Israel after Netanyahu... and Gaza, where to??

Writer: Muhammad Bassam Gouda

With the Israeli elections approaching, estimates of the possibility of forming a government without Benjamin Netanyahu have begun to mount. But frankly, I see these expectations as nothing but political pipe dreams, unless they are based on real transformations within the structure of the Israeli regime and its decision-making centers. Netanyahu is not just a prime minister seeking to remain in power, but rather he is one of the politicians most capable of managing the balances within the Israeli system and dealing with centers of influence that transcend the boundaries of parties and governments.

From my point of view, we are facing two main scenarios: First, the failure of the electoral blocs to form a stable government, leading to Netanyahu continuing to run the government as a caretaker government until April 2027, or until a political settlement is reached.

The second is to form an expanded coalition, whose parties may include Gadi Eisenkot, but within a formula that ensures that Netanyahu remains prime minister until 2028, and after that, for every recent incident, the Israeli scene is still open to possibilities that are difficult to decide in advance.

As for Gaza, betting on imminent political solutions seems to me disconnected from reality and the nature of the transformations that October 7 brought about in Israeli society. Whoever believes that Israel will move towards a political settlement that will lead to stability and calm in the foreseeable future does not realize the extent of the repercussions that these events have had on Israeli consciousness, nor the nature of their continued political and security use. A real settlement means moving from managing the conflict to addressing its causes, and this is what I do not see that the Israeli government is ready to accept at the current stage, regardless of its form or the identity of its president.

Hence, relying on Donald Trump's plan or on the roles proposed for Nikolai Mladenov is not enough to justify optimism. What is important is not what is announced in statements and meetings, but rather what the facts on the ground reveal and the calculations and conditions hidden in the understandings. Whoever merely reads the headlines without looking between the lines may find himself facing a new disappointment, because managing the crisis does not necessarily mean seeking to resolve it, just as security and humanitarian arrangements do not mean recognizing the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

With regard to Hamas, Netanyahu, in my estimation, succeeded in causing serious damage to the movement’s military structure and pushing it from a state of the most cohesive military organization to a state of more fragmentation and exhaustion. But that does not mean that the movement has ended or that Israel has exhausted all the goals that it could achieve from its continued existence.

Here lies the irony: Hamas, despite the destruction and attrition it has been subjected to, may turn into one of the options that the Israeli government can employ to justify continued security control and obstruct any Palestinian political entitlement.

In this context, I see that talk about money being paid to the movement through specific channels, including what is being reported about financial contributions made by a number of merchants under Israeli control, needs to verify its details and sources, but it raises a fundamental political question: Does Israel really want to end Hamas or keep it in a weak and limited situation that can be used as an excuse to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian entity capable of managing its affairs, even if it is limited to the Gaza Strip? The fact that the movement remains in a state of exhaustion without completely ending its presence may serve a strategy based on keeping the sector in the cycle of crisis and preventing the emergence of a Palestinian political alternative that possesses legitimacy and the ability to rule.

As for the Palestinian factions of various trends, their performance in many situations has become shameful and incapable of living up to the level of disaster that the Palestinian people are experiencing.

It seems that the struggle over roles, positions, and shares has become, for some forces, more important than formulating a national project that will put an end to the tragedy and restore respect for the Palestinian person.

What is worse is that some parties do not seem concerned with restoring the national initiative as much as they are concerned with maintaining their position in any future arrangements, even if the price is more marginalization and destruction.

On the other hand, the Palestinian elites seem trapped between those who chose individual salvation and those who lost the ability to influence due to division, polarization and marginalization, and those who are still unable to transform their intellectual and political presence into tangible national action.

As for the Palestinian community in Gaza, it is living in a deep state of shock and loss after years of war, loss, and destruction in a scene that, in some aspects, recalls what the Palestinians experienced in the wake of the Nakba of 1948, when the tragedy was not just a loss of land and property, but a widespread collapse in the system of life and the sense of security and future.

For all this, I am not optimistic. My pessimism is not an emotional stance or surrender to despair. Rather, it is a summary of a reading of a reality in which I do not yet see serious indicators of fundamental change. Israel does not seem ready to give up its tools of control, the factions have not presented a national project capable of filling the void, the elites have not regained their role, and society faces wounds that exceed its current capacity to absorb.

The problem is not only about who will rule Israel after the elections, nor about the future of Hamas, nor about the fate of the Trump plan or Mladenov’s arrangements. Rather, it is about the most dangerous question: Do the Palestinians have a national project capable of turning this catastrophe into a starting point towards restoring decision-making and rights, or are we entering a long phase of managing the tragedy, while everyone competes for positions within a reality that they do not have the ability to change?