Israel’s plan to seize Gaza City and hand control of the enclave to unspecified “Arab forces” has not only drawn condemnation by Western governments and aid agencies — some former officials and experts inside Israel say it would be unworkable.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his security cabinet voted early on Friday for a plan to capture the city in the north of the enclave, one of the few places inside the strip that the Israeli military does not control, while distributing aid to civilians outside combat zones.
The five-point plan “for concluding the war” calls for the disarming of Hamas, the return of all hostages and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, which would be under Israeli security control. It also proposes that a government is established in Gaza that involves neither Islamist militants from Hamas, who have ruled the enclave since 2007, or the Palestinian Authority, the more secular governing body that has overseen parts of the occupied West Bank since the mid-1990s and is internationally recognized.
The basics of the plan are likely unfeasible because it relies on cooperation from Arab states that have explicitly said they will not do so under these terms, according to Giora Eiland, a retired Israeli major general and former head of the country’s National Security Council.
“I don’t know whether Netanyahu has any real basis to what he said, whether he has any communication with other countries about the future of Gaza,” Eiland told NBC News in a telephone interview Friday. “And I’m afraid that his statement” — about Arab nations being given control of Gaza — “has no real, reliable basis behind it.”
Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan have “clearly indicated time and again” that a precondition for their involvement would be that the Palestinian Authority becomes a “leading actor” in Gaza’s future governance, said Nimrod Goren, president of the Mitvim Institute, an Israeli think tank.
Netanyahu had suggested earlier in the war that, rather than the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, he wanted Palestinian “clans” to take control of the enclave, and indeed he confirmed in June that Israel was arming such groups.
But his hopes of these “clans taking over Gaza haven’t materialized, and aren’t expected to,” said Goren, who is also an executive board member at Diplomeds, or the Council for Mediterranean Diplomacy, a policy group based in the Netherlands.
Ultimately, “the plan approved by the Israeli cabinet is damaging for Israel’s national security and foreign policy. It is also unrealistic in terms of its end game,” Goren added. All of this reinforces the “common perception in Israel that Netanyahu is acting due to his own political needs, rather than the national good and concern for the Israeli hostages,” he said.
NBC News has contacted Netanyahu’s office for a response to these criticisms.
International outcry
Israel’s plan has been met with outcry internationally, with the United Nations and some Western governments warning it would lead to further catastrophe for Palestinians in Gaza, more than 61,000 of whom have been killed in the 22 months of war with Israel.
Large parts of Gaza’s population have been regularly displaced since Israel launched its offensive following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in which some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and around 250 taken hostage. Crippling aid restrictions in recent months have caused the spiraling hunger crisis in Gaza, the United Nations and aid groups have said.
Voices inside Israel have been similarly alarmed by the plan, with the families of hostages and even Israel’s own armed forces chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, warning it will lead to the deaths of the remaining captives inside the enclave.
Aerial photographs this week showed the utter devastation in the enclave, while Israel’s overhauled aid distribution plan has fueled more chaos and hunger.
Eiland, the retired Israeli general, supports the war, like the majority of the country’s population. Nevertheless, he said he disagreed with Netanyahu’s plan because he thinks most of the hostages “will perish” and the Israeli army would “suffer many casualties.”
Even if Israel managed to somehow execute its plan, “we will not change anything in the approach of Hamas,” Eiland added. “On the contrary, it will just give them justification to continuing their guerrilla war against us.”
