A Gaza ceasefire is expected to go into effect by the end of the week, leading to the gradual release of the remaining Israeli hostages in return for heavy Israeli concessions to Hamas.
The bigger problem is that Gaza remains a military threat to southern Israel, something everyone from Jerusalem to Washington promised would not be the case.
“The threat of a wide-scale raid like the one that occurred on Oct. 7 exists, but in low probability,” an IDF intelligence officer said last week at a gathering of security coordinators for Israeli communities along the Gaza border, as reported by Channel 12.
That “low probability” qualifier is temporary. True, Hamas can’t pull off another Oct. 7 right now. But the terms of the ceasefire are such that Hamas can and almost certainly will rebuild its military might. At the same time, the large deployment of Israeli forces in the south will be gradually reduced.
If the war ends this week with the threat of a Hamas invasion still existing in “low probability,” then in 10 years it will still exist with “near certainty.”
This effort is being led by Mohammed Sinwar, younger brother of former Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli forces in October of last year.
It is the younger Sinwar and Hamas’s current local military chief Izz al-Din Haddad who are now running the show in Gaza, and who have the final say over whether or not the ceasefire proceeds and is successful.
An Egyptian source involved in the matter told Kan11 News that the Palestinian Authority insists on managing Gaza alone after the war, without Hamas, and is even in talks with the administration of President-elect Donald Trump on the matter.
In recent days, Egypt has tried to push agreements between the PA and Hamas regarding the civilian management of Gaza on the day after the war, but without success. The PA rejected the proposal due to a lack of trust in Hamas, and due to the fact that Hamas is trying to destabilize Judea and Samaria and introduce an Iranian agenda there.
And as the main Arab actors on the scene are dividing the bear’s carcass among them while the bear is still very much alive, Secretary of State Tony Blinken on Tuesday will present a plan on outlining strategies for rebuilding and governing Gaza following the Israel-Hamas war, according to three US officials cited by Axios.
As Blinken nears the end of his term at the State Department, he aims for his proposal to serve as a framework for future post-conflict plans for Gaza, including during the upcoming Trump administration. Blinken will outline his plan for rebuilding and governing Gaza in a speech at the Atlantic Council on Tuesday morning.
Last October, Secretary Blinken began working on a post-war plan for Gaza, drawing on ideas developed by Israel and the United Arab Emirates, according to Axios.
In an interview on Monday with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, the secretary of state explained: “The President, when he put out the framework, made clear that during the first six weeks of this agreement … the conflict stops, Israel pulls back its forces, a lot of hostages come out, some prisoners are released by Israel, we surge humanitarian assistance, and we also use that time to try to finalize an agreement on an enduring ceasefire.”
“We’ve done a lot of work on that,” he continued. “We haven’t waited to get to the ceasefire itself. We’ve done a lot of work with Arab partners, with Israel, with others to try to reach an understanding on what would follow, basically a post-conflict plan, so that the vacuum that’s there – when Hamas is effectively not in charge and Israel pulls out – is filled by something that can run Gaza effectively.”
1 comment:
Same old story...pushing a two-state solution. What else can I say?
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