Despite the Israeli army's advance in northern Gaza, the long-term Israeli strategy regarding the Strip remains "shrouded in ambiguity" for most Israelis, Palestinians, as well as Israel's allies, according to a report by the Financial Times.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent army forces to the Strip last month, he pledged that Israel would “eliminate” Hamas.

In the past few days, Israeli forces have completely surrounded Gaza City, and the Israeli army has said for days that its forces are fighting Hamas in the heart of the city, according to Reuters.

The war broke out between Israel and Hamas after a surprise attack launched by the movement on military sites and residential areas adjacent to the Gaza Strip on October 7, which led to the killing of 1,200 people, most of them civilians, according to a revised toll published by the Israeli authorities on Saturday, and 239 people were kidnapped.

In response to the deadliest attack inside Israel since its founding in 1948, Israeli forces launched the most devastating attack on Gaza since they withdrew from the Strip in 2005.

Since then, Israel has responded with intense air, sea and ground bombardment on the besieged Gaza Strip, followed by a ground operation that is still ongoing. The death toll in Gaza reached 11,078 dead, including 4,506 children, 3,027 women, and 678 elderly people, and 27,490 people were injured, in addition to 2,700 missing under the rubble, according to the report. What the Hamas Ministry of Health announced on Friday.

When and how will the war end?

As Israeli forces push deeper into the besieged Strip, there remains “lack of clarity about Gaza’s post-war future.” No one knows when or how the war will end, the Financial Times asserts.

The newspaper notes that "it is also not clear what it means in practice to destroy an organization with both political and military arms, which over the past 16 years has been an integral part of the bureaucracy and provision of public services in Gaza."

The picture is made more ambiguous by the fact that the American, Israeli, and Palestinian leadership could change during what is likely to be a “prolonged campaign.”

No one knows what will be left of Gaza, home to 2.3 million people and already devastated by month-long bombing and blockade, when the fighting finally ends.

Emile Hakim, director of regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, believes that what Israel does now will determine what you can do next.

While Israeli officials are tight-lipped about their long-term plans, some Western officials wonder whether such plans actually exist.

A Western official whose name was not mentioned by the Financial Times said, “The Israelis haven’t really thought about it. This makes it very difficult for anyone else to plan.”

The future of Gaza after the war

As international pressure for a ceasefire mounts, Netanyahu this week gave the clearest signal yet about his government's thinking about the immediate post-war period.

He said in an interview with Fox News that Israel “has a clear plan for what it is working to achieve through the war against Hamas,” ruling out “occupying or ruling Gaza” or a ceasefire at the present time.”

“I think it is clear what the future of Gaza should look like. Hamas will disappear,” Netanyahu said, adding, “We must destroy Hamas, not just for our sake, but for everyone’s sake. For the sake of civilization, for the sake of Palestinians and Israelis alike.”

Netanyahu explained, “They must see Gaza demilitarized, free of extremism, and rebuild it.” He added, “We do not seek to rule Gaza. We do not seek to occupy it, but we seek to give it and ourselves a better future. We have to make sure that this does not happen again.” .

Israeli officials acknowledge that this may include forces stationed in Gaza after the end of the war, according to the Financial Times.

A senior Israeli official, whose name was not mentioned by the Financial Times, said, “We will have to deploy our forces in different areas to enable operational flexibility,” adding, “We all woke up on October 7 to a new reality...and this means for all of us not to think from the perspective of the past.” .

Some in the Israeli security services believe that “a situation similar to what is happening in parts of the West Bank,” with Israeli forces exercising security control alongside the Palestinian civil authority, is the most likely outcome.

“There are two practical things you need to do to prevent the buildup of terrorism in Gaza,” says Amir Avivi, former deputy commander of the IDF's Gaza Division.

You need to control the Egyptian border, and you need something like Area B in the West Bank, where you can go in and out and arrest “terrorist cells like we do there,” Avivi adds.

Does Israel control Gaza?

But others on the Israeli right have called on Israel to exercise more open control over Gaza, and even reintroduce Israeli settlements, which most of the international community consider illegal, into the Strip.

“There is no status quo, and nothing is sacred,” Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch said earlier this week.

Such talk, coupled with Israel's displacement of hundreds of thousands of residents from the northern Gaza Strip, has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel may eventually end up controlling Gaza.

One Palestinian analyst, whose name the newspaper did not mention, asked, “Who is the Israeli politician who will launch a campaign to withdraw from northern Gaza?” adding, “It will be another West Bank, but worse than that, because there will be no Palestinians.”

But the Israeli leadership denies this, and the senior Israeli official says: “I do not think we want to control two million Palestinians.”

Regarding the future mechanisms for Gaza, there are two conditions: the first is that it cannot be Hamas under any circumstances, and secondly, we must maintain operational superiority,” according to the Israeli official.

Different scenarios

Although the UN played a key role in running Gaza's public services before the war, such as schools, few believe it will be able to take over the entire civil administration of the Strip.

As the war progressed, many Israeli officials accused the United Nations of "siding with the Palestinians."

The former head of the research department in the Israeli army, Yossi Kuperwasser, says, “No international force will do this,” speaking about what he calls “the failure of the United Nations mission in Lebanon to prevent clashes along the Lebanese-Israeli border.”

Kuperwasser asks, “Where are the UNIFIL forces when Hezbollah launches attacks on us?”

The Arab countries have no desire to accept what they consider the "poisoned chalice" of playing any role in Gaza, according to the Financial Times.

But the bigger question is whether any attempt to reinstall the Palestinian Authority in Gaza would create more problems than it solves.

“No Palestinian agency, including the Palestinian Authority, can take over Gaza in the context of the alliance between us and Israel against Hamas,” says a senior Palestinian official.

He and Arab officials insist that the only viable option to "neutralize Hamas' armed ideology is to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel."

“The only positive thing is that everyone realizes that there has to be some kind of push toward establishing a Palestinian state, otherwise none of this will improve,” the Western official says.

However, this possibility seems to be a “far-fetched aspiration.”

The official points out that reaching a settlement to the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires three main elements: “a committed American administration and Israeli and Palestinian leaders who are serious about peace.”

Source: Alhurra