Netanyahu moves toward military reoccupation of Gaza with no exit strategy

Watching Benjamin Netanyahu blunder into Rafah with no plan for “the day after” is like watching a Greek tragedy whose end is foreseen but can no longer be blocked.

Netanyahu’s push into the city at Gaza’s southern edge — with no strategy for an endgame — will force Israeli troops to reoccupy the entire strip. It will ensure Hamas’ political and military survival, and trap Israeli troops in an unending insurgency.

It will probably doom most of the remaining Israeli hostages. It may also doom thousands more Palestinian civilians, including children.

Worst of all, it will hand both Hamas terrorists and Israeli extremists a devastating win that will continue to wreak havoc on the Palestinian people and on the Jewish state.

Netanyahu’s focus on total victory over Hamas blindly mistakes the Gaza war for a conventional 20th-century land war that can be ended solely by military means. He falsely compares Israel to the Allied forces that defeated Adolf Hitler in World War II.

Supposed allies of Israel such as GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham encourage Netanyahu’s delusions when they cite the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a template for bombing Gaza. Not only is such talk morally repugnant, but it shows zero grasp of how to defeat Hamas.

President Joe Biden was absolutely correct to ban a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs that can wipe out whole neighborhoods in pursuit of a single Hamas commander. Such actions only increase support for Hamas globally and in the Arab world (even in moderate Arab states whose leaders despise Hamas).

The Gaza war is a nontraditional struggle with an unconventional force — Hamas — that is fighting a guerilla war from underground tunnels. The civilian population of two million is trapped in a territory no bigger than Philadelphia, with no possibility to escape. Yes, Hamas uses civilians as a shield, but Israel’s indifference to civilian casualties plays into the terror group’s hands.

The proper military comparison for the Gaza war is the situation the United States faced in Afghanistan after 9/11 — or what Israel faced in Lebanon after 1983. Both countries got mired for years in trying to defeat an insurgency. In both cases, the military alone couldn’t win because there was no concurrent political strategy to isolate the Islamist militias. Continued military attacks further alienated civilians.

Smashing into Rafah, to which half the Gazan population has fled, won’t destroy Hamas — many of its leaders and fighters will survive in tunnels or houses, blend into the remaining population, or even escape to Sinai. Israeli bombs will doom many of the hostages who are still alive.

After thousands more Palestinian civilian deaths, even Gazans angered at Hamas for their plight will adopt its ideology of a one-state Palestinian solution minus Israel. A continued insurgency will bubble under the surface and expand into the West Bank.

Israel will be trapped in Gaza, endlessly trying to crush insurgents.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant gets it. He has publicly protested his government’s lack of a Gaza endgame, telling a news conference last week that he wouldn’t allow the establishment of military rule in the Gaza Strip.

“[Netanyahu’s] not taking a decision on a ‘day after strategy’ is tantamount to a dangerous decision to install Israeli military and civil rule in the Gaza Strip,” Gallant said.

“The end of the military campaign must be a political act,” he warned. “The day after Hamas will only be achieved through the rule of Palestinian elements that form an alternative to Hamas. Above all, this is an Israeli interest. Unfortunately, no such plan has been brought for debate.”

In other words, the only way to doom Hamas is to provide Palestinians with an alternative option that separates civilians from Hamas fighters. That would leave Hamas politically and physically exposed.

The Biden administration, along with moderate Gulf Arab states, has put forward the only plausible alternative: plans that would involve a possible Arab peacekeeping force, along with Arab and international funding to rebuild from Israeli bombing.

But such plans were contingent on two steps by Israel — the first being putting a stop to the reckless killing of civilians.

Had Netanyahu thought strategically, he would have made every effort to establish real safe zones for civilians with water and sanitation that would have separated noncombatants from fighters. This strategy would have given Israel more time and more leeway to destroy Hamas terrorists in tunnels and aboveground.

Instead, Israel let vengeance rule, bombing indiscriminately and blocking aid. After the horrors of Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage, this may be understandable from an emotional standpoint, but was strategically stupid and morally ugly. Even today, after Israel has closed almost all entry points of humanitarian aid to Gaza, Netanyahu permits followers of his right-wing political allies to block the few food shipments still headed there via Israeli roads.

Second, the Biden plan is contingent on Israel facilitating the return to Gaza of rule by a rejuvenated Palestinian Authority, or PA, the governing body that exercises partial control over the West Bank. The PA’s return depends, in turn, on Israel endorsing a political path forward toward the end of occupation, a path that ultimately would lead to a two-state solution.

Yet, Netanyahu has vehemently opposed any role for the PA. He has fantasized that apolitical Palestinians or tribal leaders will somehow emerge to run daily life in Gaza, and Israeli forces will continue to police Gaza, which will be “demilitarized” and “de-radicalized.”

Israel will be left ruling over the ruins of Gaza.

That is a pipe dream, as Hamas will survive in the wings, and no tribal leaders will help Israel maintain a military occupation. Moreover, with most of Gaza’s housing destroyed or broken, the majority of Palestinians will be living in rubble, unable to function or feed themselves.

Israel will be left ruling over the ruins. Moderate Arab states will not finance the rebuilding of the strip if the war there continues; no international force will police those ruins.

Continued Israeli military occupation of Gaza will seriously undermine Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, and prevent any future normalization with Saudi Arabia. It will alienate large segments of the public in Europe and the United States, and make the country an international pariah.

It will undercut one of Israel’s closest friends ever, who tried and failed to force Israel’s leaders to face reality: President Biden.

It may be too late to reverse Netanyahu’s self-defeating course, even with more U.S. pressure. Yet, the road he has chosen — in order to retain power and avoid jail time for corruption — will keep Hamas alive and intimidate any nascent opposition. It will cause too many more Israelis and Palestinians to die.