The best-laid plans

RECENTLY, Benjamin Netanyahu entered the US Congress like a conquering hero, garnering over 50 standing ovations in a 60-minute speech from fawning Congressmen and women clapping for their AIPAC dollars like trained circus seals. While several Congress people boycotted the proceedings and Rashida Tlaib staged a lonely, one-woman protest in the hall, the overwhelming impression was that this is America’s genocide as much as it is Israel’s. In Pakistani parlance, they are absolutely on the same page.
Around the same time, half a world away, Hamas and Fatah — bitter rivals at the best of times — met in Beijing to sign a national unity agreement under the auspices of the Chinese government. Hamas, Fatah and 12 other Palestinian groups agreed to lay the groundwork for an “interim national reconciliation government” that would govern post-war Gaza.
While this does not mean that the problems between Hamas and the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority (PA) — widely viewed by Hamas and its allies as Israel’s accomplices — have ended, it does put a crimp in one of the proposed US-Israeli plans for a post-war Gaza.
Although Netanyahu claims that he wants all of Gaza under direct Israeli control, while holding out the option of a ‘deradicalised’ Palestinian governmental presence, there have been several other proposals that offer insight into what America and Israel envisage happening.
For example, anonymous Israeli officials have let it be known that they were “open in principle to Palestinians securing areas of the Gaza Strip cleared of Hamas”. This statement tallies with US discussing ways to ‘revitalise’ and reform the PA with an aim of having it at least participate in the governing of a post-Hamas Gaza. This proposal was formally rejected by Hamas and also Israel, but Israeli media reported that Netanyahu ‘unofficially’ expressed interest in the plan, though that could have been just to string the US along. The Beijing agreement now makes that an impossibility; even before that, the PA had begun to realise that obeisance to Tel Aviv will not stop the killings of Palestinians in the West Bank nor the illegal seizure of their land, all of which has increased manifold since Oct 7.
In addition to this, support for Hamas in the PA-controlled West Bank has increased manifold, with 82 per cent Palestinians polled there expressing understanding for why Hamas launched the attacks and 88pc calling for PA President Mahmoud Abbas to resign. All this means that the PA is in no physical or political shape to take over Gaza, even if it wanted to.
Before this, another option considered by Israel had come to a premature close. This was to hand over control of Gaza to local clans, who would ‘govern’ the area while also keeping what was left of Hamas suppressed with Israeli aid, and acting as intermediaries for Tel Aviv. Gaza is home to many clans and large family groups of varying influence and power. And while most tend to be law-abiding and benign, some, like the infamous Doghmush clan, formed gangs that engages in murder, kidnapping and racketeering, especially in the chaos preceding and immediately after the Hamas takeover.
Realising that credibility would come from establishing control, Hamas quickly cracked down on such groups and publicly executed those accused of criminal activities, attacks on Hamas leaders and collaboration with Israel. In 2017, one such condemned man, Hisham al-Aloul, accused Israeli intelligence of betraying him before he was executed.
With Hamas under fire and Gaza being decimated, some in Israel decided to give this plan another go earlier this year by once again looking to members of the Doghmush clan as accomplices. Once again, we saw an embattled Hamas take swift action by executing a maj­or clan leader of the tribe in Mar­ch this year. This was followed by a joint statement from the heads of Palestinian tribes, clans and families rejecting any notion of being used as a governing political body.
Soon after, Basem Naim, a top member of Hamas’ political bureau in Gaza, announced that all Palestinian tribes “have rejected this ‘Zionist offer’ and know that these offers and plans are malicious and aim at dividing the Palestinians”.
Words were followed by action and we saw Fatah, along with numerous clans, civil society groups and factions, stepping in to help provide security for the aid convoys that Israel had relentlessly targeted with the excuse that these transported Hamas members.
This leaves the fantasy of a ‘multinational’ or ‘Arab/Muslim-led’ security force that would magically appear and take over control of whatever is left of Gaza. But given that the only country to even reportedly express interest in this is the UAE, an Arab ally of Israel, this option can be viewed as dead on the ground, much like the children of Palestine.
The writer is a journalist.
X: @zarrarkhuhro
Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2024