Gaza needs ‘generation after’ plan

OPINION:

America is often called a nation of problem-solvers. So it’s not surprising that, virtually from the start of Israel’s war with Hamas last fall, U.S. officials have been pressing Israel to lay out a plan for a “day after” in the Gaza Strip.

Those calls have intensified since Israel’s mid-October killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. President Biden used the occasion to congratulate Israel for achieving justice and to press for a near-term political solution.

“There is now the opportunity for a ‘day after’ in Gaza without Hamas in power, and for a political settlement that provides a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” Mr. Biden declared on Oct. 17.

The “day after,” though, is the wrong way to think about Gaza and the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations. Rather, we need to do so in generational terms. Two decades from now, whatever its political status, the territory should be politically moderate, prosperous and developed. The question is how to get there.

The first prerequisite is security. The Oct. 7, 2023, attack shattered Israel’s conviction that it could insulate itself from the political currents of and hostilities emanating from Gaza. In the wake of Hamas’ terror campaign, it has become broadly accepted in Israeli society that the country needs some sort of presence in the Gaza Strip to keep southern Israel safe.

What shape such an arrangement might take is still being debated. Still, Israeli sentiment is squarely in favor of a buffer zone to provide separation and security from hostile forces in Gaza. Israel, though, is resource-constrained and has neither the capability nor desire to reenter Gaza on an open-ended police mission. That means military rule and security oversight must be accomplished with the aid of international partners.

Here, the countries of the Abraham Accords are natural allies. Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco already have a preferential and trusted relationship with the Jewish state. Involving those and other Arab nations would be tremendously beneficial to Israel because it would expand the number of stakeholders invested in the development of Gaza. It would also help restart the Abraham Accords, which have been nearly moribund since last fall as regional states try to navigate the political fallout from the war.

The second priority needs to be new governance. From the start of its military campaign in Gaza, Jerusalem has insisted that Hamas cannot remain in power. That’s a goal shared by Washington, broadly speaking. The two differ on what kind of government might come after the group is deposed. The Biden administration has toyed with the idea that the Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank, might be a suitable replacement for Hamas in Gaza. Israel, however, rejects the notion.

So do the vast majority of Palestinians, who are profoundly disaffected after nearly three decades of Palestinian Authority misrule. In the most recent survey conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, a respected Ramallah pollster, less than one-fifth of all respondents expressed support for the authority’s ruling Fatah faction and its aging president, Mahmoud Abbas.

As a result, Gaza’s future governing structure remains profoundly unclear. What is obvious, though, is that in order for true rebuilding and reconstruction to proceed, Gaza’s future rulers will need to be transparent, devoid of corruption and ideologically moderate.

The case of Egypt in 2012 should be instructive. The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government of Mohamed Morsi in Cairo was accompanied by a catastrophic decline in foreign direct investment as Egypt’s regional partners pulled up economic stakes. Those financial flows didn’t resume until Morsi was removed from power by the Egyptian military a year later.

The message was clear: On a basic level, foreign governments don’t invest in Islamist rule. This means that a future Palestinian government must be secular and transparent enough to instill the confidence necessary for investors to commit to getting Gaza back on its feet.

Finally, a sustainable future for the Palestinians hinges on deradicalization. For decades, Palestinian society has marinated in a toxic stew of antisemitism and political rejectionism that has made a lasting compromise with Israel far harder to achieve than it otherwise would be.

Here, the U.N. Refugee Works Agency, the U.N.’s dedicated agency for the Palestinians, shoulders a lot of the blame. Over the years, authoritative studies have pointed out that the textbooks promulgated by UNRWA are problematic, support violence against Israel and propound an expansionist vision of a Palestine stretching “from the river to the sea.”

In other words, whatever the positive humanitarian functions it performs, the agency is complicit in perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. This has been hammered home in the aftermath of Oct. 7, when around 10% of UNRWA’s roughly 30,000 employees were found to have ties to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

That realization has underpinned the broadly held Israeli conviction that UNRWA must go. To this end, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently put the United Nations on notice that the agency is banned from operating in Israel.

Predictably, that decision has caused an international outcry. But alternatives to UNRWA already exist — or could soon. UNICEF and the World Food Program have the capacity to provide near-term relief on everything from child education to food security. Studies have also proposed the creation of an international trust for Gaza relief and reconstruction to supplant other UNRWA functions.

In other words, building a new paradigm for humanitarian support for Gaza is possible. It is also essential because long-term Palestinian prosperity will hinge on creating a welcoming environment for tourism, economic investment and reconstruction.

None of this, of course, will happen overnight. A structure that can guarantee Israeli security, promote good (and moderate) Palestinian governance and ensure deradicalization will take time, energy and resources to develop. But with the proper investment and political will, as well as serious buy-in from partners in the Arab world, it may be possible to conceive of a long-term plan for Palestinian prosperity — not just for the immediate “day after,” but for the next generation that inhabits Gaza as well.

• Ilan Berman is senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington.