The war in Gaza tends to exhibit a two-sided profile, with a labyrinth on one side and an epic imprint on the other. Critics on one side contend that after more than two months of airstrikes and artillery strikes and an army deployed on the ground, all the hostages have not been recovered and Hamas command has fallen.
In the same period, domestic protest against Benjamin Netanyahu's government has not subsided and global questioning of the scorched-earth logic applied in the enclave, where the world is now only watching a unique humanitarian drama that occupies the screens, has become widespread.
On the other hand, it is argued that the structure of the terrorist group has suffered fundamental damage. Its main tunnels have been discovered and cancelled, and dozens of high-ranking chiefs have been suppressed, greatly disrupting their ability to command and decision-making system.
These two visions are true and coexist as an effect of the absence of realistic definitions for the day after, which clouds the present. Everything remains at a threshold that stops at the destruction of the terrorist group, a point on which there are no controversies. There's no afterlife to that.
Who will rule the day after?
Politics is what should guide the military arm. But that sphere is awash in contradictory and conflicting ambitions. The controversial Israeli prime minister maintains that his country will permanently take care of the security of the enclave after eliminating the fundamentalist group. But it is not clear who will govern the territory since the president vetoes with contempt the Palestinian Executive that protects the United States.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Photo: Reuters
If Israel takes care of everything, there will no longer be the flow of donations from the Arab world to the Palestinians in Gaza. Therefore, the Jewish state will have to meet the entire food, health, security and reconstruction budget that the Jewish community requires.
The supremacist partners of the ruling alliance, in turn, imagine another, more extravagant world. They aspire to recolonize these territories, without clarifying what is supposed to happen to their original more than two million inhabitants.
Other leaders, such as the mayor of Metula, David Azoulai, of the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Shas party, suggest that the territory should be completely emptied on the notion that there are only enemies there.
"Tell everyone in Gaza to go to the beaches. Navy ships should load terrorists onto the shores of Lebanon. The entire Gaza Strip should be emptied and leveled, as in Auschwitz. Let it become a museum, show the capabilities of the State of Israel and deter anyone from living in the Gaza Strip," he proclaimed on a radio station.
Other senior officials, including ministers, have lightly suggested that Egypt take care of all that humanity in tents in Sinai. One reason, say the suspicious, is why, in a constant drama and also under bombardment, the army is crowding the inhabitants of Gaza over the Rafah crossing, on the border with the Arab country. A manoeuvre so that desperation ends up charting the course.
There is also the memory of when the Orthodox villages mentioned the atomic bomb against that population; the burning of the entire territory suggested by the Parliament or suggestive episodes with soldiers planting the Israeli flag on a beach in Gaza.
Who governs?
Analysts of note, such as the Israeli-Argentine economist Daniel Kupervaser, refer to the depth of these labyrinths with examples. Israel, he notes, faces a sudden labor problem. There are no Palestinians who used to work and are now discriminated against, and there are more than 300,<> reservists attending to the conflict, out of their jobs, which also means a budgetary addition to the country's economy, wounded by the fall to peak tourism and the significant expenses of the war operation.
The business community demands personnel in central areas such as construction and the agricultural sector. Netanyahu brought the issue to a cabinet meeting on Dec. 10. There he proposed the return of the Palestinians from the West Bank, which would, in passing, ease the tension in that other territory. Also, the return of taxes to the Ramallah government that Israel illegally withholds and that are for the payment of officials and the police.
The security leadership endorsed the plan. But it didn't happen. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a controversial ultranationalist who advocates the expulsion of all Arabs from the West Bank, and Economy Minister Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the ultra-Orthodox Religious Zionist party, slammed doors and Netanyahu had to retreat. Clear data of where the power lies.
This limbo, which reaches the military in one way or another at the front, marks the development of the war and clouds the objectives of the conflict, as well as complicating the country's crucial alliances around the world.
In a rare pilgrimage, U.S. Foreign Minister Antony Blinken has already traveled to Israel four times since the start of the war over the bloody Hamas attack on Oct. 7. He was followed a couple of weeks ago by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and a few days later by Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Brown.
An Israeli tank opens fire inside the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters
They all carried a simple message. Care for civilians in Gaza should be multiplied, the current large-scale military operation should cease before the end of the year or shortly thereafter, and it should be replaced by "highly professional" commandos, Austin suggested, to hunt down Hamas and free the hostages.
They call for the strengthening of the alternative of a future Palestinian government for the Strip. In other words, Netanyahu is being asked to ignore his ultra allies and accept the need to realistically define the future of that region. Incidentally, the extension of the war should be detached from the political needs of the prime minister or his partners, who most of the time coincide. U.S. support is not at risk. The U.S. has just demonstrated Israel at the UN. It's something more complex.
Austin, a military veteran, summed up this two-sided panorama with a phrase that is worth remembering. He characterized that advances in Gaza at the known humanitarian cost imply the risk that a tactical victory on the ground will turn into a strategic defeat for the country, if a concrete way forward is not cleared.
The U.S. does not propose these ideas because of a special devotion it experiences for the Palestinians. What is sought, according to diplomatic sources, is to open a political window that modifies the conditions that feed the fundamentalist alternative, a virus that has become embedded in the national cause of that people.
There is an additional logic to these intentions. There are reports of a split in the Hamas leadership, driven by a moderate wing that is negotiating in Egypt not only a truce, but an end to the war with a rapprochement with the Fatah government in Ramallah. A virtual surrender. That government and that party have recognized Israel's existence.
If the way is opened to a Palestinian government, the message to the region would confirm the construction of a state solution to this 70-year-old drama and, to some extent, abandon the belligerent narrative of Iran, a privileged partner of Russia and China and an enemy of Israel and the US.
The Israeli government seems to be oblivious to these geopolitical urgencies, especially Netanyahu obsessed with procrastinating the day after to protect the solidity of his imperfect ruling alliance.
A mountain of 20,<> needless deaths, many of them children and their mothers, and the fantasies of their partners to appropriate territories including the West Bank, have the dual effect of amplifying the influence of fundamentalism, canceling any political solution and risking Israel's future to a dangerous binationality.
If those territories are annexed, the Oslo accords that the minority parties that keep Netanyahu in power despise disappear. With that shelf collapsed, more than five million Palestinians should be nationalized. They cannot be expelled, nor discriminated against. The state they lack will end up being Israel. You get out of every labyrinth by rising, Marechal recommended.
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