Israel’s Arab neighbours want to see Hamas gone, but spurn role in governing Gaza afterward

Despite the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees this past weekend amid a shaky truce, Israel’s political leadership has said it intends to resume attacking Gaza without delay as it seeks to eliminate Hamas’s military capability once and for all.

But at some point, the military campaign will end and a new phase in the Israel-Palestinian conflict will begin.

And in anticipation of that moment, the key question is: “What comes next for Gaza?”

“There has to be a plan, an endgame with a timeline and the world must believe in it,” Egypt’s foreign minister Sameh Shoukry said as he met international journalists in London recently as part of a tour of Arab and Islamic ministers.

The group has been visiting global capitals with a dual agenda: first, to push for an extended ceasefire in Gaza, and second, to try to find the beginnings of an elusive new consensus on how the Palestinian territory should be governed afterward.

CBC News was invited to the event, hosted by the Saudi Arabian embassy in London, and given the opportunity to ask questions directly of the foreign ministers.

Since Israel launched its offensive against Hamas following the massacres of Oct. 7, Palestinian officials claim the aerial bombardment has killed 14,000 people — 40 per cent of them children. Thousands of other bodies may still be buried in the debris.

Entire blocks of residential buildings have been reduced to rubble, and more than 1.5 million people have been displaced.

No specifics offered on endgame plan

As for the plan that Shoukry says must be present when Israel suspends its attacks, the Arab ministers offered few specifics about its main elements.

They were more equivocal, however, about ideas they will not consider.

“If we want to talk about the day after the war, we won’t come in and clean up after. That’s not what we are going to do,” said Shoukry.

That amounts to an outright rejection of the often floated suggestion that a pan-Arab administration combined with a multi-national security force could take over political and security control of Gaza once Israeli forces pull out.

“We would be seen as the enemy,” said Shoukry.

He and the other ministers said the solution will not be found in having more outsiders rule over Palestinians.

“Hamas are fighters. But [Hamas] is also an idea and the only way to convince people that it’s not the answer is to offer Palestine full statehood,” said Riyad al-Maliki, the foreign affairs minister for the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

“If you want to kill a bad idea, you present a better idea.”

Palestinian statehood is a concept Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected throughout his more than 16 years in power.

Instead, Netanyahu has presided over the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which the United Nations and most western governments, including Canada, deem to be illegal.

Furthermore, Netanyahu now relies on the support of those settlers and their political leaders to maintain his majority in Israel’s Knesset, or parliament.

Asked directly if any kind of progress could be made toward a two-state solution with Netanyahu in power, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, took a long pause before answering.

“I have to think if the international community had the will to live up to that responsibility, whatever government is in Israel, we could push to that result,” he eventually replied.

U.S. President Joe Biden is among the many outsiders who have suggested the most logical solution to the Gaza governance question is to turn it over to the Palestinian Authority, which has been in control of the occupied West Bank since 1994.

Notably, none of the Arab ministers raised that possibility — even with the authority’s foreign minister sitting among them.

“The trouble … is the Palestinian Authority is particularly weak at the moment,” Lousie Kettle, an assistant professor with the school of politics and international relations at the University of Nottingham, said on The Briefing Room, a BBC Radio 4 show.

“It is perceived as weak by Palestinians and is seen as not being in touch and quite corrupt.”

Israel receives freed hostages, Palestinian prisoners released as end of pause nears

As more hostages were released by Hamas to Israel and Palestinians held in prisons were freed, CBC’s Margaret Evans breaks down the latest updates from the conflict and what could happen before the end of the mediator-brokered four-day ceasefire.

The official position of the Palestinian Authority is that it will only consider taking over administration of Gaza in the context of a diplomatic settlement to the broader Palestinian question.

U.S. role undefined

Also left unsaid by the Saudi minister during the panel discussion was what role he expects the United States to play in trying to direct or push Israel into a shared post-war vision for Gaza.

President Biden initially offered his full-throated support to Netanyahu and Israel’s drive to eliminate Hamas.

Lately, however, he and other U.S. officials have spoken more forcefully about Israel needing to do much more to minimize harm to Palestinian civilians.

Israeli government statements about how they see the future of Gaza have been either contradictory or incomplete.

Netanyahu has said only Israel’s military has the ability to eliminate Hamas and ensure new terrorist groups don’t appear after the group has been removed, possibly implying that Israel might intend to keep control of Gaza long term.

Other Israeli officials quickly rejected the suggestion that Netanyahu was talking about another occupation of Gaza.

“How does Israel see an end? That is the question that needs to be asked,” said Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi.

The absence of an official Israeli answer leaves only one possible outcome, says another longtime Middle East observer.

“Israel will remain the security guarantor in Gaza for the foreseeable future,” said Amnon Aran, a politics professor at City University of London.

However long that initial time period is, Aran says it will require leadership changes on both the Israeli and Palestinian side before discussions about a possible new peace framework are even possible.

“I think what I could see happening is that in the immediate aftermath of the war we have a stabilization period, which is used not only to restore security on both sides, but also to build confidence with the new elites or regimes that will be governing Gaza or the West Bank and Israel,” Aran told CBC News in an interview.

A Gaza without Hamas also serves Saudi Arabia’s interest in that Hamas has often worked with its arch-rival Iran, he said.

“For Saudi Arabia, the outcome of the war and the impact that it will have on Iran and its proxies is quite vital.”

“I think Saudi Arabia also has a very strong strategic interest of having Hamas defeated or having a more moderate … political player coming into the Gaza strip.”