Gaza: the Strip of broken promises

In his celebrated children’s novel The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame introduces us to Toad of Toad Hall, the eccentric and restless central character who develops a passion for one thing on a Monday only to abandon it for something else on Tuesday until a new obsession grips him on Wednesday – and so on until Toad leaves a chaotic trail of half-baked and unfinished projects behind him.

In dealing with the Middle East, US President Donald Trump has displayed many Toad-like characteristics.

Last October, he gathered leaders from across the region and beyond in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh to proclaim the birth of a new Middle East, beginning with a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza to be followed by reconstruction, the disarmament of Hamas and the withdrawal of Israeli forces, all to be overseen by a new Board of Peace. Trump (of course) would chair the Board and direct its work. The member governments for their part would contribute generous donations with USD$100mn the minimum desired down payment. Altogether USD$7bn was committed. The Gaza ceasefire and the division of the strip between the Israeli occupation forces and the Hamas controlled portion (where the majority of the 2 million Palestinian inhabitants would be forced to live) was described as Phase One. Phase Two of the 20-point peace plan would see the creation of a Palestinian transitional civil authority – the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), composed mainly of technocrats and overseen by the Board of Peace – the deployment of an international military peacekeeping force and the start of rubble clearance and rebuilding. The UN has estimated the cost of reconstruction at $70bn. A new Palestinian police force for Gaza was also foreseen. Meanwhile, Hamas agreed to relinquish control of Gaza and allow the transitional Palestinian authority to enter the strip and begin its work. Yet the extent to which this authority would exercise genuine administrative control remains uncertain, given Israel’s continued role in determining its composition and membership.

A “beautiful plan”, as Trump called it in his speech in Davos, but six months on it is largely a fantasy. Or a vision without a strategy. With Trump consumed by his war against Iran, Gaza and the grand ambitions of the Board of Peace have not crossed his lips for months. The ceasefire may mean no more daily mass bombing by the IDF, but Israel has taken full advantage (as in Lebanon) of the clause in the ceasefire agreement which allows it to respond to “imminent threats”. That means an Israeli strike the minute it perceives a target — real or suspected.

Since October, over 900 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli strikes, and 200 since the Iran ceasefire started eight weeks ago, according to figures from the Gaza Health Authority which the UN and international media consider reliable. April witnessed 30% more Israeli strikes than March. The dead included 8 women and 3 children. Similarly, 450 Lebanese have been killed in Israeli strikes since last month’s US-brokered ceasefire. Israel has claimed that it is responding to Hamas ceasefire violations or simply to Palestinians coming too close to the Yellow Line which demarcates its area of control, even as the IDF pushes the Yellow Line further westward. Starting his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a few weeks back, declared to a group of supporters that Israel wanted to extend its military control of Gaza to 70% of the territory, and further changes to the Yellow Line is clearly a violation of the ceasefire agreement. Yet it is remarkable that many Israeli strikes have targeted Hamas police officers (14 killed in April alone) and police stations in Gaza rather than on the armed militant fighters of the organisation who are in the forefront of the combat operations.

Although President Trump declared with fanfare that Phase One had been completed, there is no sign of the transition to Phase Two. 90% of the Gaza population are displaced and living in makeshift tents as most of the housing stock has been destroyed or severely damaged in the bombing. The IDF has blown up many buildings in the 50% of Gaza that it occupies, forcing the 2 million Palestinians to squeeze into an ever-tighter zone along the coastline. Conditions are abysmal and the population is exhausted, having survived a particularly cold winter with heavy rainfall and local flooding.

True, the food supply situation has improved since the ceasefire, with hundreds of humanitarian aid trucks crossing the border into Gaza every week. The UN is no longer warning of famine as it did in the closing stages of the Israeli air campaign. But Gaza has not been given the means and materials to reconstruct a viable economy and supply chains.

The IDF controls what goes into Gaza and has a liberal interpretation of what could potentially help Hamas to rebuild its capabilities: cement for reconstruction (or Hamas tunnels), power line cables, telecommunications gear, pipelines to reconnect water supplies, medicines and equipment for hospitals or even rat poison are often considered as “dual use” items and blocked. Mobile homes and caravans to replace the tents with more durable accommodation do not qualify either. This leaves Gazans with no jobs and no income and living from one day to the next on handouts. There has been almost no electricity and very little schooling for over two years now. They are even more dependent on humanitarian assistance today than they were before the war.

