What Comes After the Truce in Gaza... In the Prospects of the Next Phase

If there is no unexpected development, a temporary truce agreement is expected to be reached in Gaza in the coming days, which President Trump may announce during Benjamin Netanyahu's visit, who arrived in the United States yesterday (these lines were written just before the visit). If announced, attention will turn in the next sixty days and beyond to exploring "the scenarios of the next day," as the Israeli government, supported by the U.S. administration, will seek to achieve political gains that translate the results of the genocide and transform the Gaza Strip into a non-viable, repelling region. Political efforts will be made to complete what daily massacres, starvation, thirst, and collective punishments have failed to achieve in all their forms.

It is well-known that negotiations either succeed, or remain negotiations for the sake of negotiations, or fail, leaving things unchanged. If they succeed, they generally reflect the realities on the ground and the balance of power, as the results of the negotiations are not only determined by the negotiator's efficiency or weakness—though this is important—since a weak negotiator may lose more than he should and fail to achieve what can be attained, while a competent negotiator might improve the negotiating terms. However, it is typically not possible to achieve (substantively) the opposite of what is grounded on the ground. Based on this, the first step must be a careful reading of reality to discern what is possible and what is not.

A realistic reading of the current situation, after 21 months of the Al-Aqsa flood, despite the legendary steadfastness and heroic resistance, indicates a weak position for the Palestinian negotiator, as evidenced by the scale of destruction and death, the occupation of two-thirds of the territory, the continuation and deepening of the division, the absence of a clear Palestinian vision, the impasse of leaderships, institutions, and programs without opening a new pathway, Arab impotence, which sometimes borders on complicity, and international contradictions. On one hand, the international community (despite its theoretically supportive position for Palestinian rights) stands paralyzed, even in the face of unprecedented popular solidarity with Palestine, and condemnation of Israel in courts and international institutions, including within the U.S. and Europe, which has pushed some European countries to take unprecedented punitive stances against Israel.

On the other hand, the parties of the resistance axis, including Iran, have suffered heavy blows despite their steadfastness in war; however, they've delivered severe missile strikes against vital targets in various locations in Israel, preventing Washington and Tel Aviv from achieving their objectives of destroying the nuclear and missile programs and overthrowing the regime or pushing it to comply or igniting internal strife, as evidenced by the widespread support for the regime. Yet, the cessation of war was not accompanied by an agreement, but rather a ceasefire agreement only, and the issues that preceded it remain on the table. This indicates that the war has not been conclusively resolved and each side has scored points allowing it to claim victory. The region and the world have witnessed wars that were not decisively resolved, such as the Korean War in the 1950s, which remains without a peace agreement, or the first Iraq War that ended with the expulsion of Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait in 1991, then the second that ended with the overthrow of the regime in 2003. As for the October War (1973), it was not militarily conclusive but was politically resolved years after Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in 1977 and the signing of the peace agreement afterward (1979), with Egypt recovering Sinai under certain constraints, and exiting the conflict and war, rendering the Arab parties (including the Palestinian party) exposed. This allowed the occupation forces to invade Lebanon in 1982, and since then, the formation of the "New Middle East" has begun, which is a long-term historical process that advances at times and retreats at others.

Despite the achievements Israel has made and the points of strength and superiority it possesses, as it is a functional entity serving a global colonial project led by the United States, it faces the reality that its expansionist ambitions and its pursuit of hegemony over the region exceed its capabilities to achieve them. It is a small state with a low population, suffering from many internal weaknesses and contradictions, and it is a foreign body planted in the Arab region that cannot be accommodated within it unless its colonial-settler nature and its functional role change, along with the existence of more than seven million Palestinians in their homeland, Palestine, who are not willing to leave or be turned into slaves, and are determined to persevere and continue their struggle to achieve their goals.

Based on that, the region is likely heading toward one of the following scenarios: either the existing situation continues without a settlement between Iran and Israel; or a settlement is reached where each side achieves some of its demands or undermines Iran through soft means over the years; or a new war breaks out to achieve what was not achieved during the 12-day war; or the continuation of the "battles between wars" policy. However, what has become clear is that a kind of "deterrence balance" has been established, temporarily or permanently halting the American-Israeli momentum, which depends on the course of events regionally and internationally in the coming years toward redrawing the Middle East map, dominated by Israel, or finding a kind of regional and international plurality and balance.

