A Pragmatic Post-War Gaza Plan is Needed Now
A viable “day after” governance arrangement cannot wait until the day after the war.
In a move designed to be a game changer, President Biden outlined last Friday a three-phase plan—based on an offer made by Israel to Hamas on Thursday—for a ceasefire between the two sides, which will effectively end the war in Gaza. The plan basically answers all of Hamas’s demands, and by wisely outing it as an Israeli proposal, Biden boxed the two sides in, making it much harder for them to walk away from the deal. The reportedly 4.5-page detailed plan describes how maintaining the lull while parties negotiate between stages will result in the return of all Israeli hostages, alive and dead, a surge in humanitarian assistance, return of internally displaced Gazans to their homes or home areas, and reconstruction of Gaza.
Where the plan falls short, however, is addressing what happens once the war stops. And while Biden said in his speech that "it's time for this war to end and for the day after to begin," in practice, mostly due to Israel’s refusal to discuss any “day after” arrangement, there is currently no agreed upon plan for post-war Gaza. If Biden’s gambit works and the fighting does indeed end—an important objective on its own—there is a critical need for Israel, with the help of the international community, to plan for what happens once a ceasefire is reached.
Whether this deal goes forward or not, the need to plan ahead is something Israelis have gradually come to realize nearly eight months into the war. In mid-May, both Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party—and Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s primary challenger, publicly warned that the absence of an exit strategy for the war in Gaza is leading the country into an unsustainable stalemate. Gantz went further, giving an ultimatum that he would quit the government if Prime Minister Netanyahu does not adopt a six-point plan by June 8, including the creation of a governing body—overseen by the U.S., European, and Arab parties, and unspecified Palestinians—to manage Gaza's civilian affairs after the war. Gallant advocates for a similar approach.
It remains to be seen whether Gantz indeed leaves the government, but what he, Gallant, and other Israeli leaders remain reluctant to publicly concede is that there is only one viable—albeit undesirable—path out of this morass, one that will avoid the two nightmare options of full Israeli occupation of Gaza and Hamas resurgence while garnering assistance from the region’s Sunni states and the international community. This path is establishing a transitional non-Hamas Palestinian administration in Gaza under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority (PA), with the aim of eventually restoring full PA governance of the territory once it has been revitalized and is capable of the task.
The notion of an Arab coalition that is willing to take over from Hamas, stabilize the territory, and oversee reconstruction is one that Israeli leaders from Netanyahu to Gantz have pushed, but the evidence is that no such coalition exists. Arab states have been clear that they are only willing to participate in such a scenario if it is Palestinian-led, and that means a PA role by default. The only question is how much longer before leaders like Gallant and Gantz acknowledge this reality, stop hiding behind vague references to unidentified “local Palestinians,” and begin charting a constructive path forward, internalizing that timing is key and that time is not on Israel’s side.
When we outlined a plan in the fall to restore public security, provide humanitarian relief, and ensure basic services in Gaza, we concluded that the only option given various limitations was for Israel to resign itself to interim PA involvement, condition that involvement on meaningful reforms, and build upon any successes in order to responsibly transition to PA control of Gaza. The reasons for that assessment have not changed, and in fact have only become more apparent and more urgent.
Prolonged occupation and military rule in Gaza would saddle Israel with an unsustainable military and financial burden that will leave the country vulnerable on multiple other fronts. Without local Palestinian governance affiliated with the PA, there is no willingness of Arab states or European partners to make any long-term commitments to Gaza, which is where Gantz’s plan is dead on arrival. Israel has not been able to identify any local elements outside of the PA and Hamas for good reason—there are none. This search is going to remain futile, as Palestinian politics is a two-party system, with the choices Hamas or the Fatah-dominated PA. The veto on PA involvement is not only costing Israel on the ground, but damaging its diplomatic relations, most visibly with the United States, where President Joe Biden’s frustrations with Israel’s lack of day-after movement are boiling over.
The advantages to involving the PA immediately are threefold. First, the PA is the only non-Hamas entity with capabilities to take over basic responsibilities in Gaza. Israel implicitly conceded this following its operation in early May to take the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, when it asked the PA to take control of the crossing on the condition that border guards not identify themselves as PA-affiliated, which the PA obviously rejected. PA Security Force (PASF) members have remained in Gaza since Hamas’s 2007 takeover, and can serve as the nucleus of a transitional security force that can incorporate Arab state peacekeepers and gendarmerie, after proper vetting and training. The model that exists in the West Bank can serve as a nucleus, where the PASF is trained and equipped by a U.S.-led NATO mission and coordinates with the IDF on counterterrorism and policing. The key difference is that phasing out Israel’s direct role will be easier in Gaza since there is no Israeli population to protect, and thus the IDF’s need for a constant presence is far less.
The PA is the largest employer in Gaza after Hamas, with representatives in key government positions including the ministries of health and education and the water and monetary authorities, with whom Israel continues to interact today. The pushback on bringing the PA back to Gaza is in some ways a theater of the absurd, since it is in fact already there. For example, PA-affiliated personnel can improve the humanitarian effort, which Israel now prioritizes, with civil defense workers clearing rubble and building temporary shelters along with border and customs police manning the Gaza side of crossings, PA health professionals administering vaccines, and PA water authority workers testing for pollutants. One of the key mechanisms to ending Hamas governance is providing an alternative that can take over basic functions and fill the vacuum left by the IDF campaign, and the PA is the alternative that actually exists.