Because sanitation infrastructure and sewers cannot be repaired, sewage flows onto the streets and garbage piles up, feeding the growing number of rats and rodents and the alarming spread of disease and infection. The Gazan population and particularly children are potentially more vulnerable to dysentery, sepsis and diarrhoea from rat bites than they are to Israeli airstrikes. Very few Palestinians have been allowed to leave the strip, mainly to Egypt and Jordan for urgent medical treatment, and only a trickle have been allowed back in, making Gaza a virtual prison cut off from the outside world. Perpetual limbo seems to be its fate.

Israel has also continued to hinder access by NGOs and humanitarian agencies. It has imposed strict registration requirements on humanitarian workers, delaying their ability to enter Gaza or work there altogether. As many NGOs will not allow themselves to be controlled by Israel, many have stepped back from operating in Gaza. Some NGOs have tried to send humanitarian aid by sea from ports in Cyprus or Crete to the shoreline in Gaza. Convoys like the Gaza Freedom Flotilla last September or the more recent Global Sumud Flotilla gained considerable media attention as they had hundreds of activists on board dozens of ships, including celebrities like Greta Thunberg. But the Israeli navy blocked the ships and detained the activists and crews well before they could reach the Gaza coastline. In the case of the Sumud flotilla, the interception and detentions took place in international waters leading to accusations of piracy against Israel. Also worth noting are the allegations and evidence of the activists’ grave mistreatment and continued detention despite their governments’ urgent appeals. France has taken the step to bar the Israeli Minister for National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, from entering the country.

At the same time, Israel has tried to incapacitate Hamas further. The Israeli parliament, or Knesset, has just adopted a law by an overwhelming majority (93 out of 120 lawmakers, with no votes against) which will establish a special military court to try the Hamas fighters that Israel accuses of participating in the attack against Israel on October 7 2023, during which 1200 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed and 70 taken hostage. Currently, Israel holds between 200-300 Hamas prisoners in its jails. Many will face the death penalty, which has come under fire from human rights groups who warn that the bill “intentionally lowers the legal protections to a fair trial”.

Families of those killed or taken hostage by Hamas on September 7 will participate in the trials, which will be public and televised. It is right and proper that Hamas killers should be brought to justice but European governments must press Israel to follow due process and ensure that the court cases not degenerate into show trials.

Hamas of course bears the responsibility for the atrocities committed on October 7. It is a terrorist organisation which has brutally repressed the population of Gaza and poorly administered the territory as well as killing Israelis. As such, deserves absolutely no sympathy or excuses from outsiders. Hamas has always been part of the problem and never the solution. But it was a massive intelligence failure by Israel as well. Yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has avoided setting up a commission of inquiry into this intelligence failure and keeping the war going on multiple fronts is the perfect pretext for him to push the day of reckoning further into the distant future. Israelis deserve both justice for the victims but also accountability from their government for failing before October 7 and afterwards to provide a sustainable basis for their long-term safety. That is the message that European diplomacy must press home.

Against this background, international efforts to fully implement the peace plan and relieve the plight of the long-suffering Palestinian population have stalled. The eternal limbo suits many of the key players. Hamas has refused to disarm beyond a few gestures about a limited handover of some of its heavier weapons. It has focused on reasserting its control over the 50% of Gaza still in Palestinian hands. Hamas wobbled in the weeks before the ceasefire as demonstrations took place against it and some anti-Hamas militias appeared on the scene, egged on unsurprisingly by the Israelis. But Hamas has always been both resilient and ruthless.

No matter how much Palestinians loathe it and blame it for the catastrophe of the October 7 attacks, they hate Israel more and Hamas has always been the strongest of the resistance movements. Although brutal and repressive, is untainted by the compromises and corruption of the Palestinian Authority under the octogenarian Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. Moreover, and like Hezbollah in Lebanon, it has been mauled by the IDF but emerged intact with new leaders and far from defeated. Hamas has executed its opponents in Gaza and imposed taxes on petrol and engine oil to generate enough revenue to pay its fighters and officials. There will always be a bedrock of support for it among Palestinians. The Israeli government claims that resumed strikes in Gaza are due to Hamas rearming, with continuing support from Iran.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has also shown little appetite to take back control in Gaza after being forced out by Hamas in 2006. Worth noting here is that its own unpopularity as well as disruptive actions by the Israeli government has contributed to its lack of control within the area. PA agreed recently to organise some very limited elections in a single urban area of Gaza, Deir al-Balah (one of the few not levelled by Israeli airstrikes) in order to test the waters of popular sentiment. The turnout was low and Hamas-affiliated figures maintained their control over the municipality. Accordingly, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who should have stood for re-election well over a decade ago, does not fancy a rerun of the confrontation with Hamas over Gaza with the probable result that the control of the West Bank, which is increasingly restless, would progressively slide towards the radicals.

