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So where does the Israeli operation go from here? Retired Israeli army Col. Michael Milshtein, a former head of Palestinian affairs for military intelligence, told me Israel is at a crossroads: “It must either promote a broad deal regarding the hostages, which means the end of the war and probably withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, or implement the strategic goal of erasing Hamas military capacities, which demands full control over Gaza.” The “in-between strategy,” he added, “isn’t successful.”
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Yet that neither-fish-nor-fowl strategy is just what Netanyahu is pursuing. While Israeli forces continue to fight in Gaza, the Israeli government is deep in talks in Paris in the hope of reaching another hostage release deal with Hamas. The two sides are discussing a cease-fire of at least one to two months and the release of many convicted Palestinian terrorists in Israel in return for the return of all the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza. Hamas is demanding that Israel end its offensive altogether, while Netanyahu’s right-wing cabinet allies are opposed to any extended pause. Netanyahu is trying to square that circle.
Whatever happens with the cease-fire, the Israeli end game in Gaza remains as opaque as when the war began. Quite simply, Netanyahu refuses to lay out any day-after strategy because to do so is too politically risky for him. The United States and its Arab allies are urging Israel to involve the Palestinian Authority in governing Gaza and to create a road map for Palestinian statehood. But the far-right parties that keep Netanyahu in power are dead-set against a two-state solution or any role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s right-wing allies prefer an Israeli military government — i.e., another Gaza occupation that would be anathema to Palestinians and the rest of the world. They are even agitating to expel many, perhaps all, Palestinians from Gaza and to bring back Israeli settlements (which were evacuated in 2005). Israel will not carry out this monstrous ethnic-cleansing plan, which has no mainstream support, but an Israeli military government remains a distinct possibility.
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Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has tense relations with Netanyahu (the prime minister tried to fire him last year), has laid out his own day-after plan, one that is adamantly opposed by the right-wing ministers. Under the Gallant plan, the IDF would retain long-term military control of Gaza, but Israel would not administer the territory as it did until 2005. Gallant imagines local Palestinian administrators, not affiliated with Hamas, functioning under the oversight of the United States, European nations and moderate Arab regimes.
There’s only one problem: There is no chance that any other countries would take responsibility for Gaza without any Israeli commitment to Palestinian statehood. Yet Netanyahu has ruled out a two-state solution and even a Palestinian Authority role in Gaza. If Netanyahu went along with these demands from Israel’s international partners, his right-wing allies would turn on him and he would lose power. That, in turn, would leave him in a weaker position to defend himself in his ongoing corruption trial — and in any future commission of inquiry about the failures that led to the Oct. 7 attack.
Tragically, Netanyahu’s personal and political incentives are to allow military operations to continue indefinitely without making any hard decisions about what comes next. Thus, when the prime minister speaks of the “day after” in Gaza, he limits himself to vapid generalities — such as saying on Jan. 18 that “total victory requires that Gaza be demilitarized, under Israel’s full security control.” Note that he does not even broach the all-important question of who will exercise political power in Gaza.
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Israel is in dire danger of ignoring one of the most enduring lessons of counterinsurgency: Namely, victory requires not just tactical military success but a viable political end-state. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter how many insurgents you kill — more will simply spring up to replace them. That is a lesson the United States learned at high cost in Afghanistan and Iraq.
David Petraeus, retired general and former U.S. commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, told me: “We experienced in 2003 following the fight to Baghdad and the toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime what the lack of adequate post-conflict planning can bring. Our vision and organization were inadequate, and the shortcomings were then compounded by seriously counterproductive decisions such as firing the Iraqi military. … In so doing, we created hundreds of thousands of Iraqis with an incentive to oppose the new Iraq rather than to support it and sowed the seeds of the insurgency that would plague us for at least four subsequent years.”
Petraeus hopes “Israel can determine and convey a vision that will enable them to avoid what we experienced.” But it seems increasingly unlikely the Israeli government will ever come up with a viable postwar plan as long as Netanyahu remains in power and at the head of a far-right government.
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If elections were held today, polls indicate that Netanyahu would lose by a large margin to his more centrist war-cabinet partner, retired Gen. Benny Gantz. But while Bibi is terrible at governance, he is very good at politics. He has become known as “the magician” for his ability to retain office. Thus, he could very well cling to power as Israel drifts into a costly quagmire. That would be a tragedy for both Israelis and Palestinians. Unless there is a postwar administration in Gaza that has some legitimacy and addresses the needs of its people, Hamas — or some other radical group — will simply spring from the rubble left by the Israeli offensive.
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It’s been nearly four months since Israel launched Operation Swords of Iron in response to the horrific Hamas attack on Oct. 7. Yet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still has failed to articulate a viable “day after” strategy for what happens if and when the guns fall silent. His latest dereliction may consign the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip to failure despite the bravery and dedication of ordinary Israeli soldiers.
While much of the media coverage focuses on the heavy casualties suffered by the Palestinian civilians that Hamas uses as human shields, the Israel Defense Forces are also inflicting heavy losses on Hamas fighters. According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. intelligence estimates that the IDF has killed 20 percent to 30 percent of Hamas’s prewar strength of roughly 30,000 combatants and wounded roughly another 30 percent. (Israel’s figures for Hamas casualties are slightly higher.)
