Israel Reveals Plans to Maintain Role in Gaza After War

As questions linger about Gaza's future, an Israeli official has revealed to Newsweek an insight into the country's vision for the postwar governance of the Palestinian territory.

"What we want to see in Gaza—in the day after Hamas—is a demilitarized territory and a de-radicalized society, potentially run-by local civil administrators who have no link to terrorism," a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Office told Newsweek.

The remarks come after the emergence of a new proposal for Gaza put forth by the Arab League, which called for the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers in the territory during the 22-member group's latest summit earlier this month.

But the Israeli Prime Minister's Office spokesperson shed doubt on the feasibility of such a plan, outlining a need for Israel to maintain a role in managing Gaza's security beyond the end of the conflict.

"Based on past and current experience that Israel has had with U.N. peace-keeping forces, it certainly doesn't appear—to put it mildly—that a mission of this kind could guarantee our security," the spokesperson said.

"So, in the foreseeable future Israel will have to maintain some security responsibility over the Gaza Strip to make sure that we don't see a resurgence of terrorism after we destroy Hamas as a governing body in Gaza and military wing...an army of terror, I should say," they added.

Newsweek reached out to Hamas and the U.S. State Department for comment on the prospect of U.N. peacekeepers being deployed to Gaza.

Last month, amid competing views over who will control Gaza once the dust settles, two senior Hamas officials told Newsweek that only Palestinians themselves could choose their leadership.

A member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which serves as the representative of the West Bank-based Palestinian National Authority (PA), argued that the terms of Gaza's future could only be determined by a ceasefire and a sustainable path toward a two-state solution.

In discussing Israel's history with U.N. peacekeepers, the spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister's Office pointed first to the challenges faced by the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the Lebanese government in implementing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which called for the withdrawal for the Lebanese Hezbollah movement from areas south of the Litani River in southern Lebanon following the latest cross-border fought in 2006.

"UNIFIL forces, along with the Lebanese government, were supposed to keep the calm on our border with Lebanon by enforcing UNSC Resolution 1701 according to which Hezbollah—at the end of the second Lebanon war in 2006—was supposed to withdraw its forces 18 miles away from the border," the Israeli spokesperson said.

"This hasn't happened. We've had missiles [and] hostile drone infiltrations from the North almost every day now," the Israeli spokesperson added. "Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed or injured by Hezbollah fire. About 80,000 Israelis still can't return to their homes in the north for nearly eight months now... Do you think they trust U.N. security guarantees?"

Nearly 93,000 people have also been displaced from southern Lebanon as a result of the ongoing hostilities, according to a report published last week by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Newsweek has reached out to Hezbollah regarding the situation at the border.

While Hezbollah maintained a presence along the border, known as The Blue Line, the group, as well as the Lebanese government, frequently accused Israel of violating U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 by occupying border posts and conducting regular flyovers of military aircraft in Lebanese airspace.

Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, Hezbollah has vowed to continue operations until Israel halts its offensive.

Meanwhile, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix and UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Lieutenant General Lieutenant General Aroldo Lázaro Sáenz both emphasized UNIFIL's role in maintaining dialogue among parties, preventing escalation and setting the conditions for a lasting solution in recent interviews with Newsweek.

Still, Israeli officials have remained skeptical of expanding U.N. peacekeeping operations to Gaza, owing also to past experiences in the wake of the 1956 Suez Crisis and the lead-up to the 1967 Six-Day War.

"Don't forget that we already had U.N. peacekeeping forces in the Gaza Strip and the Sinai that were supposed to keep the calm after the Suez Canal crisis in 1956," the Israeli Prime Minister's Office spokesperson said. "And what happened in 1967? Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser asked them to leave. So they left, and he went ahead to launch a war against Israel."

"So, to your question—fool me once, fool me twice...but a third time?" they added. "It's clear that U.N. forces ALONE won't be sufficient to ensure anyone's security."

The 1967 war saw Israel seize and occupy Gaza, leading to a period of heightened activity by Palestinian militias, among which Hamas ultimately emerged as one of the most powerful factions during the First Intifada in the 1980s. After hopes for lasting peace brought on by the ultimately unfulfilled 1990s Oslo accords unraveled with the eruption of the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, handing power to the PA.

Palestinian elections held the following year, however, saw Hamas emerge victorious, leading to a violent split between the Islamist movement and the PA's dominant left-wing Fatah party. Hamas seized Gaza in 2007 and has led the territory throughout clashes and wars with Israel, of which the current conflict is by far the longest and deadliest.

In its latest estimate provided Thursday, the Palestinian Health Ministry in the Hamas-led territory recorded more than 36,000 people killed in Gaza, mostly women and children. Israeli officials have counted more than 1,200 killed, mostly civilians, in the initial attack last October and at least 290 IDF personnel killed in the ensuing campaign.

President Joe Biden's administration has supported Israel throughout the conflict but has increasingly raised concerns over civilian casualties, the humanitarian crisis and ambiguity over how Gaza would be administered after the conflict.

Biden has said he would like to see a return to PA rule in Gaza, though Netanyahu has previously rejected this proposal. The rift between the two leaders has widened in the past weeks since Israel went forward with an operation in the southern city of Rafah despite U.S. protests and international backlash.

Speaking at a press gathering while in Moldova on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Israel to reflect on how "further incremental gains against Hamas but gains that may not be durable in terms of Hamas' defeat in the absence of a plan...stacks up against some of the, again, unintended but horrific consequences of military action in a place where the people you're going after are so closely embedded with civilians."

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