A 'day-after' Gaza plan, finally, but Netanyahu remains silent

Neither right-wing ministers nor Palestinians likely to accept Defence Minister’s proposal

- Jonathan Eyal

LONDON - What should happen to the Gaza Strip after the war? While his forces continue to pound the territory, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has steadfastly refused to answer this question.

But almost exactly three months since the start of the current hostilities, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has finally broken his country's official silence by touting a plan for the future of the war-torn Palestinian enclave.

The good news is that Israel's top military official is rejecting any suggestion that Gaza should be permanently occupied by his forces. Mr Gallant told the media on Jan 4 that Gaza should, in future, be administered by its inhabitants, the Palestinians.

Unfortunately, that is where the good news ends, for it is not evident that the Defence Minister's proposals have the approval of Mr Netanyahu, and it is even harder to see how this so-called "day-after plan" can be accepted by either Palestinian politicians or leaders of the wider Arab world.

Still, Mr Gallant's proposal is noteworthy, partly because it forces Mr Netanyahu to clarify his position, and partly because it may herald the start of a more significant divide inside the Israeli Cabinet about the continuation of the war.

Since he ordered his troops into Gaza in response to the Oct 7 incursion by the Hamas militant organisation into Israeli territory - an attack in which more than 1,200 people perished - Mr Netanyahu has claimed that the war would continue until Hamas is destroyed.

T But Mr Netanyahu has persistently avoided specifying who will administer Gaza if Hamas - which has governed the enclave since 2007 - is eliminated. The Israeli Prime Minister is also not ready to say what should happen in the much more likely scenario that Hamas emerges from the war severely depleted, yet still the political master of Gaza.