Any conventional military force that has suffered such heavy casualties would be rendered “combat ineffective.” But Hamas is continuing to wage guerrilla warfare against Israeli forces, and its command structure remains intact. While Israel has killed many lower-level commanders, it has not yet located Hamas’s senior leaders, including Yehiya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack who is believed to be hiding in the tunnels under his hometown, Khan Younis. The IDF has discovered that Hamas’s tunnel network is even more extensive than suspected — and as much as 80 percent of the tunnels remain intact despite months of bombardment.
There are even reports of Hamas militants returning to areas in northern Gaza where Israel has reduced its forces in the past month. Hamas could actually wind up inadvertently benefiting from Israel’s heavy bombardment: The terrorist group has figured out how to turn unexploded Israeli ordnance into its own bombs and missiles.
“Israel has been highly successful in degrading Hamas militarily and must complete the work in the two remaining areas of Gaza: Khan Younis and Rafah,” Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser, told me. “It has been far less successful in undermining Hamas’s control as the ruling body in Gaza.”
So where does the Israeli operation go from here? Retired Israeli army Col. Michael Milshtein, a former head of Palestinian affairs for military intelligence, told me Israel is at a crossroads: “It must either promote a broad deal regarding the hostages, which means the end of the war and probably withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, or implement the strategic goal of erasing Hamas military capacities, which demands full control over Gaza.” The “in-between strategy,” he added, “isn’t successful.”
Yet that neither-fish-nor-fowl strategy is just what Netanyahu is pursuing. While Israeli forces continue to fight in Gaza, the Israeli government is deep in talks in Paris in the hope of reaching another hostage release deal with Hamas. The two sides are discussing a cease-fire of at least one to two months and the release of many convicted Palestinian terrorists in Israel in return for the return of all the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza. Hamas is demanding that Israel end its offensive altogether, while Netanyahu’s right-wing cabinet allies are opposed to any extended pause. Netanyahu is trying to square that circle.
Whatever happens with the cease-fire, the Israeli end game in Gaza remains as opaque as when the war began. Quite simply, Netanyahu refuses to lay out any day-after strategy because to do so is too politically risky for him. The United States and its Arab allies are urging Israel to involve the Palestinian Authority in governing Gaza and to create a road map for Palestinian statehood. But the far-right parties that keep Netanyahu in power are dead-set against a two-state solution or any role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s right-wing allies prefer an Israeli military government — i.e., another Gaza occupation that would be anathema to Palestinians and the rest of the world. They are even agitating to expel many, perhaps all, Palestinians from Gaza and to bring back Israeli settlements (which were evacuated in 2005). Israel will not carry out this monstrous ethnic-cleansing plan, which has no mainstream support, but an Israeli military government remains a distinct possibility.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has tense relations with Netanyahu (the prime minister tried to fire him last year), has laid out his own day-after plan, one that is adamantly opposed by the right-wing ministers. Under the Gallant plan, the IDF would retain long-term military control of Gaza, but Israel would not administer the territory as it did until 2005. Gallant imagines local Palestinian administrators, not affiliated with Hamas, functioning under the oversight of the United States, European nations and moderate Arab regimes.
There’s only one problem: There is no chance that any other countries would take responsibility for Gaza without any Israeli commitment to Palestinian statehood. Yet Netanyahu has ruled out a two-state solution and even a Palestinian Authority role in Gaza. If Netanyahu went along with these demands from Israel’s international partners, his right-wing allies would turn on him and he would lose power. That, in turn, would leave him in a weaker position to defend himself in his ongoing corruption trial — and in any future commission of inquiry about the failures that led to the Oct. 7 attack.
Tragically, Netanyahu’s personal and political incentives are to allow military operations to continue indefinitely without making any hard decisions about what comes next. Thus, when the prime minister speaks of the “day after” in Gaza, he limits himself to vapid generalities — such as saying on Jan. 18 that “total victory requires that Gaza be demilitarized, under Israel’s full security control.” Note that he does not even broach the all-important question of who will exercise political power in Gaza.
Israel is in dire danger of ignoring one of the most enduring lessons of counterinsurgency: Namely, victory requires not just tactical military success but a viable political end-state. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter how many insurgents you kill — more will simply spring up to replace them. That is a lesson the United States learned at high cost in Afghanistan and Iraq.
David Petraeus, retired general and former U.S. commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, told me: “We experienced in 2003 following the fight to Baghdad and the toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime what the lack of adequate post-conflict planning can bring. Our vision and organization were inadequate, and the shortcomings were then compounded by seriously counterproductive decisions such as firing the Iraqi military. … In so doing, we created hundreds of thousands of Iraqis with an incentive to oppose the new Iraq rather than to support it and sowed the seeds of the insurgency that would plague us for at least four subsequent years.”
Petraeus hopes “Israel can determine and convey a vision that will enable them to avoid what we experienced.” But it seems increasingly unlikely the Israeli government will ever come up with a viable postwar plan as long as Netanyahu remains in power and at the head of a far-right government.
If elections were held today, polls indicate that Netanyahu would lose by a large margin to his more centrist war-cabinet partner, retired Gen. Benny Gantz. But while Bibi is terrible at governance, he is very good at politics. He has become known as “the magician” for his ability to retain office. Thus, he could very well cling to power as Israel drifts into a costly quagmire. That would be a tragedy for both Israelis and Palestinians. Unless there is a postwar administration in Gaza that has some legitimacy and addresses the needs of its people, Hamas — or some other radical group — will simply spring from the rubble left by the Israeli offensive.
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