In this long thread, I address moves in the past 2 weeks from actors pushing for resolution to the current Gaza war that will ensure its continuation. In particular, I will address Israel’s refusal to consider a permanent ceasefire, given other troubling statements from the current government.
Friday begins a 4 day truce, the initial release of 50 Israeli women and children Hamas hostages, 150 Palestinian women and teens held on terror charges in Israel, fuel & humanitarian aid to Gaza, and Israel halting drone flights over southern Gaza and limiting to 1000-1600 in the north.
Prior to this deal, there have been major protests worldwide demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza (which this truce is not), protests here in Israel and abroad demanding the release of Hamas’s 240 or so hostages kidnapped on 7 October, and disturbing rhetoric about next steps.
At the 11.11 Arab-Islamic Summit in Riyadh, Iranian Pres Raisi praised Hamas: “There is no other way but to resist Israel, we kiss the hands of Hamas for its resistance.” Turkish Pres Erdogan: “We cannot put Hamas resisters defending their homeland in the same category as the occupiers.”
Even as US President Joe Biden has argued that a revitalized Palestinian Authority should take control of Gaza, the PA has circulated documents claiming that Israeli helicopters bombed the Supernova music festival along the Gaza border on 7.10 to justify its war on Gaza.
Statements that have gotten much more attention have been from Israeli PM Netanyahu and others in his cabinet who have asserted that there should be indefinite Israeli military/security control of Gaza after the war, and have (publicly) refuted any notion of PA governance.
Beyond a refusal to countenance a ceasefire, MKs from the outwardly fascist Otzma Yehudit party and only slightly less extreme Religious Zionist party have denounced allowing humanitarian aid and fuel into Gaza and pushed post-war Israeli civilian resettlement of northern Gaza.
About a week ago, Avishay Ben-Sasson-Gordis wrote an excellent thread on Israeli opposition to a ceasefire, responding in part to an open letter that has been circulating by Political Scientists demanding a “ceasefire now” (CFN). It is excellent and well worth the read.
Many responses to Israeli opposition to CFN and calls for Israeli military control of Gaza have argued that these positions confirm what they have known all along, Israel is a fascist Apartheid state that is actively pursuing the extermination of the Palestinian people.
No one can convince them otherwise. This is a position they took before 7 October and it is a position they took on 8 October. Hamas’s atrocities in their rape, murder, kidnapping, and wanton destruction are treated, at best, as an unwelcome distraction from the true villain.
Others demand CFN given massive human suffering. Even if you don’t believe Hamas’s casualty estimates, 1000s of innocents have been killed, countless Gazans are homeless, and massive destruction has been wrought against Gaza’s already precarious civilian infrastructure.
From this standpoint, any opposition to a ceasefire is seemingly paramount to a war crime on its own. Israeli insistence that the war must continue even after the lull (not yet implemented) coupled with open calls for military occupation must therefore equal Israeli warmongering.
Taken in isolation, I accept and even empathize with this moral reasoning, even as my phone buzzes constantly with warnings about continued rocket fire from Gaza and from Hezbollah in the north (about 50 already today) and drone infiltration of Israeli air space.
This reasoning (any argument about the necessity, proportionality, or restraint of the IDF in Gaza and on the northern border aside) however ignores or trivializes that CFN, as formulated by its proponents, offers absolutely no constructive way forward.
It is concerned, rightly so, with immediate Palestinian suffering, but offers no solution for the long run. It presumes Hamas is a responsible actor that will rebuild the Strip and redress Palestinian suffering as it never has attempted in the past nearly 20 years of its de facto rule.
Alternatively, it accepts Hamas is a bad actor, but CFN will be the first step to ending Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza. After all the only solution is “political”. If the end result is a free Palestine “from the river to the sea,” all the better.
But criticizing those who want an end to (or more importantly those actually experiencing) death and destruction for not having a realistic plan to “fix” the conflict is, at least in isolation, both unfair and unjust. So let’s change gears.
What of Israeli opposition to CFN? Why the growing popularity of the reoccupation argument? Again, there is the small but politically powerful (in the current coalition) corner of Israeli society that sees this war as an opportunity to resettle Gaza and advance their messianic agenda.
A more important and generally shared motivation is moral outrage at Hamas atrocities, both those perpetrated on 7 October and those ongoing with continued indiscriminate rocket fire and murder of already kidnapped Israelis, coupled with a determination that this should never happen again.
A further, less emotional explanation, however, stems from the reality that CFN requires Israel to accept one of two entirely unacceptable outcomes to this war: a return to the status quo or worse, an empowered Hamas. See my previous long threads on these points.
CFN without addressing Hamas’s control of the Strip, its stated intent to continue to attack Israel, and its purely instrumental interest in moderation (i.e. rebuilding its military capacity) can only have one realistic policy response short of war, a draconian strengthening of the blockade.
The unimaginable alternative under these conditions, whereby Israel lifts the blockade and allows Hamas to do as it will, would do little to redress the humanitarian crisis (Hamas will continue to pillage international aid for its own gain), and would guarantee a more disastrous war.
Proposed alternatives at the moment appear little better. In response to a US proposal, Egypt has stated unequivocally that it will not take security responsibility for the Strip in Israel’s place. So too, it has rejected proposals to accept Palestinian refugees even on a temporary basis.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas has also made it clear that the PA would only accept control of Gaza under the framework of a larger political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole along pre-1967 borders with a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.
However, an immediate negotiated end to the conflict is deeply unrealistic, whether under the current Israeli government or one led by the opposition. Given Abbas’s own rejectionist rhetoric, no such initiative is likely.
As significant, there are questions whether Gazans would accept Abbas or even the PA as legitimate. Abbas is deeply unpopular even among West Bank Palestinians and many believe the PA to be, at best, composed of self-serving kleptocrats and at worst, a willing tool of Israeli occupation.
Israelis are also deeply anxious about world opinion. Many world leaders whose judgment & support matter to Israelis immediately and sharply condemned Hamas’s massacre. Most notably the US, but also the UK and France offered clear & concrete support and diplomatic cover for an Israeli response.
As protests of the last few weeks and statements by various leaders indicate, this goodwill is running thin, further diminishing Israeli confidence that any international actor will provide for Israel the security conditions it demands vis-a-vis Gaza when this war ends.
It is in this context that Israeli military reoccupation of Gaza is gaining not popular support but public credibility. Facing two unthinkable options that would leave Israel insecure and without control over developments in Gaza, the third previously unthinkable option becomes plausible.
As I have argued previously, this policy would be would terrible and self-destructive. It would ensure that Gaza remain a space of constant violence with occupying forces and that West Bank unrest will further escalate to an intolerable degree, rendering any political solution impossible.
This is what Ben-Gvir and his Otzma Yehudit party (& Smotrich and the Religious Zionist party somewhat less so) are actively working toward: a situation in which Israeli-Palestinian violence becomes existentially threatening such that further draconian measures begin to appear necessary.
In sum, while an Israeli rejection of CFN makes a great deal of sense in terms of what is at stake and what the likely outcomes of such a policy would be, the policy choices that are being proposed in its stead will be similarly destructive.
This post was originally published to Facebook and Bluesky on my personal accounts on 23 November 2023.
Dr. Ariel Zellman 