Israel aims to defeat Hamas, then leave Gaza. Who would fill vacuum?

In September of 2014, Barack Obama gave a White House address in which he pledged that the United States and its allies would “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State.

The world could not tolerate a terrorist organization that kidnapped and killed innocents in the most barbaric of manners, the president said, or that possessed a base from which to launch its attacks and spread its poisonous ideology.

After several years, heavy destruction of several Iraqi cities, and the loss of many innocent lives, ISIS was substantially degraded and denied the “caliphate” it briefly declared in parts of Iraq and Syria.

But it was not eradicated, and it remains active today.

Now Israel, in the wake of the worst terrorist attack of its 75-year history – with more than 1,400 people killed, thousands wounded, and more than 220 taken hostage – is promising its citizens something similar to what Mr. Obama pledged: the destruction of Hamas, the militant Palestinian organization that rules the Gaza Strip and calls for Israel’s destruction.

But questions over the feasibility of “destroying” Hamas and its ideology, as well as over the moral issues raised by the high price that both sides – and in particular, civilians in Gaza – will pay in the war, are being asked as people anticipate Israel’s ground invasion of the enclave.

“What Israel aims to do is not unlike the U.S. going in against Al Qaeda and ISIS,” says Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington. Those groups “were severely weakened,” and in a similar way, “Hamas seems very unlikely to survive this or ever return to anything near its power” today, he adds. But “that will still leave the question of Palestinian nationalism, which will not go away.”

The U.S. reportedly has been pressing Israel to delay the offensive to facilitate diplomatic efforts to secure the release of more hostages and deliver more humanitarian aid to southern Gaza. But reports in Israeli media Monday suggested the Israeli military was pressing the government to authorize the start of the invasion.

No one should expect the delay to last much longer, Israeli officials said.

Biden’s caution to Israel

The heavy weight of this war’s moral dilemmas was one of the main drivers behind President Joe Biden’s extraordinary wartime visit to Israel last week.

While offering Israel full-throated support, and ordering a show of force intended to discourage additional entrants into the conflict, Mr. Biden sought to caution one of America’s closest allies “not to be consumed” by its outrage nor to make the mistakes the U.S. made in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

If anything, Israel will face far more daunting odds than the U.S. and its allies did against ISIS. That’s because Hamas is not a carpetbagger extremist group, but a deeply implanted governing organization espousing a brand of Palestinian nationalism that won’t be extinguished with regime change in Gaza.

Given those realities, the promised Israeli ground invasion may indeed topple Hamas from power and destroy much of its military apparatus, some Israeli military veterans and longtime analysts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict say.

But in the process, Israel will also kill many more thousands of Gaza residents – more than 5,000 people have already been killed, Gaza health ministry officials say – and destroy much of the densely populated territory’s physical infrastructure.

That severe toll is likely to create more sympathizers for whatever remnants of Hamas survive. And when the invasion is over, Israel and the international community will be left with the daunting question of who administers the 2.2 million people who have been under Hamas rule since 2007.

“Of course this goal of destroying Hamas is realistic. It just depends on the price you are willing to pay to achieve this. After what took place Oct. 7, Israel does not have any other choice,” says retired Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni, commander of the Israel Defense Forces’ Gaza Division in the early 2000s.

“But we recognize that Gaza will be piles of rubble after this war,” he says. “It won’t be short, and even if you kill and capture all the leadership and take out the weapons production, you can’t reduce to zero the Hamas supporters.” If anything, he adds, “there may well be even more supporters after this.”

How Hamas can declare victory

As difficult as toppling Hamas will be, the challenges that will surface when the ideas behind the organization are perhaps invigorated will be no less daunting, some experts say.

“We do ourselves no favors by underestimating the ideological commitments that will be there no matter the outcome of the war,” says David Makovsky, director of the Koret Project on Arab-Israel Relations at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

All it will take will be one senior Hamas leader able to emerge from hiding after Israel’s onslaught for Hamas to declare, “We survived; therefore we won,” he says.

Israel is at some risk of “raising the bar too high” with its rhetoric of destruction, Mr. Makovsky says.

“The Israelis know they are not going to take out every Hamas foot soldier,” he says, “but they are aiming to take out the governing apparatus that directed this attack.”

Others are even less sanguine about the prospects of eliminating Hamas.

“I understand the desire to destroy the Hamas apparatus, but I just don’t think it’s doable,” says Benjamin Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank promoting a realist foreign policy. “If you envision any degree of Palestinian self-rule, then I think some version of Hamas 2.0 remains in power,” he adds, “and Gaza goes back to what it was, but with fewer people and buildings.”

It’s worth considering the case of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Mr. Friedman says, noting they were deposed by a superior military power – only to return and take back control of the country.

Some Israelis refer to the U.S. campaign against ISIS not as a cautionary tale but as an example of what Israel intends to accomplish.

“The U.S. said it was going to destroy ISIS, and essentially it was destroyed,” says Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, a former head of politico-military affairs at the Ministry of Defense. “For Israel, what ‘destroy’ means is that all the relevant leaders need to disappear.”

In addition, Israel will aim to take out as many Hamas fighters as possible, destroy Hamas’ weapons production infrastructure, and find and destroy the underground military infrastructure and extensive tunnel system, military experts say.

In many cases that infrastructure is located under residential buildings and public services like hospitals and schools.

Appeal to Israel’s neighbors

In terms of what comes after the invasion, there is near unity among officials and experts: Israel does not intend to stay in Gaza long as an occupying power.

Secondly, Israel is likely to call on its Arab neighbors – and in particular those Gulf countries with which it recently established diplomatic relations – to formulate an administrative authority for Gaza and begin funding reconstruction.

“The exit strategy will rely on intensive discussion with our American friends and with our Arab neighbors,” says Major General Gilad, who is now executive director of the Institute for Policy and Strategy in Herzliya, Israel.

Mr. Makovsky co-authored a Washington Institute plan that envisions a “consortium” of Arab countries acting as something of a bridge administrator. That consortium would take over policing and public order functions and begin work on the long rebuilding process – while ultimately turning the reins over to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governed Gaza until it was chased out by Hamas in 2007.

The PA is the logical alternative for governing a demilitarized Gaza, Major General Shamni says, although he acknowledges there will be challenges to that plan. Foremost will be the widespread perception of the PA as a corrupt and unpopular governing entity in the West Bank that was already “kicked out” of Gaza once.

Others doubt that Arab countries will be enthusiastic about joining a plan to administer a devastated Gaza, as they would risk a perception of bailing out Israel when anti-Israel sentiment in Arab publics is likely to have spiked.

Indeed, many military and diplomatic experts assert that how Israel carries out its war on Hamas and how Gaza emerges from it will go far in determining the Middle East’s trajectory: stability and even fresh paths to peace, or further violence and chaos.

“The real question will be whether the dismantling of Hamas and the destruction that accompanies it leaves a horrible taste in the mouths of the Palestinians and their supporters in the Arab and Muslim worlds,” says the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Dr. Schanzer. “If any part of Hamas is left standing, that taste could allow [it] to reconstitute itself somewhere else.”