U.S. military appears to favor Israeli plan for permanent Gaza occupation

Israeli soldiers eye their targets at the Israel-Gaza border on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023. | AP

Nearly 20,000 Gaza civilians, mostly children and women, have died from bombs and gunfire in Israel’s war so far. Many more will be dying soon from lack of medical care, food, water, and the spread of infectious diseases. Healthcare and social service facilities—along with the homes of a million or more—have been reduced to rubble.

The U.S. government provides the support for all of this to happen, as it continues to financially and militarily back Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza in retaliation for the latter’s attacks of Oct. 7.

Prospects for Gazans who survive the war are grim, or worse. The families of many are gone, and international aid agencies have mostly disappeared. Dire shortages of necessities are on the horizon.  Repairing the physical damage won’t happen anytime soon, and Israeli settlers are already eyeing prime Gaza lands.

With humanitarian disaster on full display, Human Rights Watch points out that, “by continuing to provide Israel with weapons and diplomatic cover as it commits atrocities…the U.S. risks complicity in war crimes.”

Either the charge or the fact of complicity will very likely bedevil the United States for as long as Gazan civilians are dying in large numbers or being removed to camps somewhere else and, all the while, the U.S. goes on supplying Israeli occupiers with weapons.

A recently released Israeli military analysis raises the possibility that the U.S. government courts very serious condemnation if it provides material support for a permanent Israeli occupation of Gaza.

Dr. Omer Dostri, the study’s author, is associated with the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and the Israel Defense and Security Forum. Each is oriented to Israel’s military establishment. His study appeared Nov. 7 in the Military Review, the self-described “Professional Journal of the U.S. Army.”

As reported by journalist Dan Cohen, Dostri declared on social media that, he “authored [the study] on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Army’s Military Review journal.” For the Military Review’s editors to have invited Dostri’s submission suggests they already knew about and were at least tolerant of, Dostri’s iron-fist approach toward Gaza.

The author and editors alike presumably expected their respective military superiors to accept some or all of the views expressed in the paper. Perhaps, then, the two military leaderships have common ground regarding Gaza. Publication of this Israeli analysis becomes a straw in the wind as to future U.S.-Israel military collaboration on Gaza, and, on that score, to U.S. war crimes.

The title of Dostri’s article reads in part, “The End of the Deterrence Strategy in Gaza.” He notes the failure of Israeli military intelligence, Israel’s lack of combat readiness, and Hamas’s “exceptional military and professional approach.” Referring to Israel’s “disregard for the fundamentalist religious dimension of Hamas as an extreme Islamic terrorist organization,” he diagnoses faulty “political perception”

Dostri reviews options for control of Gaza following the envisioned defeat of Hamas. They are: a local Gazan administration, the Palestinian Authority taking charge, a mandate exercised by another government or an international agency, or occupation and governance by Israel’s military. He favors the latter, “from a security perspective.”

The main reason for establishing Israeli settlements in Gaza, he states, is that “seizing and securing land constitutes a more substantial blow to radical Islamist terror groups than the elimination of terrorist operatives and high-ranking leaders.”

Summarizing, Dostri indicates that:

“[A] robust ground campaign in the Gaza Strip, encompassing the occupation of territories, the creation of new Israeli settlements, and the voluntary relocation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to Egypt with no option for return will greatly fortify Israeli deterrence and project influence throughout the entire Middle East.”

Dostri examines Israel’s conduct in the ongoing Gaza war. He calls for a military strategy aimed at securing “a swift surrender of the enemy” that would allow “political maneuverability to make decisions.” The goal “is to defeat Hamas and assume control of the Gaza Strip for the benefit of future generations.”

Israel, he says though, runs “the risk of a multifront war.” Planners are “in the process of altering…policy and military strategy, not only concerning Gaza but also across other fronts.” The Gaza experience is instructive: “Successive Israeli governments…regarded Hamas in the Gaza Strip as a legitimate governing entity that could be managed and engaged through diplomatic and economic means. Not anymore.”

Now “Israel should shift from a strategy of deterrence…[to a] strategy of unwavering decisiveness and victory.” In particular, “Israel will have no choice but to invade Lebanon and defeat Hezbollah.” In addition, “Israel cannot afford to allow the Houthis [in Yemen] to significantly bolster their military strength over time.”

U.S. political leaders for the most part have yet to weigh in on the fate of Gazan civilians in the post-war period. Dostri’s view of Gaza’s future, seemingly acceptable, more or less, to the militaries of the two countries, leaves no room for the niceties of civilians being abused and dying as part of the coming occupation.

By Dec. 1, the U.S. Congress was considering a proposal for assisting Israeli forces as they clear Gaza of Gazans:  Egypt, Turkey, Yemen, and Iraq would receive U.S. monetary support for taking in Gazans fleeing from Israeli attacks.

The next day, however, Vice President Kamala Harris indicated that “Under no circumstances will the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank.”

At issue for U.S. policymakers are competing realities: the suffering of Gaza civilians, obligations to U.S. ally Israel, the prospect of a region-wide war, and the control of oil, whether Israeli or Palestinian.

Reporting on counterpunch.org, Charlotte Dennett cites “oil and natural gas, discovered off the coast of Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon in 2000 and 2010 and estimated to be worth $500 billion.” The Palestinians in 2000 claimed that the “gas fields…belonged to them.”

Yasser Arafat, the then-President of the Palestinian National Authority, “learned they could provide $1 billion in badly needed revenue. For him, this [was] a Gift of God for our people and a strong foundation for a Palestinian state.”

Dennett adds that “In December 2010, prospectors discovered a much larger gas field off the Israeli coast, dubbed Leviathan.” In addition, “work has already begun on…the so-called Ben Gurion Canal, from the tip of northern Gaza south into the Gulf of Aqaba, connecting Israel to the Red Sea and providing a competitor to Egypt’s Suez Canal.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to “convince international lenders to support his long-held scheme of turning Israel into an energy corridor.”

With such riches at stake, does anyone really believe that a truly free Palestinian state will be allowed to come into existence?

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CONTRIBUTOR

W. T. Whitney Jr.

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, and lives in rural Maine.