Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, Resident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and leader of the organization Realign for Palestine, spoke to a December 8 Middle East Forum Podcast (video). The following summarizes his comments:
“No one dared say anything—which is that Hamas was using medical infrastructure, hospitals, schools to cowardly hide in there.”
Currently, the Gaza Strip is vertically bisected, with Hamas “fully back in control” of the “western part where the majority of the population” is, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in control of the eastern half. Reports from the Hamas-controlled area indicate that the terror group has “fully reimposed its will” on the population there.
Hamas operates three ministries out of makeshift headquarters in three Gaza hospitals: Shifa hospital in Gaza City in the north, Al-Aqsa in Dar al-Balakh in central Gaza, and Nasser in southern Gaza near Khan Younis. These ministries include the Ministry of Interior, where activists are taken and tortured; the Ministry of Economy, which not only taxes all commercial goods and public land use at the rate of 50 percent, but also facilitates “all sorts of theft of aid” from humanitarian supplies and goods; and the Ministry of Finance, the terror group’s collection arm which finances the “protection racket for Hamas.”
“And now when they want, when they call someone, they suspect someone of wrongdoing, or they want to do deals with someone or whatever, where should I meet you? Meet us at this hospital, at this hospital, at that hospital. So, we now have Hamas returning. We now have basically the, what everybody in Gaza, what a small child in Gaza knew during the war.
But no one dared say anything—which is that Hamas was using medical infrastructure, hospitals, schools to cowardly hide in there.”
The proposed International Stabilization Force, part of the second phase of the U.S.-backed peace plan authorized by a U.N. Security Council Resolution, was meant to be a multinational peacekeeping force for securing and demilitarizing Gaza. However, the Arab and Muslim countries who would populate the force have refused to confront Hamas, thereby exposing the “gap between enforcing disarmament” and the reality on the ground. “There’s a gap that I think has grown irreconcilable to the point where I think it’s flatlined. It’s effectively dead, and either Trump revives it or, khalas (it’s finished).”
A proposed interim solution would be for the International Stabilization Force to form a strike group of “private military contractors who can go in in a small, targeted fashion, take on Hamas, and then the International Stabilization Force can come in and mop up.” That prompts the question of how to build an “organic” Palestinian force in Gaza that could “sustainably take over control of the Gaza Strip.” Compounding that difficulty is “interference from Turkey and Qatar.” They have successfully “played” the Trump administration by manipulating the circumstances, contending that there is no alternative to Hamas other than being “recycled as part of the next phase.”
President Trump had enlisted Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, to form the Gaza International Transitional Authority as a transitional governance body comprising stakeholders in the region. Initial reports that Gazans would be relocated from Gaza in order to turn the area into “an investor playground” antagonized some of the Arab states, in particular Egypt. Consequently, Blair was “completely iced out” of the process, and all the details he devised for Gaza International Transitional Authority withered on the vine. There is no money for either Gaza International Transitional Authority or the International Stabilization Force, and the U.S. is adamant about not investing in nation building, given its experience in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Israelis may have enough veto power to bar Turkish troops from joining the International Stabilization Force.
The Israelis may have enough veto power to bar Turkish troops from joining the International Stabilization Force. In any case, Ankara’s role should be marginal, and it is critical that Turkey not play a part in the International Stabilization Force in Gaza’s recovery. The expectation that the Qataris would infuse a tranche of funds to train an alternative body of Palestinian security personnel is “politically untenable,” given the “antagonism” of the Netanyahu government towards Doha.
“I don’t think the Trump administration is going to block Turkey and Qatar from the second phase of the peace process,” which still remains “aspirational,” particularly in light of the number of concessions the administration extended to Qatar after the Israeli airstrike on Doha. Including Turkey and Qatar in the second phase would be “bad. I think that’s terrible. I think that’s a problem.” Even if Israel can tactically forestall Qatar and Turkey’s direct involvement, their inclusion would antagonize Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, neither of whom would want to be involved in Qatar’s plan.
How vested is the Trump administration in “preserving the political capital that was expended in making this deal happen?” The second phase of the peace plan would require the international forces to fight Hamas. “I’m very concerned that we’ve let too much time pass between phase one and phase two.” Moreover, without Hamas’s disarmament, Israel will escalate airstrikes to further squeeze Hamas, “and I see the return of war as a matter of time.”
The Gazans are divided into two groups: Two-thirds are considered refugees who “went through the UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees] system” and are descendants of the post-1948 Arabs who fled to Gaza after losing the war against Israel. Most of Hamas’s ranks come from that group. The other third of Gazans are considered pre-1948 “natives” consisting of Bedouins and tribal clans, or hamulas. There are “historical grievances between the two groups,” and the clans, brutally cowed into submission, say nothing about Hamas hiding in the “medical infrastructure, hospitals, [and] schools.” But there is a “medieval notion of revenge” prevalent among the clans, and they wait for an opportunity to strike back at Hamas.
The majority of Gaza’s civilians “are absolutely opposed to Hamas,” as they realize how its October 7 attack on Israel’s south and the ensuing war has wreaked havoc on their lives. They believe that they had a higher standard of living under the Palestinian Authority’s (P.A.) rule, despite its corruption. The P.A. used the “Palestinian national project as its ethos,” while Hamas merged nationalism with “Gaza and Palestine, with ‘resistance,’ with Jerusalem.” The truth is that there is radicalization in Palestinian society, and Gazan opposition to Hamas “does not automatically mean you’re for peace with Israel.”
The truth is that there is radicalization in Palestinian society, and Gazan opposition to Hamas “does not automatically mean you’re for peace with Israel.”
“Hamas uses … it’s kind of this disgusting ideology. It is almost like the Nazis in the sense of like using Islam and a certain strain of Islam to say … we’re merging nationalism with Gaza and Palestine, with resistance, with Jerusalem, with this, with this, with that.”
There needs to be a process to promote the notion that “people’s opinions and views are not static; they’re elastic. They’re subject to change.” The future Gaza “should be its own statelet” and be treated as a separate entity in a “federated system.” With its “geographic advantage in overlooking the Mediterranean,” it could be part of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. Although there is an opportunity for change by exploiting Gazan opposition to Hamas, that opportunity is being met with skepticism from “Israeli journalists and pro-Israel think tankers,” who cite the thousands of Gazan civilians who partook in the October 7 invasion. They say, “everybody had hostages underneath” their homes. The process of shifting public opinion in Gaza will require a “thousand-mile journey.” Although the mainstream media will not report it, building on the Gazans’ resentment of Hamas can “begin the process of transformation.”