Israel too seems again to be wedded to its “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” approach; that is, the Israeli government prefers to opt for a solution that has a lower risk of failure, even if it is not the best solution. For Israel, security solutions are always better than political solutions. Force and control are preferable to the compromises involved in negotiations or the risks in empowering your neighbours, even if the goal is to reconcile with them and live in peace. So, interest in a two-state solution, giving the Palestinians a homeland alongside Israel, is more off the agenda than it has ever been, including among Israeli moderates. Israelis are now sceptical that they can ever conclude peace deals with their neighbours and given the success of the IDF in pummelling Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and assorted jihadist and radical groups across the Middle East, they believe more than before that stationing their army on foreign soil and the occasional air strikes to prevent the adversaries from resurging is not only the best, but indeed the only answer to their security dilemmas.

The lesson of the Middle East is that those who hold territory hold onto it at whatever cost, and those that relinquish it (like Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did in Gaza in 2005) come to regret doing so. Consequently, the IDF is not too concerned that Hamas has not disarmed as it can still be blamed for everything and justifies sticking to a purely military strategy. It can pour more concrete, push its Yellow Line forward and settle down in Gaza for the long-term. Some on the Israeli far-right hope that the mounting pressure of abysmal living conditions will force the remaining 2 million Palestinians in Gaza to leave, and that they can rebuild the settlements there that the government of Ariel Sharon forced the irate settlers to abandon in August/September 2005.

Meanwhile, the Board of Peace, which should be enthusiastically pushing the peace and reconstruction effort forward that the rival UN is said to be incapable of, hasn’t got off the ground. It has appointed a High Representative, the former Bulgarian Defence Minister, Nickolay Mladenov, but he and his staff have been holed up in a luxury hotel in Cairo for much of the last six months since the ceasefire. It has since moved to a location in southern Israel close to the border with Gaza but journalists visiting recently, like the BBC’s Sebastian Usher, did not see much sign of activity. Only 1,000 of the 25,000 members of the Gaza civilian police force have to date been approved by Israel and training and force leadership and development courses have not yet begun. The Board’s staff consists mainly of engineers and civil planning experts who expected to be on the ground in Gaza last January. They are not allowed to talk to the press, making it difficult for outsiders to understand exactly what the holdups are. Mladenov visited Jerusalem a few weeks ago and did give a rare press conference, making it clear that his main problem is getting Hamas to disarm totally and turn itself into a purely political movement (which then could play a role in future Gazan politics).

Israel refuses to start its withdrawal from Gaza until this condition is met, whereas in a classic chicken and egg manoeuvre, Hamas will not begin the disarmament process before an Israeli withdrawal. Mladenov has enlisted the help of Egypt, Qatar and Turkey to put pressure on Hamas. Its leadership is now mainly in Istanbul. He wants Hamas to provide information on the locations of its weapons stockpiles and its tunnel complex. Also, the locations of workshops where Hamas produces the short-range rockets which it has periodically fired into Israel. At the end of this process, the actual weapons would be handed over, presumably to the new transitional Palestinian administration (NCAG).

Hamas, however, has its demands too. It has been encouraged by the defiance shown by its patron, Iran, in resisting the US and Israel and its close ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is sceptical that Israel will ever comply with the peace plan or ease up in its clamp down on the Palestinians, especially considering that Israel continues to target its leadership and kill civilians despite the ceasefire. The restrictions on supplies into Gaza are also seen as proving its point. It worries that if it disarms but the other Palestinian militias supported by Israel do not, it will be vulnerable to revenge attacks. Finally, Hamas wants Trump to explicitly commit to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

But the real problems are more fundamental: Hamas does not control all of its fighters. A dozen different groups and factions were involved in the October 7 attack against Israel, including the Nukhba brigade, the al-Qassam and al-Quds units, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and the Islamic Jihad forces. These groups are still numerous in Gaza, believed to number around 20,000 fighters, which is a sobering statistic for Israel as it implies that that the IDF was only able to kill or capture a third of the overall total (10,000) during its two-year campaign against Gaza. The other stumbling block (which reminds us of the situation with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards or Hezbollah) is that killing one generation of leaders does not make the next generation more moderate or compliant. Quite the contrary, they can be even more radical and determined to double down and avenge their predecessors. Hamas has not formally designated a new leadership team as these people will immediately be priority targets for Mossad and the IDF. But those speaking on behalf of Hamas show every sign of wanting to continue in the uncompromising resistance line of Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attack, subsequently killed by the IDF. All this suggests that the conflicting conditions of Israel and Hamas (which disguise a common interest in dragging their feet on the implementation of the peace plan) spell stalemate and thus more misery and rats for the population of Gaza for months if not years to come.

