The debate over “Gaza, the Day After” was initially an American concept based on the assumption that the war would end very soon by eliminating Hamas and creating an opportunity to design a new future for Gaza without Hamas. But now, while writing this article after eleven months of war, it is obvious that eliminating Hamas is literally unachievable, and any claimed military victory by Israel will not wipe out the Palestinian resistance or Hamas ideology and will not end the conflict or bring peace and security to Israel as long as there is occupation and denial of the Palestinian national rights.

“Absolute victory” over Hamas is not an easy goal because Hamas is not merely a physical entity that can be defeated or destroyed but an ideology of religious faith and it is part of the Palestinian national and Islamic resistance against the Israeli occupation. This resistance is partially be motivated by religious Jihad ideology, but its collective goal is realizing the Palestinians’ national aspiration for freedom, ending the occupation, and establishing a sovereign Independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian national land.

Supporting Hamas for Confronting the Occupation

It is true that there are organizations of religious Islamic Jihadi orientation such as Hamas and al-Jihad al-Islami (Islamic Jihad), part of the Palestinian resistance, but the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people, though they are conservative Muslims, are not ideologically committed to creating a Sharia Islamic state, though they sympathize with Hamas and al-Jihad because they are the only ones who confront the oppressive Israeli colonial occupation and fight against it. The majority of the Palestinians are in favor of a civil state and not a theocratic one.

Though the October 7th attack was planned and initiated solely by Hamas, al-Jihad and other national factions seized the opportunity to demonstrate their presence in the resistance field and participated in the attack. This explains the chaotic nature of some activities during the attack, which created the impression that it got out of control. It also explains why some of the Israeli hostages who were taken to Gaza, were not confined to one location under consistent watch, but some were kept by families in different locations.

The scope of the attack and the ability of Hamas to stand its ground for more than 11 months proves that the attack was a product of years of intensive preparations and efforts of storing weaponry, training cadres, and equipment for digging a huge network of tunnels to be ready for the attack.

Iran Exploits the Palestinian Cause

Iran was the main source of providing weapons and training to Hamas and al-Jihad, while Netanyahu’s successive governments allowed generous financial support to the tune of a monthly $35 million carried in suitcases from Qatar to Hamas in Gaza through Ben-Gurion Airport over many years, which helped Hamas prepare for the attack. This was part of Netanyahu’s policy of strengthening Hamas in Gaza while weakening the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank in order to disqualify the national leadership as a partner to any negotiations and claim that it is weak, corrupt, and doesn’t represent the Palestinian people.

Ironically, Netanyahu and Iran shared the same goal of strengthening Hamas and weakening the Palestinian national leadership of Mahmoud Abbas.

No doubt that Iran cares only for its interests and strengthens its allies in the region to use them as proxies to fight its wars indirectly and far from its territory. It also seeks to keep the regional players busy with side issues to divert attention from its nuclear program and gain time to achieve nuclear capability.

The connections of Iran to Hamas and Jihad are interwoven in this vision, despite the Iranian attempts to pretend that it is to support the Palestinian struggle for liberation. The fact is that the Iranian support to the Palestinian organizations Hamas and al-Jihad is meant to have another foothold in the region in addition to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shi’a Houthis in Yemen, and the Shi’a militias in Iraq and Syria to be used to enforce its domination and influence in the region. One can say that it’s a two-way relationship, meaning that each of the two sides tries to exploit the other for his own interests.

Israel Is Playing into Iran’s Hands

Israel plays into the hands of Iran by refusing a ceasefire in Gaza, weakening the moderate national leadership in the West Bank, and not allowing a new national reality to develop in the Gaza Strip. This refusal enables Hamas and al-Jihad to become more popular among the average Palestinians.

Since October 8, 2023, Israel has been on the offensive and Hamas has gradually shifted from firing rockets on Israel proper to adopting guerrilla tactics against the Israeli forces inside Gaza. From time to time, it fires rockets at Israel to bolster Palestinian morale by demonstrating its existence and willingness to continue to fight until Israel accepts a ceasefire, prisoner exchange, and total end to the war.

Israel’s retaliatory attack on Gaza was motivated largely to exact revenge for Hamas’s horrific attack on October 7th, and attempt to regain Israeli deterrence, self-confidence, and cover up for the failure of the military, security, and political leaderships in preventing the attack.

Israel Engaged in a Meaningless War

Israel announced that the goal of its war on Gaza is to eliminate, destroy, and uproot Hamas, as well as to liberate the Israeli hostages captured by Hamas. Yet, after 11 months of war, none of these goals has been accomplished. The war became a meaningless act of state terror, killing until now more than 40,600 Palestinians, most of them innocent civilians including women, children, and the elderly, wounding more than 120,000, and totally destroying the built-up areas and all facilities and infrastructure supporting human life. But it has not achieved the declared goal of the war: “eliminating Hamas” by “absolute victory,” which means eliminating the Palestinian will, determination, and resistance against the occupation.