Moreover, Arab countries, especially the Gulf ones, must act based on the fact that they are now in a better negotiating position than they were before the war. If Iran had been defeated, Israel would have been more aggressive toward everyone, including those it normalized relations with, and would have been more capable of advancing toward the liquidation of the Palestinian issue in all its components. As for Israel, after 21 months of war, Tel Aviv has not achieved its objectives despite its military successes. Even in Syria, where the regime has completely changed and replaced by an anti-Iran regime, it is unlikely that the new regime will sign a peace treaty with Israel, as it lacks the necessary strength or legitimacy to take such significant steps, with the most it can offer being a security ceasefire agreement. In Lebanon, there are no signs of normalization or disarmament of Hezbollah; rather, the possibilities remain open, including the return of war. The relative decrease in security threats may allow the Saudi leadership to maintain its stance: no normalization without the establishment of a Palestinian state, which the current Israeli government is impossible to agree to.

The Likud party seems to be gaining chances in the upcoming elections, against an opposition that does not differ much from it in extremism, united by a single goal, which is to get rid of Netanyahu without adopting an alternative vision, making the scenario of Netanyahu winning in the upcoming elections a possibility. In this context, it will not be possible to achieve significant successes in other tracks, so Israel will focus on achieving political successes in the Palestinian track. While it realizes (or will inevitably realize) the difficulty of achieving maximum goals, such as the complete occupation of Gaza and the imposition of military rule, or demographic transfer, annexation, and the liquidation of the Palestinian issue, while keeping the door open for that, it will descend from the tree and attempt to achieve minimum goals, such as annexing parts of the West Bank and maintaining security control in Gaza, especially through control over buffer zones and strategic corridors, particularly at the Palestinian-Egyptian borders and those linking the occupying state with the Gaza Strip.

Israel will also seek to deal with Gaza as it deals with the West Bank and Lebanon: maintaining the siege, bombardment, assassinations, incursions, and pushing things toward chaos and internal fighting, without entering into a costly direct occupation for the occupying army and without jeopardizing the lives of captured Israelis, noting that it has not achieved its goals despite exhausting the Israeli army of what can be achieved, as its leaders state, who prefer a temporary agreement that opens the way to end the war. We can expect (especially if a prisoner exchange agreement is reached and not sabotaged) intensive attempts to overthrow Hamas's rule, disarm it, and remove any remaining leadership outside the sector. However, the main Israeli weakness that limits (if not prevents) achieving Israeli goals is the absence of a political alternative to "Hamas" in Gaza. The far-right government does not want (or cannot) bear the cost of direct occupation and imposing military rule, and it has failed to find local elements to assume governance; thus, Yasser Abu Shab's militias will collapse if the occupation forces redeploy their troops. Therefore, Netanyahu demanded the establishment of tent cities in Rafah, displacing residents from north to south, and maintaining Israeli control over several important axes, because the client militias can only operate and survive under direct Israeli protection, as their bet on families and clans has failed, and Israel does not agree to the return of the authority, nor does it accept so far to put Gaza under Arab or international Arab guardianship, as most of the suggested candidate countries rejected this, as it would provide cover for the continued Israeli occupation or security control.

Netanyahu's government fears that it may ultimately be forced to accept the presence of "Hamas" in the sector, inside or outside governance, but with the capacity to influence and control. If it continues to deny the return of the authority or Arab guardianship, it may find itself facing this reality. Therefore, preparations should be made for a scenario of renewed war after the 60-day period ends or after extending it, although this would be difficult due to the emergence of internal Israeli-Palestinian momentum, as well as regional and international, particularly American, forces that will not assist in resuming war, at least in the manner it was previously conducted. The worst scenario for Israel would be the return of the authority to Gaza as part of a Palestinian internal consensus, supported by international Arab backing, because it embodies the Palestinian national identity in one entity and keeps the door open for a Palestinian state.

This scenario must be worked towards by all patriotic Palestinians who want to protect the issue, the land, and the people, and by every Palestinian who does not want to surrender and become a client of the occupation. The "renewed" authority, which the occupying state could agree with, will be the one that accepts to be a cover for the Israeli solution, whether in the form of a decisive plan or a plan derived from theories of conflict management and reduction, which a new Israeli government with a different coalition led by Netanyahu or another could adopt, and it does not differ from its predecessor except that it attempts to realize what is possible to achieve for Israel now, as achieving a total settlement of the conflict is not possible, neither now nor in the future.

This threat is compounded by an international movement led by Saudi Arabia and France to hold an international conference to establish a Palestinian state by the end of this year as a condition for regional stability and cooperation and peace. While this movement faces Israeli rejection backed by Washington, if Netanyahu's extremist government falls, and a government led by Naftali Bennett comes to power that adopts an "conflict management and mitigation" approach instead of "resolving it," then we may return to an era of conflict management without a solution, or a narrow window opens for some form of "settlement" between Palestinian Arab international positions and the Israeli-American stance.