Hamas and the Gaza Strip

A comprehensive comparison between the plan to conquer Gaza and the Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire, the release of hostages, and the establishment of an alternative administration in the Strip

After approximately a year and a half of war in the Gaza Strip, Israel stands at a crossroads and must formulate a relevant strategy regarding the future of the Strip. It faces a rather grim range of alternatives, all problematic in their implications and feasibility: encouraging “voluntary emigration”—an option whose strategic consequences have not been thoroughly examined in Israel and whose feasibility is low; occupying the Strip and imposing prolonged military rule—while this may severely weaken Hamas, it does not guarantee its eradication, and comes with the risk of endangering the Israeli hostages held by Hamas and incurring other significant long-term costs to Israel; establishing a moderate Palestinian governance in the Strip with international and Arab support—an option whose costs to Israel are low, but currently lacks an effective mechanism for demilitarizing the Strip and dismantling Hamas’s military capabilities; and finally, the possibility that political and military stabilization initiatives will fail, leaving Hamas in power.

After each round of violent clashes between Israel and Hamas, the issue of rehabilitating the Gaza Strip and improving its economic situation is raised once again. The accepted working assumption is that given suitable political conditions, and in the framework of a political process based on an attempt to promote the realization of the two-state paradigm, in which the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are considered one political and territorial unit under the control of the Palestinian Authority, it will be possible to rehabilitate the Strip. But it appears that nobody has ever asked if the Gaza Strip can indeed be rehabilitated. In this paper I will try to clarify the meaning of “rehabilitation” in the context of the Gaza Strip, and with the aid of a matrix of variables, those that facilitate rehabilitation and those that disrupt it, examine a number of basic questions dealing with the actual feasibility of rehabilitating the Gaza Strip under existing conditions. Following that, with reference to my conclusion regarding the absence of sufficient conditions for a successful rehabilitation process, I will describe the characteristics of this state of affairs and its ramifications, and propose a number of possible options for dealing with the emerging situation in the absence of rehabilitation, with an emphasis on the importance of adopting logical guidelines which do not currently exist but which are here deemed to be essential for the success of such a process. The conclusion of this paper is that leaving Hamas in the Gaza Strip as a ruling entity and with their commitment to the preservation of the idea of armed resistance, are both strongly disruptive variables, and both are endogenous to the Palestinian system. Therefore, without neutralizing these two variables, or at least weakening them very considerably, it is hard to imagine that the rehabilitation process will succeed.