The fact is that Netanyahu wants to extend the war as long as possible because he believes that will enable him to remain in power and not face a growing call for elections or the possibility of a jail sentence at the end of his never-ending trial.

Since the beginning of the war, Gazans have been pushed continuously from one place to another, under fire, fear, and horror; lack of food and water; with no medical care or minimal conditions to sustain human life. Some have been displaced more than 14 times and are still on the run. This war has no moral or security or military justification; on the contrary, it is sinking deep into immorality and criminal warfare.

The Israelis suffered one day on October 7, while the Palestinians have been subjected to more than 100 repeats of that massacre for what will soon be a year. Massacres of whole families, a documented horrific genocide which is still going on in front of a helpless or complicit world that justifies the Israeli war crimes as Israel’s right to defend itself, or does nothing but lip-service, issuing statements of condemnation at best.

Palestinian Cause Back on Agenda

The October 7, attack and its repercussions will be remembered as a turning point in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because it forced the Palestinian cause to the top of the regional agenda, placed it on a higher level on the international agenda, shown by the sharp increase of states recognizing the state of Palestine, and proved that there will be no security or stability in the region without resolving the Palestinian cause. The great number of countries that have, since the beginning of this war, supported the establishment of a Palestinian state were motivated by the large-scale violent reaction of the Israeli army, the sufferings of the Palestinian people in Gaza and realizing that the willingness of the Palestinian people to get rid of the occupation and practice their right of self-determination is inevitable.

This change in the regional and international priorities would not have happened without October 7. Hamas can claim credit for this positive change because its attack aborted the attempts to marginalize the Palestine cause, and make the occupation and the settlement project a de facto permanent situation, and enable normalization of Israel’s relations with the Arab world, starting with the key player Saudi Arabia, at the expense of the Palestinians. But this positive change cannot be attributed only to Hamas but mostly to our people who paid the heavy price caused by the attack and put the international community in front of its moral and human responsibility. However, Hamas cannot expect to return to the situation pre-October 7, and continue to be in charge of Gaza because of the new realities created by the war, including the misery of the Gazans which some of them hold Hamas responsible for, and the organization’s delegitimization in the international political arena by some specific countries allied with Israel, and the heavy burden of reconstructing and rehabilitating Gaza.

End-of-War Scenarios

Sooner or later, the war will end in one of two scenarios: a “total” temporary military defeat of the Palestinian resistance, including Hamas, or a ceasefire deal and prisoner exchange which will keep Hamas on the political map.

The first scenario, a “total” military defeat will be temporary, and will not end the conflict but rather postpone it to a later stage more fierce and violent.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict did not start on October 7th, and will not end the day after the war. As long as occupation and the denial of Palestinian national rights and aspirations persist, there will be waves after waves of uprisings until achieving liberation.

The Israeli leadership must understand that resistance against the occupation is a legitimate right of people under occupation, and as long as there is occupation, there will be resistance and there will be no security or stability for either Israelis or Palestinians, who have both become hostages of the ongoing conflict. They need a courageous initiative to embark on the path to a political settlement. Such an initiative should come from the strong side in this formula, the Israelis, who must start deescalating the tension and enabling the creation of a political process momentum to achieve a historical compromise between the two peoples.

A “total” military defeat of the Palestinian resistance at this stage will breed more violent and fierce resistance by the Palestinian people in their pursuit of freedom and national independence. This cycle means that Israel will never achieve the security or stability it yearns for.

In addition, the attacks carried out by extreme Jewish fanatics in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank against Palestinian civilians, along with the disastrous war on Gaza and the plans to resettle the Gaza Strip will exacerbate a hell of violence and counter-violence for decades, and ultimately force Israel to confront the question: Who will be the loser at the end of the day – the resistance or fanatic, racist Israel?

The second scenario, is a ceasefire deal with a prisoner/hostage exchange, combined with a political process conducive to a political settlement of the conflict.

This will naturally keep Hamas on the political map along with other Palestinian factions under the national leadership of the PLO as a step toward extrication from the vicious circle of violence and counter-violence with a clear vision of the two-state solution.

This scenario requires a guarantee that although Hamas will remain an element within the components of Gaza’s political future, it will not be the dominant component, because there are a number of domestic Palestinian factors and regional concerns that should be taken into account.

Gaza under the control of Hamas would not get the billions of dollars needed to rebuild Gaza and would be isolated from the international community and lack legitimacy, which would mean death for 2 million Gazans. The job that needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is bigger than Hamas and bigger than any single faction.

Furthermore, Gaza under Hamas would be an obstacle to reuniting the Palestinian territories under one national leadership and would prevent any democratic process to eventually rebuild the Palestinian national institutions and unify the West Bank with the Gaza Strip, which are fundamental conditions for building a reformed, secular, democratic state, the State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

In a zoom meeting on September 2, 2024, between Usama Hamdan, one of Hamas’s leaders, and a number of former Palestinian Authority ministers, including the writer of this article, he assured us that Hamas does not aspire to go back to full control over Gaza, considers that the worst option, and would welcome a collective national Palestinian body to take over responsibility for Gaza.

