It would be wonderful if this war were to be the last war. People have said this after so many wars. The key question is what will be after the war is over. Each side has a vision. On the Israeli side, the vision of Prime Minister is defined mostly by what will not be. He does not want Hamas in control (and whoever is, must not be able to threaten the lives of Israeli citizens). He also does not want the Fatah party, currently ruling the Palestinian Authority (PA), to be in charge. Having an Israeli military government is also taboo. That does not leave a wide choice for the Palestinians in Gaza.
The US is trying to put together a group of Arab countries to step in and run things until the Palestinians can handle things themselves. The Americans have managed to get Egypt, Morocco and the UAE to conditionally join in. The conditions are the problem. The main one is American recognition of a Palestinian State. Hidden behind that recognition is a requirement to solve some very serious problems. Will the future Palestine be committed to living peacefully alongside Israel? No Palestinian political group has ever done so. What will be the border between Palestine and Israel? The actual 1967 cease-fire line has been proposed as the basis for final borders. The UN resolutions in the past all call for negotiations between the sides to decide this. Israel and the current PA have not been able to agree on a solution to this problem. How should the problem of the Arab refugees be solved? UNRWA certainly cannot be a model for deciding this. Can some of them return to areas where their families once lived? Most of them are descendants of Syrian, Lebanese, and Iraqi Arabs who came to Palestine when it was a British Mandate. Where should they go now? If a transfer of populations is used as a model, how do you work in the ¾ million Jews who were forced to leave Arab countries and flee to Israel after 1949? There are large areas of Syria today that are underpopulated because of the Syrian Civil War. Will Palestinian refugees be willing to go there?
In short, creating a conflict free zone in Gaza is not going to be an easy task.
Wetherhorn 