The Israeli war cabinet put it starkly to Hamas this week: release the remaining Oct. 7 hostages and surrender before President Donald Trump completes his Middle East trip in 10 days — or face the full wrath of the IDF.
It's dubbed "Operation Gideon’s Chariots." Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu said his government "decided on intensified action in Gaza," including what militaries call a "Clear, Hold, Build," strategy. This probably should have been Israel's approach immediately after Oct.7, instead of quickly withdrawing from "cleared" territory. As the Urban Warfare Institute's John Spencer recently put it, Clear, Hold, Build "has worked globally—from Malaya to Iraq."
Reservists will do the holding. Indefinitely.
Netanyahu added, "That was the IDF chief of staff’s recommendation—to move, as he said, toward the defeat of Hamas. He believes this will also help us rescue the hostages. I agree with him."
Trump is set to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates from May 13 to 16, giving Hamas 10 days to comply. If I were a betting man, I'd wager next month's car payment that Hamas chooses war.
“We are finally going to occupy the Gaza Strip,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Monday. “We will stop being afraid of the word ‘occupation.’”
That should be re-occupy. Israel fully occupied the Gaza Strip from 1967-2005. They might have gotten out of there following the 1979 Camp David Peace Accords with Egypt, which ruled the Strip from 1948 until losing it during the 1967 Six Day War. But Anwar Sadat took one look at the restive Gaza Arabs and said in effect, "You keep it!"
For the next two decades, Israel struggled with how to occupy and administer Gaza’s fast-growing Arab population without becoming what critics would call an “apartheid state.” The dilemma led Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to implement the 2005 Disengagement Plan for a full military and settler withdrawal that handed over internal control to the Palestinians. Some settlers had to be removed at gunpoint — IDF gunpoint.
In 2006, Gazans elected the terrorist group Hamas to run their government, using, as Middle East analyst Daniel Pipes liked to put it, the region's time-tested formula: "One man, one vote, one time." Hamas quickly began a long-term terrorist campaign against Israel, despite Israel providing aid, jobs, and medical care for Gaza Arabs via border permits and humanitarian transfers. But Hamas didn't fully return the favor for Disengagement until Oct. 7, 2023, in ways so horrific that they were previously unimaginable.
There is no good way forward for Israel. Full re-occupation ought to prevent another Oct. 7 but restores the pre-2005 dilemma — only worse because instead of 2005's 1.4 million Gaza Arabs, now there are 2.2 million.
(Some "Israeli genocide," eh?)
But there is a possible solution, one Trump first floated in February: the resettlement of most Gazans into Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere. A coalition of nations would then rebuild the Strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East," as Trump put it.
Trump’s plan was firmly rejected by the Arab world at the time — but it might prove more palatable than a grinding Israeli re-occupation, especially with whatever financial threats or incentives Trump might bring to the table. And as my PJ colleague Scott Pinsker will cover later today, a majority of American Muslims seem amenable to the idea.
Whether or not anything comes of Trump's plan, Operation Gideon’s Chariots is a strategic necessity for Israel, not a choice.
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