As Israeli forces intensify their offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, diplomats in Washington, the United Nations, the Middle East and beyond are beginning to consider options for the "day after" if the Palestinian group is ousted - and the challenges they face are many.
Among other things, they are discussing the deployment of multinational forces in Gaza after the conflict, a transitional Palestinian administration that would exclude politicians from Hamas, the temporary role of neighboring Arab states in securing and governing, and the temporary supervision of the United Nations over the territory, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters. .
The process is still in, as one source from the United States said, an informal new "presentation of ideas". The key questions are whether Israel can destroy Hamas as promised and whether the US and its Western allies and Arab governments will commit military personnel to separating Israel and the Palestinians, overcoming the current reluctance to do so.
The White House announced this Wednesday that it "does not plan and does not intend" to deploy American soldiers to the ground in Gaza.
As the debate heats up, medical authorities in Gaza have announced that more than nine thousand people have been killed in the narrow strip of land, home to 2,3 million people. More than half of Gaza's population has already been displaced, hospitals are overcrowded without electricity or medicine and are turning away the injured, while cemeteries run out of places to bury people.
The US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, said yesterday during his visit to Israel that he urged Israeli leaders to allow a humanitarian pause in the war with Hamas in Gaza in order to enable the provision of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian enclave and facilitate the release of hostages. Blinken, who is on his second trip to the Middle East in less than a month, is seeking to balance US support for Israel with efforts to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza. Like Israel, the US rejects growing international calls for a truce, but seeks to persuade Israel to accept localized breaks. Blinken hinted that the exact details have not yet been worked out.
In the long term, it remains unclear whether the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has limited autonomy in parts of the occupied West Bank while Hamas rules Gaza, will be able or even willing to take control. Blinken floated the idea of a "renewed" PA on Tuesday, but the administration headed by Mahmoud Abbas has been the target of accusations of corruption and mismanagement.
Any entity seeking to impose authority in post-war Gaza would also have to deal with a widespread perception among Palestinians that it is a puppet of Israel, Reuters writes, recalling that the offensive against Hamas was launched in response to a horrific incursion on October 7 in which militants killed 1400 people and about 230 kidnapped.
Even if the Hamas leadership is ousted, it will be nearly impossible to root out support for the militants among the population in Gaza, increasing the threat of new attacks, including by suicide bombers.
"If the Israelis succeed in overthrowing Hamas, I think it will be extremely difficult to get a governing structure that will be legitimate and functional," Aaron David Miller, a former US negotiator for the Middle East, told Reuters.
"The Day After" seems like science fiction to me at the moment, Miller said.
The talks have intensified as Israel steps up its air, ground and sea attacks on Gaza, but they have also been fueled by what US officials see as Israel's failure to define an endgame.
Huge rebuilding help
It is increasingly clear that a huge amount of international aid will be needed to rebuild Gaza, and such an influx will be almost impossible to obtain from Western governments if Hamas remains in power.
Shortly before leaving for a visit to Israel and Jordan, Blinken said that his meetings in the region will not only be about "concrete steps" to minimize damage to civilians in Gaza, but also about a number of topics related to post-war planning.
"We focus on the break day. However, we also need to focus on the day after," Blinken told reporters. The basis for lasting peace, according to him, is the path to Palestinian statehood, a goal that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long resisted.
Lessons from Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti
US officials have said privately that they have discussed with their Israeli counterparts the lessons learned from Washington's mistakes in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan due to a lack of preparation for what followed.
Among the options discussed by US officials is the creation of a multinational force to maintain order. Their composition could include a combination of European and Arab countries, although no country has openly expressed interest in joining those forces.
US President Joe Biden, who ended the twenty-year US military presence in Afghanistan in 2021, is unlikely to want to get involved in direct military action in a new foreign conflict as he seeks re-election in 2024.
Some political analysts have also floated the idea of deploying UN-backed forces to Gaza, either in the form of official UN peacekeeping forces, as is the case on the border between Israel and Lebanon, or multinational forces with UN approval.
However, diplomats told Reuters that there were no talks at the United Nations about such a move, which requires the agreement of the 15 members of the UN Security Council.
Such missions often encounter major obstacles, the British agency points out. In October 2022, Haiti asked for international help to fight violent gangs. A year later, the UN Security Council approved a foreign security mission, and the delay was caused by a long search for a country to lead such a force. Kenya eventually signed up, but Haiti is still waiting for the mission to arrive.
Further complicating the situation is that Israel is likely to oppose any kind of UN security role, especially after Israeli officials criticized UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for saying that the October 7 Hamas attack "did not happen in a vacuum."
Israel has said it expects a long war, but has also stressed that it is not interested in reoccupying Gaza.
Regional umbrella
Outside experts, known to be occasionally tapped by US policymakers, are considering what a post-war Gaza might look like.
If Hamas lost its "veto power" and Gaza was demilitarized, "it could pave the way for the establishment of a transitional administration with a technocratic Palestinian government that would operate under an international and/or regional umbrella," said Dennis Ross, a former negotiator for Middle East and White House Counsel.
The details, he said, would require a complex engagement with the Palestinian Authority, led by the US and other major players who have an interest in stabilizing the Middle East.
However, for this to work, Israel must limit the time frame of its military presence in Gaza or else the new governing body will have no legitimacy in the eyes of the people, Ross told Reuters.
In an article written by Ross and two other colleagues from the Institute for Near East Policy in Washington, it is proposed that after Israel withdraws, security in Gaza will be in charge of "a consortium of five Arab states that have reached peace agreements with Israel - Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco”.
However, there is some skepticism that such an agreement could be reached. "Arab states will not send troops into the field to kill Palestinians," said former negotiator Miller, who now works at the Carnegie Institution for International Peace in Washington.
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