So with Israel not cooperating and the US distracted in the Gulf and the Hormuz Strait, is there anything that Europe can do to swing the international spotlight onto Gaza, and the plight of its inhabitants?

One thing is to continue to hold both Israel and Hamas to account and push back on their self-serving narratives. In May, EU foreign ministers imposed sanctions on three Israeli settlers and four settler organisations. This was in response to growing settler violence against Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, destroying their homes, livelihoods and lives in some cases, to drive them off their land as the settlers seek to expand their holdings.

The end of the Orban regime in Hungary (a long-standing backer of Netanyahu) undoubtedly made it easier for the EU to take a tougher stand against Israeli policy, which in recent months has gone towards not only the expansion of settlements but also more outright annexation of territory on the West Bank. As the EU High Representative, Kaja Kallas, put it: the EU needs “to move from deadlock to delivery”. Although some Israeli politicians and the courts have condemned the settler violence, so far the IDF has not intervened to put a stop to it. The settlers, heavily armed, have received far more lenient treatment than Palestinian protesters and civilians who have been detained, killed and imprisoned by the Israeli authorities.

At the same time the EU sanctioned some Hamas leaders as well. When faced with criticism the Israeli government often responds with the usual outrage and hyperbole. The foreign minister, Gideon Saar, condemned the EU move as “arbitrary”, and spoke of “unacceptable comparisons between Israel citizens and Hamas terrorists”. In a direct poke at Europe, he claimed that Israel and the United States were doing its “dirty work” by eliminating radicals while Europe criticised from a safe distance. But Israel’s claims that it is acting in broad western interests and not just its own are specious. And those actions do not give it a blank cheque to do anything it likes and then claim impunity for violations of international law and humanitarian obligations. A UN report submitted to the Security Council on the increase in sexual violence in armed conflict puts Israel in the same category as Russia. This is not the sort of company that a democratic western country like Israel should be keeping. Simply dismissing and rejecting such reports as biased or hostile is not the same as engaging or being serious about investigating and holding those guilty of illegal acts to account. Crimes are crimes whoever commits them and Israel, which has haemorrhaged international sympathy and support during its campaign against Gaza (including in the US), would get much more of a hearing for its cause and security interests if it recognised the existence and rights of non-Israelis.

Two Israeli politicians, Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, have been indicted by the International Criminal Court and South Africa has started a process against Israel for genocide at the International Court of Justice. Israel will reject these charges as biased and politically motivated, which they may well be to some extent. But Israel’s moderate politicians and civil society must ask themselves if it is good for Israel in the long run to have no friends and to depend almost exclusively on the US for international support.

European leaders must stick to their guns. Italy for instance recently froze its security agreement with Israel. The EU has been looking at its trade agreement with Israel and individual member states have frozen certain arms sales. Where Israel is truly the victim and legitimately defending its people and its right to exist, it deserves every support. But if Israel wants to be considered as a democratic state and a member of the Western camp, it must meet its standards.

Second, the EU, together with its partners, must push harder on Israel to ameliorate the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Israel’s ongoing struggle with Hamas is not a reason to make the impoverished and homeless population of Gaza suffer further. More than 70,000 Palestinians have already been killed and over 170,000 injured since 2023. Further punishment does not serve any Israeli security interest and does not correspond to the obligations that the country took on under the peace agreement when it accepted a total of 650 trucks entering Gaza every day.

The EU must press the Israeli government to draw up a list of goods and services that can be given free access to Gaza and limit to the strict minimum what are classified as dual-use items. EU governments can push for an independent international monitoring mechanism on the Gaza borders to make sure that Israel respects the arrangements and is not the only authority to decide what enters Gaza and what does not. The Israeli government should restore to the Palestinian Authority its tax and customs revenues so that it can pay for basic services in Gaza such as police, refuse collection and vaccinations.

In addition, exaggerated constraints on the activities of humanitarian NGOs need to be removed. Israel likes to divert attention to other issues, not only Iran but also its actions in Lebanon where it has held three rounds of talks with the Lebanese government in an effort to secure its backing in cracking down on Hezbollah. Netanyahu has also reached out to the Arab Gulf states attacked by Iran and claims to have made a secret visit to the UAE, offering it the Israeli Iron Dome missile defence system. These may be useful initiatives but again they cannot be used by Netanyahu as a get-out-of-jail card to ignore the situation inside Gaza.

