OPINION:
Israel is justified in pursuing a transformative regime change in Gaza. Hamas has committed the most horrific mass genocide attack against an adversary country’s citizens since 9/11 (including holding some 240 hostages, with most of them civilians), undermining its legitimate right to rule.
Nevertheless, unless there is an innovative and transformative end-state for the conclusion of Israel’s ground invasion in Gaza to overthrow and destroy Hamas’s leadership and infrastructure, the campaign is bound to fail, at last, politically.
With no political solution in sight, the Israeli military campaign is bound to generate violent local, regional and worldwide blowbacks by militant pro-Hamas demonstrators and rioters, with Hamas’s atrocities justified by them. This is already taking place in Arab countries, Europe, and the United States, accompanied by attacks against Israeli embassies and Jewish populations.
Tragically, while Israel’s justified military invasion of Gaza will likely succeed in the short term, a poorly thought-out end-state dooms it. In military warfare, an effective end state integrates the strategic level (a desired overall outcome), the operational level (the military forces and equipment employed), and the tactical level (the tactics that will be employed to defeat the enemy in battle).
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are considered brilliantly effective at the operational and tactical levels, but it is at the strategic level that the overall military campaign is lacking since the country’s political echelon has not yet publicly announced its long-term political plans for the post-Hamas overthrow in Gaza. Worse, since the likely violent upheaval that the future post-Hamas era in Gaza will unleash is not being addressed by a coherent strategic plan by the Israeli government, a political and military vacuum will be created in Gaza that will present virtually insurmountable problems for Israel’s national security.
There is, however, a way for Israel to formulate an effective end-state strategy that will enable its militarily justified pursuit of regime change against Hamas to lead to a new, more peaceful and prosperous Gaza.
Thus far, Israel’s end-state for the military invasion is to eliminate Hamas’s leadership and infrastructure, consisting of an estimated 20,000-30,000 fighters (and an additional 10,000 Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters) and their extensive military arsenal; eliminate any remaining pockets of resistance; and withdraw from Gaza, with a “new demilitarized security reality” no longer threatening Israel along the border.
To fill the political and military vacuum in Gaza, with its population of an estimated 2+ million, according to public reports, Israel will ask the Palestinian Authority, which barely exerts security control over its parts of the West Bank and is led by an unpopular 87-year-old President, with no presidential or parliamentary elections held over the past two decades, to take over administrative rule, bolstered by regional and international political and financial support.
Hamas, however, is not merely a military organization but a popular political and religious representative of the militant Muslim Brotherhood, with deep roots in Gaza (and the West Bank), especially among its highly indoctrinated younger population, as well as in other parts of the Arab world, including Egypt and Jordan.
The Palestinians in Gaza, as well as in the West Bank, lack any hope for a better personal, economic and political future. In one indicator of economic hopelessness, prior to October 2023, the unemployment rate in Gaza was estimated at 66%, while in the West Bank, it was around 25%.
With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government pursuing an expansionist settlement policy in the West Bank, including tolerating revenge rampages by militant Jewish settlers against neighboring Palestinian towns that have cumulatively served to undermine the rule of the Palestinian Authority, the Gaza Palestinians will justifiably rebel against any Israeli imposed rule over them. They will be supported by their counterparts in the West Bank (and East Jerusalem), leading to a violent and protracted uprising against any attempt by Israel to impose a new ruler over them that does not address their national aspirations and usher in a far more promising future.
An effectively formulated strategic end-state needs to usher in what will amount to a fundamental regional realignment between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza that will lead to a durable and permanent peaceful coexistence.
To make this possible, Mr. Netanyahu and his inner security Cabinet need to announce that the ultimate objective of the regime change is to usher in a new form of coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians that will provide some sort of independent, demilitarized state for the Palestinians in the West Bank.
This would be accompanied by a significant curtailment and reduction of Jewish settlement activity, including in the Arab-dominated East Jerusalem. Elections would be held in Gaza to elect a new governing body and political leadership that would implement transformative political and economic development in what will become Palestine’s twin state. This would be backed by massive economic aid from Israel’s neighboring Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, which will be backed by the United States and Europe.
This envisioned end-state faces insurmountable hurdles. First, the Israeli coalition government is not exactly suitable to implement it since only a liberal democratic government could implement such a regime change in Gaza. Israel would need to be led by someone with the stature of the late Israeli President Shimon Peres, who, following the 1994 Oslo Peace Accords, called for regional economic cooperation. The current Israeli government has spent the past year attempting to impose a regime change in Israel that would undermine the independence of the country’s judiciary, which led to massive protest demonstrations against it across the country.
Second, the current Israeli coalition government includes the leaders of the far-right-wing settlement movement, who would violently oppose any initiative to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank.
Finally, there is the question of who will take over Gaza. Historically, the American-led regime change in post-Second World War West Germany succeeded in its de-Nazification program because a non-Nazi political and economic elite was present to provide new leadership and mobilize the population in a new democratic and peaceful direction. Does Gaza possess a “non-Hamas” political and economic elite to lead a new administration that can effectively govern the “twin-state” of Palestine with legitimate popular support?
Despite these hurdles, which hopefully will not be insurmountable, no other outcomes will achieve the objectives of peaceful coexistence between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Palestinians. This proposed strategic end-state for the Gaza military operation and its aftermath is not hopelessly utopian, as it expresses the views of numerous prominent retired Israeli security leaders.
Israel is facing an existential threat to its long-term security and national identity. There is an optimistic path forward that will require a transformative paradigm shift for Israeli national security. The alternative will leave Israel in a long-term precarious state of insecurity.
• Joshua Sinai is Professor of Practice, Intelligence & Global Security Studies, Capitol Technology University, Laurel, MD.`
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