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The plan, circulated early Friday, is “largely a collection of principles the premier has been vocalizing since the beginning of the war,” noted Jacob Magid of the Times of Israel, “but it was the first time they have been formally presented and submitted to the cabinet for approval.” My colleagues outlined some of its core points:
- Israel’s military will stay in Gaza as long as it takes to demilitarize the enclave, eliminate Hamas and keep it from regrouping.
- Israel will assume greater control of Gaza’s southern border, in cooperation with Egypt “as much as possible,” and will carve out border buffer zones to prevent smuggling and further attacks.
- The United Nations’ primary aid agency in Gaza and the West Bank would be disbanded and replaced. Israel accuses the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, of complicity with Hamas and fostering hatred of Jews.
- The proposal rejects any permanent agreement with “the Palestinians” that is not achieved through direct negotiations with Israel, as well as any “unilateral” Palestinian state.
Much of this flies in the face of the stated expectations of the United States, European and Arab governments. The Biden administration has repeatedly stressed that Israel should not maintain an indefinite occupation of Gaza and wants to see the Palestinian Authority assume responsibilities there. Egypt has rejected any Israeli role on its border with Gaza. UNRWA is a vital institution for the delivery of services to millions of Palestinians, especially in Gaza, and, for all the controversy surrounding some of its employees, would be difficult to replace.
In the West Bank, Palestinian Authority officials rejected Netanyahu’s approach. “The plans proposed by Netanyahu are aimed at continuing Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “Israel will not succeed in its attempts to change the geographical and demographic reality in the Gaza Strip.”
On Monday, the Palestinian Authority’s prime minister presented the resignation of the beleaguered entity’s entire government, as the United States and other governments look to it to reform and pick up the slack after the fighting eventually stops. The PA is deeply unpopular among Palestinians for its role as handmaiden to Israel’s occupation, as well as the alleged corruption of its entrenched political elites. But it’s the only game in town.
“The move follows months of intense deliberations between Ramallah, Washington and Arab states, on how best to boost the legitimacy and efficiency of the Palestinian Authority so it can be part of a postwar solution in Gaza,” my colleagues reported.
They added: “The consensus has converged on a vision for an empowered prime minister role and government of technocrats, with a curb on some of the absolute unchecked power that have accumulated around 88-year-old Abbas, according to U.S. and Palestinian officials.”
Whatever emerges there, Netanyahu has signaled a blanket rejection of any solutions that empower the Palestinians. He is opposed to the PA taking over in Gaza, opposed to any talk of reconstruction in Gaza without an amorphous program of “deradicalization” in the territory and opposed to any discussion of Palestinian statehood in the aftermath of the conflict.
On all these fronts, Netanyahu can justifiably argue that he’s in line with Israeli public opinion. But his positions are at odds with those of the United States, European partners and Israel’s Arab neighbors. Wealthy states like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia tethered potential investment in Gaza’s reconstruction to the revival of a political track that would lead to the creation of an independent Palestinian state. The Biden administration also wants to boost prospects for a two-state solution that Netanyahu has spent decades undermining.
Netanyahu’s proposal, argued Alon Pinkas, a former senior Israeli diplomat, is “consistent” with Netanyahu’s record of “manipulation and gaslighting.” His “day after” plan, Pinkas concluded, “is effectively a negation of the Biden plan, a list of statements that constitute open-ended Israeli control of Gaza with no political silver lining.”
In that sense, it’s also a bid to return Israel to Oct. 6 — a febrile status quo where Israel maintained control over the lives of millions of Palestinians either under occupation or economic embargo. “Netanyahu’s plan for the day after is that there is no plan for the day after,” wrote Haaretz’s Noa Landau. “Under Netanyahu, Israelis and Palestinians are destined, like in the movie ‘Groundhog Day,’ to wake up yesterday morning. He wants what he always wanted: to manage the conflict without ever solving it.”
Netanyahu, facing record low approval ratings, may simply be trying to buy time, staving off Biden administration pressure while keeping hold of the motley right-wing coalition that helps him stay in power. “The plan is not enforceable, it’s not implementable and I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Nomi Bar-Yaacov, associate fellow at Britain’s Chatham House think tank, told the BBC. “Netanyahu is talking to his right-wing coalition.”
He is not simply talking to it. Over the weekend, Israel’s government announced plans to expand settlements in the West Bank, even after the Biden administration deemed Israel’s West Bank settlements “inconsistent with international law” — a reversal of a Trump-era policy siding with the settlers.
The expansion of settlements, which carve up the West Bank’s with segregated roads and other civilian infrastructure, is seen as a major stumbling block for the emergence of any viable Palestinian state. It’s one of the reasons numerous experts are skeptical about the revived chatter regarding a two-state solution.
“The principal effect of talking again about two states is to mask a one-state reality that will almost surely become even more entrenched in the war’s aftermath,” wrote Shibley Telhami and Marc Lynch in Foreign Affairs.
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