Israel is due to hold elections probably in October and two opposition leaders and former Prime Ministers (Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett) have joined forces in an effort to unseat Netanyahu, the country’s longest serving Prime Minister. This is the moment for European politicians, NGOs and the media to try to stimulate more debate inside Israel on Gaza, working with civil society, where there is a well-supported and vociferous peace movement, and those political forces in the country which reject the policies and Jewish supremacy of the far-right. Jewish organisations and communities in Europe and North America have been on the receiving end of a rise in antisemitism and despicable attacks against synagogues and individual Jews. They rightly demand more action and protection from governments. But, this said, they can also call on Israel, a nation-state and signatory of the UN Charter, to take more responsibility for the future of Gaza and its people. Millions of Palestinians cannot be held eternally responsible for the terrible actions of Hamas on 7 October. The cause of Palestine cannot be left to radical groups like Palestine Action, which has frequently resorted to violence and sabotage, and in the UK is controversially classified as a terrorist organisation. These groups have organised large scale demonstrations in European cities, making some Jewish citizens feel targeted and uncomfortable. In a number of recent, if isolated incidents, have been attacked, Jewish property damaged and members of the Jewish community aggressed. Governments have stepped up measures like police patrols and intelligence to protect Jewish communities that are feeling more beleaguered. In the UK they have been calling for PA marches to be banned. The challenge is that Jewish communities and Muslim communities feel equally threatened and pull further apart, each appealing to government for action and protection. Governments have a delicate task of maintaining peace at home and protecting everyone’s rights and security while maintaining pressure on Israel and Hamas to implement the Gaza peace plan. The rise in acts of antisemitism makes their job harder. A broader, cross-party approach, involving members from all the faith groups , is therefore required.

Finally, Europe cannot leave Gaza or the Middle East more generally to Trump’s Board of Peace, a body containing more autocracies than democracies, inexperienced and untested and whose activities and decisions are anything but transparent. It is time to bring the UN and its agencies back into the game. The UN is far from perfect and Israel has seized on its failings, such as the inadequate vetting of Palestinian staff employed by UNRWA in Gaza, to delegitimise the UN in general and put obstacles in its path. UNIFIL in Lebanon, whose peacekeepers have frequently been targeted both by the IDF and Hezbollah, has suffered a similar fate. But at the end of the day the UN has on-the-ground experience and staff expertise that the Board of Peace lacks. Agencies like the UN High Commission for Refugees, the World Food Programme, UNCTAD, the UN Population Fund, OCHA and UNRWA (which has supported 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza) are indispensable if humanitarian relief and reconstruction are to move forward.

Europe can help by making sure that these agencies are adequately funded and provide help with logistics, warehousing, local site security and transportation. But working through the UN has the advantage of including potentially all the countries of the world and working through boards and governance structures that are properly constituted and transparent, and where Europe is represented and has a voice, unlike in the Board of Peace.

UN Special Envoys to the region have often been European and have coordinated closely with European foreign ministries and the European External Action Service. The EU should make clear to the US and Israel that it will not finance the reconstruction of Gaza unless the UN agencies can carry out their work unimpeded and the officials of the Board of Peace consult openly and frequently with the European Commission and High Representative.

The EU should nominate a small group of member states with a particular track record in Middle East affairs (for instance. France, Germany, Italy and Spain) to conduct diplomacy on its behalf and working in tandem with the EU Special Envoy for the Middle East Peace Process, the French diplomat Christophe Bigot. The UK should be invited to be a member of the group too, given its previous involvement in the Iran nuclear file and permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Norway, which engineered the successful Oslo Accords in the 1990s, is a possible addition as well.

Building peace is harder than ending wars. President Trump may come back to his beautiful plan for reconstruction in Gaza once he has extracted himself from the Iranian imbroglio as he may return to mediating between Russia and Ukraine. But his track record so far suggests that the US President prefers the quick wins of declaring ceasefires (as fragile as most prove to be) to the hard graft of long-term stabilisation, reconstruction and building durable security architectures. This takes time and as the British economist John Maynard Keynes was fond of pointing out: “in the long run we will all be dead”. For the long-suffering population of Gaza that is more likely to be the case in the short term.

Diplomacy is first and foremost about saving lives and this is now the challenge for Europe’s diplomats as they step into the breach in Gaza. There is only one thing worse than bombs and bullets and that is neglect.

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.