What is the future for Gaza, in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack and the conflict that has followed? There are two main possibilities.
First, the current situation. The Israel Defense Force (IDF) has northern Gaza surrounded and will search and destroy Hamas’s underground tunnel system. Around 70 percent (1.6 million) of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have fled their homes since the conflict began. More will follow and a few hundred thousand will remain.
Despite all the threats, it is unlikely that foreign agents, including Hezbollah and their sponsor Iran, will directly engage Israel. More Hamas and IDF fighters will die in combat. Some Israeli hostages will be rescued, some will not. The likely outcome is that Israel will control this part of Gaza for several years.
Israel has occupied Gaza before. They originally took the strip after a failed 1967 attack by several Arab neighbors, known as the Six-Day War. One of the agreements from the end of the war resulted in Arabs on the now occupied West Bank moving to Gaza, the northern part of Palestine. In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza while retaining control over its borders, seashore and airspace. It finally completely abandoned the area in 2008.
Both Israelis and Arabs have legitimate claims on the West Bank. A movement called Zionism began in the late 1800s that influenced many Jews from around the world to move to Palestine to reclaim their ancient “homeland.” Thus, by the 1930s, the numbers of Jews had risen to a point that alarmed many Palestinian Arab leaders.
However, British Mandate land registries and Ottoman registries show that individual Arabs in Palestine did not own most of the land area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Large portions were owned by rich landlords — Arabs, Armenians or Greeks. Christian churches owned significant land, especially around cities like Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth and various monasteries around the countryside.
So, when this current war is over, what are the main two possible outcomes?
One possibility is a return to the uneasy, violent status quo.
Based on history, the Israelis are not likely to occupy Gaza four years from now. In this time, the United Nations and Arab nations like Saudi Arabia will rebuild housing and infrastructure. Some Palestinians will return, but without direct access to Israel, it will be economically unstable. The Israelis will probably turn security over to the United Nations.
Hamas, and other insurgents like the Islamic Jihad, will not disappear. According to The Economist, Hamas has billions of dollars of investments. The current war will just create new insurgents (half the population of Gaza is under 18 years of age) and the extremists of both the Palestine Authority (Al Fatah) and Gaza (Hamas, probably under another guise) will continue to be locked in a lethal civil war.
But the far-right extremists of Israel are now enshrined in parliament, and after the Oct. 7 attack are unlikely to be easily removed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has combined with ultra-Orthodox allies and a far-right faction. For the first time in Israel’s history, a wide majority of the coalition is Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox. Some settlers on the West Bank have used the Hamas attack as an excuse to expel further Palestinians from their land.
The extremists on both sides will continue to violently raid each other’s territories, even after an internationally agreed truce has been negotiated.
The second possibility is a two-state solution. All the major powers, including China, Russia and America, want this solution. The main opposition comes from Iran.
This solution requires painful compromises. A lot of land is extremely disputed and claimed by both sides — for example, East Jerusalem and Al Alsa/Temple Mount. Both sides claim both and both sides refuse to negotiate.
If this area can be shared responsibility, what about the West Bank? There are possibilities. Israel must agree to compensate Palestinians who have legal claims on land there (the court must be impartial — perhaps a dedicated court in The Hague). All future building in West Bank settlements must accommodate Arabs and Jews.
Each Israeli settlement bloc in the West Bank (Ariel, Gush-Etzion, Talmon, etc) could become a district, with small and isolated Israeli settlements like Yitzhar either part of the surrounding Arab-majority district or joining the nearest Jewish-majority district as an exclave. Each district would have its own local council, police force and courts, but there must be coordination between all law enforcement agencies in all districts based on common democratic principles.
The binding fate of these two groups would be to a supranational organization with a common high authority. This solution would require the direct intervention of the United Nations, instead of the hands-off approach we have now, and would include armed peacekeepers.
Maybe it is time for the major powers, especially the U.S. and Iran, to officially agree not to interfere. Allow the two states to decide their forms of government and future co-operation. Despite some commentators declaring that the Oslo Accords, the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and the Abrahams Accords are dead, they are not. They could be the basis for a future, peaceful co-existence.
Patrick Drennan is a journalist based in New Zealand, with a degree in American history and economics.