Netanyahu last said on Friday, although he ruled out keeping the Strip occupied. That means having "freedom of action" with "air operations" or "small incursions" on the ground to stop Hamas or another similar organization, Ofer Shelah, a former member of parliament from the centrist Yesh Atid party and an analyst at the Institute for the Study of National Security (INSS), said in a phone call. But, at the same time, Israel shows no sign of accepting that the institutional vacuum left by Hamas, in the government of the Gaza Strip since 2007, will be occupied, at least in part, by the Palestinian National Authority (PA), as suggested by the United States. The day after, which is of such concern in the international sphere, is as if it did not exist for the Israeli government, except for the ultranationalists with messianic daydreams who demand to take over the Palestinian enclave.
At the moment, the focus is on the battle of Gaza City, "one of the most fortified places in history," says former general Giora Eiland, where the Israeli army has to face two phenomena. On the one hand, Hamas' 20,000 to 25,000 heavily committed militants, its sophisticated tunnel system and Iranian technology. On the other hand, the "loyal" support that, according to him, is given to them by the local population and those responsible for the Administration.
Eiland, like Israeli military commanders, insists that militants find support even in hospitals. And it is precisely there that, in the last few hours, Israel has tried to gain positions with constant attacks, according to Palestinian health and humanitarian sources. The former general explains that the main health center in the Gaza Strip, the Al Shifa hospital in the capital, in addition to receiving patients and citizens who are sheltering from the attacks, maintains a Hamas command center under its facilities, so "that area must be destroyed." Although he says it is not what they are looking for, that argument leads him to justify the high number of civilians who are dying despite the widespread criticism that Israel receives for what are considered war crimes such as the Islamist attack on October 7. "I don't think Israel can do anything to prevent it," he says, "unless the Hamas leadership decides to surrender, which doesn't look like it's going to happen right now."
Plans for the future
Gershon Baskin points out that Netanyahu and his Cabinet, which he believes will be "expelled" after the war, have no plans for aftermath. Neither Shelah nor Eiland see the prime minister in his post after the war. The future without Hamas in power is something that others have begun to raise, including some Palestinians, including PA President Mahmoud Abbas himself. In this regard, Baskin suggests, under a mandate from the UN Security Council, an Arab multinational force with Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the Emirates, but with the PNA security forces at the forefront to avoid the feeling of a "new occupation". It would be, he adds, a "technocratic administration" leading to a new Palestinian government and learning from the "mistakes of Oslo" to ensure the two-state solution.
Former parliamentarian Shelah assumes that the presence of international organizations and some kind of coalition or alliance of Middle Eastern countries will be necessary to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza. There, he explains, the PA should participate in some way, which he hopes "will recover in Gaza, although that will take years," but in no case Hamas. "The Israeli dilemma is enormous," says Mahmoud Muna, a bookseller in charge of the Educational Bookshop and a Palestinian from Jerusalem, about the lack of ideas for the future. He predicts that any solution that is proposed will be good or bad depending on whether Israel accepts it. "And what Israel accepts will not be good for Gaza. I don't see the world forcing a solution that Israel doesn't want," he concludes pessimistically.
The scenario that former general Giora Eiland draws for the Palestinian enclave has three phases. On the one hand, the current war, which has lasted about six weeks or more; a second, that it should lead an international task force to assist Gazans with a European or Arab and Palestinian presence; and the third, which must establish the agreement that allows the designs of the territory to be governed. At the moment, he says, the "most urgent" thing is to try to free the hostages, even if the price to be paid is the release of a few hundred Palestinian prisoners and several days, three or four, of a ceasefire that Hamas seeks. But, the former general adds, neither Israel nor Hamas should be in charge of Gaza, although the troops should take measures in the event of a "terrorist threat" from that or another armed group.
Former negotiator Baskin has maintained a direct line with the leadership of the Islamic movement until a few days ago. It already negotiated with them in 2011 the release after more than five years held in Gaza of soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners. Among them was the current head of Hamas in Gaza, Yahia Sinwar, one of Israel's most wanted men. On November 1, Baskin sent a letter, which he also made public, to Ghazi Hamad, one of the militia's leaders, to end almost two decades of relationship, more than a thousand conversations and four face-to-face meetings. In the letter he states that he is an "evil" without "humanity". Hamad has boasted about the October 7 attack and insisted that Israel must not exist, repeating one of Hamas' pillars.
Israel now faces not one, but more than 240 hostages held by the enemy in Gaza. "The only way to save them all is through an agreement with Hamas. But the agreement with Hamas, which calls for the release of all Palestinian prisoners, some 7,000, is unacceptable to Israel. (...) It is also contradictory to the ultimate goal of the war, which is to dismantle Hamas," said the former negotiator, who has not yet ruled out a pact that would allow children, women and the elderly to be released. He assures, during an interview on Friday, that he knows first-hand that it was not until three days ago, with Egypt taking part in the contacts and with the Islamists closing the list of hostages to be released, in which there were not going to be military women. But the Islamists' demand for a ceasefire was not accepted. And now, he says, although it is hinted at in the negotiations underway in Qatar, "Israel is not going to accept a ceasefire in exchange for the release of 10 or 15 hostages."
Former MP Shelah believes the fate of the hostages depends on Yahia Sinwar. A pause of several days would be possible, at least, to free some, "but that must not become the end of the war." "Hamas would win if it managed to stop the war using the hostages," he concludes.
Baskin, for his part, believes that Israel underestimated Hamas' current capability and thought that the Iron Dome anti-aircraft system was enough to stop 90% of its missiles, but they evolved, the tunnels arrived and the Oct. 7 assault on a security fence that had cost $1 billion. All of this will have to be analysed and monitored after the war, as even the prime minister himself acknowledges.
"Netanyahu has managed to remove the Palestinian issue not only from the Israeli agenda, but from the international community ... Why does Spain support the two-state solution and only recognize one of them?" asks former negotiator Baskin. In any case, he himself places the blame on Israelis and also on Palestinians because they have not been able to get away with Israel's narrative or present a serious peace plan. "We knew about the hypocrisy of the United States, but we trusted Europe," laments bookseller Mahmoud Muna. Spain, in any case, is not one of the worst off in its diatribe. "We Palestinians are alone," he adds, also referring to the abandonment of Arab countries, whose oil wealth does not prevent the fuel crisis in Gaza.
In a 2015 interview with the Haaretz newspaper, a few months after the last war in Gaza, Ofer Shelah somehow predicted what is happening in 2023. Israel had failed because of the "absence of a complementary political process" and "the next assault is a matter of time and will be more horrific."
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