Speaking at the right-wing Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington on Tuesday, Israeli opposition Leader Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) presented a plan for the “day after” Hamas in Gaza.
The former prime minister said he backs elements of US President Donald Trump’s vision for Gaza, in which Gazan Palestinians would be free to willingly emigrate, and the US would oversee massive investment into Gaza.
The major addition Lapid appears to be presenting, however, is 8-15 years of Egyptian rule followed by a handover to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.
“Israel cannot agree to Hamas remaining in power,” he said.
“The Palestinian Authority is neither willing nor able to manage Gaza in the near future. Israeli occupation is neither desirable nor possible. A constant state of chaos is both a security threat and a humanitarian disaster.”
The plan, according to Lapid, would have Egypt govern Gaza for eight years, with an option to extend its rule to 15 years. In exchange, Egypt would have its foreign debt paid off by the United States and its allies.
The Egyptian military would essentially run Gaza alongside soldiers from various Gulf states, during which time “the conditions for self-governance in Gaza will be created and the process of the total demilitarization of Gaza will be completed.”
During the period of Cairo’s rule over Gaza, Lapid said the PA would undergo significant reforms in order to prepare it for eventually taking control of the territory.
Egypt occupied Gaza from the time it conquered the strip from Israel during the 1948 War until Israel won it back on the first day of the 1967 Six Day War.
Israel was forced to relinquish the territory in 2005 by US President George W Bush, who expected the American-backed PA to govern the territory. But a short civil war between the PA and Hamas led to nearly two decades of Hamas rule.
As a result of this current war, there have been concerns expressed by US officials that Israel could retake permantant control over Gaza and potentially rebuild the Jewish communities destroyed in 2005. As a precaution against this outcome, the Biden administration applied heavy pressure on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud) to officially commit to a “day after” plan that would clarify Israel has no intention of retaining control over the territory.
Netanyahu successfully resisted this pressure.
According to Israeli officials, Lapid has already presented his plan to top officials in the Trump administration. But the more likely scenario is that Trump’s team presented the plan to Lapid.
This plan is likely Trump’s real vision for Gaza; Egyptian military rule that may or may not transition to PA governance accompanied by heavy economic investment by Trump and other American capitalists. But Trump is clever enough to know that such a plan would be easier for Israelis to accept if it’s perceived to be a “homegrown” Israeli idea.
It should also be noted that the forcing Israel to relinquish Gaza, and most other territories won in 1967, has been consisted bipartisan US policy since the Six Day War. It hasn’t seemed to matter much to the Americans who would take control of these territories so long as Israel doesn’t hold them.
If we see the Trump administration slowly adopting the “Lapid plan” in the coming weeks, it should be clear that this is actually the real Trump plan for Gaza.
It might also signal that Lapid may be conspiring with the new administration to replace Prime Minister Netanyahu and his nationalist coalition with a government more amenable to future American demands.
I wonder whether our government, as it stands now, is relevant at all. The idea that we have to go along with whatever the American government wants, pretending it’s an Israeli idea, or even desire, is completely delusional.
Maybe we need to think about whether it might be time to look for the beginnings of the Davidic Kingdom as God promised to King David in the books of Samuel. The Kingdom, in its completeness, would be the goal that a website promoting itself as Jewish-vision-oriented would work toward, right?