Involving the PA fully or tangentially would also help alleviate its fiscal pressures and the dire economic challenges facing the West Bank economy at large. Thus, turning the humanitarian effort in Gaza into a Palestinian development project could help prevent the PA’s collapse and the emergence of another military front facing the IDF.
The PA also has similar advantages diplomatically. The international community continues to see the PA as the legitimate government of the Palestinian people, including in Gaza, and this recognition carries more than mere symbolism. PA involvement in the humanitarian effort would incentivize the donor community to continue its support in a more strategic manner. Further, meaningful recovery—and later reconstruction—of Gaza will require immense investments by the donor community and UN-led development projects, which have always been coordinated via Ramallah. With more and more countries recognizing Palestine as a state, international interest to work through the PA will only grow.
Second, despite years of friction between the PA and its Arab interlocutors, the October 7 attacks have improved the PA’s standing in regional capitals. None of the pragmatic Sunni states want Iranian influence to grow or its proxies to retain their ability to sow chaos, and unlike Netanyahu, they immediately recognized that Hamas will not be eliminated, or even fully defeated, without giving a boost to the other part of the Palestinian national movement represented by the PA. In addition, the appointment of Mohammad Mustafa as the new Palestinian prime minister and other technocrats to ministerial positions, including six ministers from Gaza, has raised the prospects of more transparent and responsive Palestinian governance for the first time in over a decade, which has been the key demand of Arab states.
The Emiratis, Egyptians, Jordanians, and Saudis have been clear that they will not assume any of the costs of the mess in Gaza without Palestinian self-governance, which necessarily means the PA. The more that Netanyahu makes dubious claims about a regional coalition taking over Gaza once Israel has achieved his apocryphal vision of “total victory,” the more public pushback he receives from Arab leaders on the grounds of his refusal to outline a vision for Palestinian sovereignty. To put it bluntly, if Israeli leaders—whether Netanyahu or the candidates to replace him—will not concede a PA role in Gaza, there will be precious little international help coming Israel’s way. This is not only true in the long term. Arab leaders are reluctant to even support Israel’s short-term plans for humanitarian “bubbles,” in which some form of normalcy could emerge, without a formal PA request to assist.
Third, facilitating a transitional PA role in Gaza is the best leverage that Israel and the international community have now to get genuine PA reforms. In a sense, Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel has at least internationally brought the PA back to life, treating it no longer as part of Gaza’s problem but rather as part of the solution. Yet the onus is not only on Israel to shift its West Bank policy, but also on the PA to demonstrate that it is willing to do the hard work needed to make it capable of assuming responsibilities in Gaza. Following years of legitimate demands of the PA by Israel, the U.S., the EU, and regional states, the combination of the need to stabilize Gaza and the PA’s crisis of legitimacy among Palestinians fed up with its kleptocratic rule has created the perfect storm of interests and needs to force reform across a range of areas. Abu Mazen’s appointment of a new technocratic government is a first step in the right direction, but Israel and the international community are in a position to demand genuine change with clear objectives, a roadmap for achieving them, and key performance indicators.
Chief among these is ending the Palestinian prisoner and martyr payments system and replacing it with a need-based welfare system. Additionally, reforms should incorporate basic financial transparency and accountability, independence of the judicial system, security sector reorganization, and ending state harassment of civil society and media organizations. There is also an opportunity to identify new potential leaders and craft new governance structures that will reduce Mahmoud Abbas’s influence and move Fatah into a new, and hopefully more fruitful, era. There are no quick fixes to these long-standing issues, and Gaza’s governance after the war cannot wait for all clocks to synchronize.
Nonetheless, beginning a reform process with an implementable timetable and gradual shift in responsibilities, functional and geographical, could help align the parallel tracks. Without these reforms, Israel will continue to withhold tax revenues from the PA that it collects on its behalf and the U.S. will continue to be prohibited from spending any money that directly benefits the PA. Regional states will continue to refuse to invest in the Palestinian economy or spend on Palestinian infrastructure. The PA’s fiscal and legitimacy crisis will deepen, and it will not only negatively impact the West Bank, but the prospects for turning Gaza around as well.
The post-October 7 period has already been a cavalcade of missteps and missed opportunities. With Israel’s military and diplomatic challenges piling up, Rafah is indeed looking like a turning point, but not the one that Netanyahu has repeatedly promised. Israel is in danger of seeing both of its unacceptable options of permanent IDF occupation and Hamas resurgence materialize simultaneously and co-exist alongside each other in different parts of Gaza.
The time for implementing a viable day-after plan is now. It may be late to have a coherent day after strategy to replace Hamas as the de facto government of Gaza—but not too late.
Dr. Shira Efron is Israel Policy Forum’s Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Senior Director for Policy Research. Dr. Michael Koplow is Israel Policy Forum’s Chief Policy Officer.
It would have been nice if Biden hadn't made the whole thing up whole cloth. Both Israel and Gaza say they have seen nor agreed to any such plan. They don't seem to know what Biden was talking about with this new agreement.
It's not clear how much of a presence (if any) Hamas would still have in Gaza if the PA began to run the territory. Would Hamas still be able to fire rockets at Israel from Gaza? Would the PA be able and willing to prevent rocket firings, or else crack down on Hamas after they fired them?
If Biden's plan leads to a stable, secure, rocket-free Gaza run by the PA, that will be excellent. I fear it won't work, though. As tragic as it is to say, I fear the only way to prevent anything close to another October 7 is for Israel to keep fighting in Gaza until Hamas is utterly destroyed, even if all the remaining hostages and thousands more Gazan civilians perish. I hope Biden knows what he's doing.