The media is still busy talking about the hostage release negotiations. This is still a waste of time. Hamas leader, Yahyah Sinwar, has not changed his red line demands (and I don’t expect he ever will). His two top concerns are staying alive, and staying in power. I’m not sure which of them is most important. Did anyone ever read the book The True Believer? That’s him. His movement extolls Shahidim (martyrs) who die for their cause. Is he any different? The people who appear to have the poorest understanding of what makes him tick are the Americans. They haven’t seen an enemy like this since they faced the Japanese Kamikazes at the end of World War Two. Any approach that aims for a comprehensive two state solution that includes Hamas will, in my opinion, end up like an attempt to mix oil and water.
Israel has been looking for some organization or country to replace Hamas in handling local government issues in Gaza. So far, that search has not yielded results. The IDF has one of the loudest voices calling for the politicians to do something in this regard. The answer may be to have the IDF put together a military government unit. That, of course, does not sit well with the Israeli government statement that they have no wish to remain in Gaza once Hamas is gone. But failure to act just leaves a vacuum where Hamas local bureaucrats (not terrorist fighters) are already moving in. The USA created the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War Two. Something similar is needed in Gaza. An alternative to Hamas is needed to handle local affairs, especially to restructure and restart the local schools. And it cannot be handled by UNRWA. That would just be allowing Hamas to come back under a different name. The American experience in Afghanistan seems to show that such an effort needs to maintained for a very long time to be effective.
Wetherhorn 