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Ever since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel has waged an intermittent but limited military campaign to keep a lid on the violent Palestinian faction. Hamas fired missiles at Israeli cities, Israel bombed Gaza from the air or attacked on the ground, then negotiated a cease-fire.
The goal was never to remove Hamas; that appeared too costly. It was merely to keep it under control. Israeli military officers gave their recurring Gaza offensives a sad, cynical name: “mowing the grass.”
Last week, mowing the grass came to an end.
Hamas’ murderous rampage through Israeli towns and villages, which deliberately targeted civilians, led Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to adopt a far more ambitious goal: regime change.
“We will destroy Hamas,” Netanyahu said.
To remove Hamas from its hold on Gaza, Israel appears to be preparing a massive ground invasion. It has imposed a blockade, launched airstrikes and urged more than a million Palestinian civilians to evacuate the northern third of the Gaza Strip.
Such an offensive would be difficult. Hamas presumably knew its terrorist onslaught would provoke massive retaliation. The group has spent years building fortified tunnels, preparing booby traps and training for house-to-house fighting. Former Israeli officers have estimated that dismantling Hamas’ military power could take between two and six months of fighting.
But even if Israel succeeds in toppling Hamas, it will face a conundrum that Americans will recognize from the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq: Who will administer Gaza? The answer isn’t clear. The problem with Gaza is that nobody seems to want it except Hamas.
Israel doesn’t want to occupy the territory; that’s why it left in 2005.
Even the Palestinian Authority, which administers the Israeli-occupied West Bank and is led by longtime opponents of Hamas, may not want to take over — at least not right away, aboard Israeli tanks.
The Palestinian Authority is “the most natural address,” former Prime Minister Ehud Barak said last week in an appearance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It doesn’t make sense to give (Gaza) back to Hamas.”
It’s not clear the Palestinian Authority is up to the job. On the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority is regarded as inefficient and corrupt. Its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, hasn’t allowed elections for 17 years.
Critics of Netanyahu say he has deliberately weakened the Palestinian Authority by allowing Israeli settlements on the West Bank to expand, even as he quietly maintained a modus vivendi with Hamas in Gaza.
Barak and others have suggested that a post-Hamas order in Gaza might begin with an interim peacekeeping force provided by Egypt and other Arab countries. “It would be a great blessing,” he said.
But that will require Israel to ask those countries, plus the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, for help brokering such an arrangement.
All of which brings the issue back to where it started: the Israeli-Palestinian standoff, which has been deteriorating for 15 years.
Israel’s strategy of mowing the lawn in Gaza didn’t just fail because Hamas is committed to the destruction of the Jewish state. It also failed because Hamas had a seemingly endless supply of potential recruits among young Gazans who saw no viable future.
When Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with Netanyahu last week, he reaffirmed America’s strong support for Israel’s right to self-defense. But he also reminded the prime minister that President Biden still believes Israel can achieve long-term security only if it seeks a viable peace with the Palestinians.
“We must provide an alternative to the vision of violence and fear, nihilism and terror presented by Hamas,” Blinken said.
Netanyahu didn’t respond. Israel’s focus is on recovering from the recent trauma and preparing the military offensive to come. It’s far too soon to talk about peace talks.
But it won’t be forever, especially if the alternative is endlessly mowing the grass.
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