How Will the Israel-Gaza War End?

Palestinians and Israelis as well as most of the rest of the world want the Israel-Gaza War to stop. Yet 22 months after it began, this war shows no sign of ending. Gaza and Israel are fighting for some very clear and basic reasons. However, it is not clear at all when the war will end and what will happen once it does.

What is Happening in Gaza, Simple Explanation

The root cause of the Israel-Gaza War dates back to the end of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th Century. At this time Britain took over and colonized the land which is now Israel and Gaza and designated it as Mandatory Palestine. The British then enabled the Jewish people to return from exile by the thousands to reclaim this land which they had called home for generations. The problem is that the Palestinians had up until colonization been calling this same land home for generations.

Mandatory Palestine was renamed Israel and the state of Israel was formally established on May 14, 1948. This kicked off decades of conflict and war which continue to this day. Conflict and war brought about the creation of the Hamas terror organization, headquartered in the Gaza Strip. On October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorists came out of the Gaza Strip and attacked Israel by land, air and sea. On that day Hamas killed almost 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 251. Nothing remotely of this magnitude had ever happened before in the history of Israel. The Israel-Gaza War began the same day. During this war Hamas has killed an additional 1,200 Israelis and are still holding 50 hostages inside Gaza. The Israeli Defense Forces have killed at least 55,000 Gazans and destroyed around 70% of the strip.

Asymmetrical Warfare

The situation between Israel and Gaza is always asymmetrical. This is true in peacetime and in wartime. Israel controls the borders of Gaza. The Gaza Strip has no official military although it does have the paramilitary Palestinian National Security Forces organization and, of course, Hamas, along with weapons smuggled into the strip from Iran. Israel on the other hand has a well-funded, formidable and technologically advanced military funded by the United States and other countries. Widely recognized as one of the most powerful militaries in the world, when there is war Israel is always going to win.

The truth is the Palestinians are essentially all alone in the world. They evoke powerful emotions yet there is very little useful effort or effective action to help them. The world argues about them and fights over them but no country on earth will go to war with Israel because of the Palestinians. That is because Israel is too powerful a foe.

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Israel-Gaza Border

Gaza is bordered on the north and east by Israel. Even during relatively peaceful times it is virtually impossible for any of the 2.1 million Gazans to leave across these borders because they are tightly controlled by the Israeli Defense Forces. The western border of Gaza is the Mediterranean Sea. Gazans cannot leave through the sea. Not only is the sea formidable but also Israel has placed war-time security restrictions on it. They have also warned Gazans to avoid entering the sea at the risk of endangering their lives.

Egypt’s Sinai peninsula borders the Gaza strip on the south. Since October 7, Egypt has prohibited Gazans from crossing into the Sinai and has also increased its security barriers on the Gaza border. Why Egypt is not helping Gaza in this war? The country has stated several reasons.

Among the reasons given by Egypt is that the country does not want to assist in ethnic cleansing. Egypt also doesn’t want the Sinai to become a new headquarters for Palestinian resistance operations against Israel. Additionally, Egypt does not want to “liquidate the Palestinian cause.” Allowing Gazans into the Sinai would mean that they would be safer and living outside a war zone. However, such a move would ultimately hurt them because it would mimic the nakba. The nakba – Arabic for catastrophe – occurred as a result of Israel’s first war. The Arab-Israeli War began hours after the establishment of Israel and resulted in approximately 750,000 Palestinians fleeing or being forced to leave the country. If Egypt accepted the Palestinians from Gaza into the adjoining Sinai region as proposed, they likely never will be able to go home.

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When will Gaza War end and how? Four scenarios.

The Israel-Gaza War is intensifying now, not ending. Ultimately, in the future how will the Gaza War end? The best possible outcome, of course, would be to succeed in eliminating Hamas without continued death or destruction and for the war to stop immediately. This, of course, is not going to happen. At this point, it appears one of four different scenarios could play out.

The first scenario is that the war lasts indefinitely. This serious concern intensified in late August after Israel called up 60,000 reservists for a ground offensive to capture Gaza City, the largest city in the strip. Such a major operation would more deeply entrench Israel and Gaza in war. The war would then become all the more difficult to stop. Many or even most Gazans and Israelis do not want to fight in this war anymore. Both sides have lost too much already. The images of devastation inside Gaza along with the massive anti-war protests in Tel Aviv, increasing in number and frequency, are vivid indications that the people do not want this war to continue.

Another scenario, formulated by Egypt and supported by Arab countries, proposes a $53 billion plan to rebuild the territory. Under the Gaza 2030 plan, the Palestinians would remain in Gaza. The three-phase plan begins with a six-month recovery period which would involve the recovery of land mines and removal of debris as well as the building temporary roads and housing. The two-year-long second phase will involve the construction of permanent housing and installation of telecommunication systems. The third and final phase involves the creation of an economic development strategy including industrial zones, fishing ports and an airport. With the score of destruction in Gaza to date, however, this fairly short and simple plan looks too unlikely and hopeful. Also, it is not likely that Israel will agree to this.

What Israel might agree to is President Trump’s proposal. Trump has said he wants to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” In this third scenario, Palestinians would leave the strip to live in neighboring countries. The United States would then take control of the territory and transform it into a Dubai-esque vacation paradise. With Trump mentioning this only once,  along with his style of starting high and then negotiating downward to a more acceptable solution, it is unlikely this was a serious proposal.

The fourth scenario is that Israel takes the Gaza Strip. If this transpires, Israel would certainly force all of the Palestinians to leave. Israel likely would also eventually begin allowing the return of the Jewish people for the first time since the Israeli disengagement from the strip in 2005. Will Israel rebuild Gaza so the Jewish people can live there? There are proponents of annexing the strip, including a small number of government officials as well as Israeli citizens. Netanyahu has publicly ruled this out, although that could change. However, if Israel did try to move in this direction, public sentiment in Israel along with international pressure could prevent this from happening.

Conclusion to How Will the Israel Gaza War End

Much of Israel and the world supported the Israel-Gaza War in the beginning. Twenty-two months later, however, we can see what is really happening. The goal of the war is to destroy Hamas, yes, but it is also to destroy Gaza. The reasons for what is happening in Gaza and Israel are clear. However, the answers to when will Gaza War end and how it will end are not clear. For every possible scenario, there are accompanying problems. In this land of long-term problems, an end to the war and a positive solution to the existing Gaza-Israel conflict is unlikely to be found any time soon.

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Featured image by Emad El Byed