The Integrity of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank

This requires empowering the national leadership led by Fateh to have the ultimate authority over any future governing body in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. This body would be responsible for addressing the disastrous situation caused by the Israeli retaliatory aggression, which was not just a war against Hamas but a vengeful attack on the civilian population of Gaza. This aggression aimed to force more than 2 million Palestinians to flee from Gaza to Sinai, facilitating Israel’s plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and its annexation, which must be thwarted at all costs.

Building the Palestinian national institutions and democratizing the regime must happen in tandem with reconstructing the Gaza Strip after the disaster that Israel brought upon it.

On the political level, this scenario requires a transitional period where the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank, as one integral unit, are put under an international umbrella to enable the conduct of national parliamentary and presidential elections, rebuild all the national institutions that collapsed or were mismanaged since the Hamas coup in 2007, and establish a new legitimate leadership that can rightly claim to represent the Palestinian people. It is almost sure that the free election polls will be in favor of the national factions.

As to Israel, the return to a pre-October 7 situation with its southern kibbutzim and towns under the threat of possible future attacks from a Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip cannot be allowed, and it should be understood that this Israeli concern should be fully and seriously addressed.

On the regional level, the neighboring Arab countries will not allow the reestablishment of Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip. Certain Arab countries fear that a Gaza under Hamas will be an Iranian extension, and a source of threat not only to Israel but to other Arab countries, too. Their fear of Iranian aspirations and actual plans to dominate the region and ultimately change the Arab Sunni regimes or secure their loyalty to Tehran must be addressed, as well by eliminating any attempt to reinstitute Iranian influence in the Palestinian territories and Palestinian affairs by offering the Palestinians a meaningful substitute to Iranian assistance and support.

Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Gaza Strip

Finally, the reconstruction of the destroyed Gaza Strip requires an international coalition and effort to turn the war from a catastrophe to an opportunity for a better future.

Israel should be held responsible for the catastrophic destruction it has committed against the Gaza Strip and must abide by the recent ruling of the International Court of Justice on the status of the occupied Palestinian territory according to the Geneva Conventions and international customary law. Israel must immediately stop the war and assume the financial burden of the reconstruction of Gaza, if not alone, then possibly with other international donors.

The rehabilitation of the victimized and socially ruined civilian population and the material reconstruction of Gaza is the responsibility of Israel primarily, but also the international community because of its silence on the Israeli practices in Gaza during the war. The war left Gaza socially ruined, facing the danger of widespread famine due to what happened, and with no hospitals, schools, universities, businesses, agriculture or infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage, roads, and public services). These issues cannot be addressed by any local body alone. A transitional period of international involvement should be established with a “Marshall Plan” to restore Gaza to normal life. The rebuilding of the Palestinian political institutions must happen along with the reconstruction of Gaza and not be separate from it. The current Palestinian leadership in cooperation with all the Palestinian political factions should have a role in the reconstruction through a “Marshall Plan,” and be an essential part of it at all levels and stages of implementation.

No Simplistic Solutions

In conclusion, the aftermath of the war on Gaza presents a complex and challenging landscape that defies simplistic solutions. The initial assumption that the conflict would end with the elimination of Hamas and a straightforward transition to a new governing authority has proven naïve.

The October 7th attack revealed the multifaceted nature of the conflict, involving not just Hamas, but other radical factions as well. In the aftermath of this shocking attack, Gaza is suffering a severe humanitarian crisis and extensive damage, underscoring the need for a comprehensive and humane approach to reconstruction and political resolution.

Ultimately, achieving a lasting peace will necessitate addressing the root causes of the conflict, recognizing the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, and ensuring that any reconstruction efforts are inclusive and equitable. The international community must play a crucial role in facilitating this process, ensuring that both immediate humanitarian needs and long-term political solutions are adequately addressed.

All of the above, is on condition that there will be an Israeli leader who will agree to be a partner in the proposed process. The current Prime Minister Netanyahu is a hostage of his racist extreme coalition, which is threatening to bring down the government if he accepts a ceasefire and prisoner/hostage exchange deal, because his ultra-right partners want to stay in Gaza, expel its Arab population, and enhance a process of building settlements in Gaza as part of Israel.

If the United States succeeds in pressuring Netanyahu and makes him accept a deal, some opposition parties such as Yesh Atid announced that they will give him a safety net and prevent the fall of his government. If he enters a deal, he can make the historic decision and open the door to a political path leading to a historical compromise between the two peoples of Israel and Palestine. If he yields to the fanatical Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, with whom he also shares the ideology of expansion and annexing Gaza, the above scenario will remain an illusion, and we will continue to sink deep in the mud of war and bloodshed. This must be prevented. The ball is in the court of the U.S. and the international community.