As the Israel-Hamas war continues to rage on, it begs the question: who rules Gaza after the war? Gaza continues to bear the brunt of Hamas’ attack on Israel, which occurred on October 7. Israeli forces are targeting Hamas gunmen inside the vast tunnel network beneath Gaza. The Israeli forces targeted Gaza's main north-south road and attacked the city from two directions. Meanwhile, there’s no fuel, food and clean water for Palestinians in Gaza.
Veteran journalist and political scientist Fareed Zakaria, in an interview with Business Today Executive Director Rahul Kanwal, decoded the likely scenarios after the war gets over. Who would rule Gaza after the war – it is not only the most pertinent question right now, it is also one of Israel’s big challenges.
According to Zakaria, “Israel will face the brutal reality that either it will have to run it or it will have to withdraw.”
He explained that no one would like to go back to Gaza on the back of “Israeli tanks”, work with the Israelis and set up a government in Gaza. “Don’t forget, whatever remnants there are of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are not going to be happy with that. They will launch an insurgency against you. The US tried to do this in Iraq, they brought in the UN to help govern Iraq. Immediately the insurgency targeted the UN…I don’t think you are going to be able to find very easily an Arab force that’s going to be willing to go there,” he said.
“Israel occupied Gaza from 1967…maybe I am wrong and maybe they will be able to find some coalition of Arab forces that will be willing to do it but really those are the three options – one possibility is that you get a bunch of Arab countries to do it, the second is Israel does it, third is you just leave and effectively some version of Hamas or something will come together. There is one other thought that is the Palestinian Authority, which is very unpopular. None of these are optimal outcomes…you could get the Palestinian Authority to come in again but will they be willing to come on the back of Israeli tanks and say we are benefitting from Israel displacing Hamas, I doubt it,” said the veteran journalist.
Zakaria said that the whole problem is that anyone who is coming in on the backs of Israeli tanks is going to be delegitimised in the eyes of the Gazans, not because they love Hamas but because they don’t like Israel and they particularly despise what Israel is doing right now. “So how can any force be seen as legitimate that in some ways are working hand in glove with the Israeli forces?” he asked.
He also said that the Hamas militants might not have fully calculated the consequences of the October 7 attack and did not anticipate the dramatic blowback from Israel.
Also read: 'They are not chess players': Did Hamas anticipate the blowback from Israel?