Pollard: Why Israel alone must determine Gaza’s ‘day after’

With no credible international commitment to forcibly disarm Hamas, Israel must annex Gaza rather than rely on temporary military control or unenforceable security guarantees.

The question of “the day after” in Gaza has moved from theoretical debate to unavoidable reality, forced by a stark admission from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu recently revealed that efforts to find an international force willing to step in and disarm Hamas have completely failed.

Despite challenging American officials to identify a willing coalition, months of searching yielded a definitive answer: no country is prepared to take on this mission.

Consequently, Netanyahu stated that mission falls squarely on Israel, regardless of the heavy casualties the IDF may endure to destroy Hamas entirely.

This reality exposes a profound moral contradiction at the heart of the international community’s approach to Gaza.

Foreign governments expect Israel to eliminate Hamas, a mission that may require further Israeli casualties, enormous financial resources, and prolonged military operations. Yet many of those same governments insist that Israel surrender control over the political and security arrangements that follow.

In other words, Israel is expected to pay the price of victory while others reserve the right to determine what that victory will mean.

This is not merely unreasonable. It is morally indefensible.

The international community’s double standard

For years, Israel has been urged to place its security in the hands of international arrangements, diplomatic guarantees, and foreign institutions. Yet when the moment arrives to confront an entrenched terrorist organization, the willingness of those institutions to assume the necessary risks becomes considerably less apparent.

The international community has proposed stabilization forces, civilian administrations, reconstruction authorities, and elaborate diplomatic frameworks. What remains unanswered is who will actually confront Hamas if its fighters refuse to surrender their weapons or relinquish their military infrastructure.

Would foreign soldiers enter Gaza’s neighborhoods to confiscate weapons? Would their governments accept the casualties such operations could entail? And would they authorize their forces to continue fighting when international condemnation inevitably begins?

These are not secondary questions. They are the difference between a genuine security solution and another diplomatic illusion.

Israel cannot entrust the survival of its southern communities to arrangements whose enforcement depends on governments unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to sustain them.

Why the familiar alternatives cannot succeed

The destruction of Hamas’s military capabilities, however essential, will not resolve Gaza’s future by itself. Israel must confront the geographical, demographic, and political realities that have repeatedly frustrated attempts to establish a durable security arrangement.

Allowing Gaza unrestricted maritime access would create opportunities for renewed weapons smuggling unless Israel retained effective control over the coastline and its approaches. Any future maritime arrangement must prevent terrorist organizations from rebuilding their arsenals.

The Egyptian alternative is equally problematic. Cairo has consistently rejected proposals involving the mass movement of Gaza’s population into Sinai, citing security concerns, sovereignty, and the danger of permanent Palestinian displacement.

Israel cannot build its security strategy around the assumption that Egypt will suddenly reverse this position.

Nor can voluntary emigration provide an immediate or comprehensive solution. Other countries have shown little willingness to accept large numbers of permanent residents from Gaza, while regional governments remain opposed to arrangements they believe could permanently alter the Palestinian national question.

Nevertheless, Gazans who genuinely wish to leave should be permitted to do so through lawful, voluntary arrangements with countries willing to receive them. Such departures must remain a matter of individual choice rather than coercion.

The idea that Gaza can simply be handed to a new Palestinian administration is no more reassuring.

Replacing Hamas’s formal government without eliminating its armed networks, financial influence, and capacity for intimidation would risk recreating the conditions that allowed the organization to dominate Gaza in the first place.

A civilian administration operating under the shadow of Hamas’s surviving weapons would not represent a genuine alternative to Hamas rule. It would merely provide a new administrative facade behind which the same threat could eventually reemerge.

Why military control alone is insufficient

Some will argue that Israel can retain indefinite military control over Gaza without formally annexing the territory. This may appear to offer a convenient compromise, preserving Israeli security authority while avoiding the diplomatic consequences of sovereignty.

But such an arrangement would leave Gaza’s ultimate political status unresolved and Israel responsible for defending a territory whose future would remain subject to international negotiation.

It would also preserve the dangerous assumption that Israeli military control is inherently temporary, something to be reduced or surrendered whenever sufficient diplomatic pressure accumulates.

We have already witnessed the consequences of treating territorial withdrawal as a substitute for genuine security.

In 2005, Israel dismantled its communities in Gaza, removed its permanent military installations, and withdrew its ground forces. Supporters of disengagement argued that separating Israel from Gaza would reduce friction and improve Israel’s security.

Instead, Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007, built an extensive military infrastructure, and transformed Gaza into a base for rocket attacks, tunnel warfare, and terrorism. On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists crossed into southern Israel and carried out the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Disengagement did not make that atrocity inevitable. But it demonstrated the catastrophic danger of relinquishing territorial control without establishing a security arrangement capable of preventing a terrorist organization from exploiting the resulting vacuum.

Israel cannot afford to repeat that experiment.

For this reason, I believe Israel must move beyond temporary military administration and establish permanent sovereignty over Gaza.

Annexation would not automatically eliminate terrorism, nor would it relieve Israel of the responsibilities accompanying control over a civilian population. It would, however, establish that Israel’s security presence is not a temporary bargaining chip awaiting the next diplomatic initiative.

The difficult question of Gaza’s civilian population

Annexation necessarily raises a question that cannot be avoided: what becomes of the Arab population remaining in Gaza?

The answer cannot be another arrangement that allows Hamas to rebuild its military infrastructure among civilians, using residential neighborhoods as cover for weapons, tunnels, and terrorist operations. Israel must establish security conditions that prevent such a threat from reemerging.

That would require secure civilian areas, effective screening for weapons and armed operatives, restrictions around sensitive military zones, and permanent Israeli oversight of Gaza’s security infrastructure.

But permanent security control also carries permanent responsibilities. Gaza’s residents would require housing, medical care, education, employment, and functioning civilian institutions.

Security measures must distinguish between civilians and those directly involved in terrorism rather than impose indiscriminate confinement.

Annexation would also force Israel to confront the legal and political status of Gaza’s residents, including their civil rights, freedom of movement, representation, and eligibility for citizenship or permanent residency.

These questions cannot be indefinitely postponed, because sovereignty entails obligations as well as authority.

The international community should contribute substantially to the humanitarian and reconstruction costs. Israel should also facilitate lawful, genuinely voluntary emigration for those wishing to establish their lives elsewhere, provided receiving countries agree.

None of this will be simple or inexpensive. But the difficulties of administering Gaza cannot justify returning to a security arrangement that allows another terrorist army to emerge along Israel’s southern border.

Israel must determine its own future

The central question is whether any proposed arrangement can provide lasting security for the communities of southern Israel.

For too long, Israel has been asked to accept promises in place of enforceable security, international supervision in place of sovereign responsibility, and diplomatic optimism in place of strategic reality.

Annexation will bring serious diplomatic, economic, legal, and administrative challenges. These must be acknowledged and addressed. But indefinite uncertainty, with Gaza’s future perpetually subject to outside pressure and the possibility of renewed terrorist control, carries dangers of its own.

Israel cannot continue sacrificing its soldiers to eliminate threats only to surrender the strategic gains of those sacrifices at the negotiating table.

If the international community is unwilling to undertake the dangerous mission of disarming Hamas, it must recognize that Israel will make the decisions necessary to secure its own future.

October 7 demonstrated the terrible price of allowing a terrorist army to entrench itself along Israel’s border.

The next arrangement for Gaza must be judged not by the diplomatic applause it receives, but by whether it prevents that nightmare from ever being repeated.

Israel has already paid too high a price for the illusion that someone else will guarantee its security. It cannot afford to gamble the lives of its citizens on that illusion again.

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