I’ve tracked down or spoken to people involved with a dozen such blueprints, some more sophisticated than others. And if current cease-fire talks produce some calm — a big if — more plans may be released.
And yet … I still feel like there’s no plan.
It’s tempting to reach for famous quotes about God laughing or Mike Tyson throwing a punch. But the cold truth about a region as vexed as the Middle East is that for a plan to become The Plan, someone with credibility and broad backing needs to openly take charge of the process, giving it momentum.
Instead, political fighting — within governments and between them — as well as the calculations of Hamas, are stifling any momentum.
That means while the details of the plans are interesting — and I’ll go into them — it’s worth looking first at why they’re likely to fall short.
In Israel, Netanyahu’s governing coalition is fractured over what to do with Gaza. Some of Netanyahu’s far-right partners wish to expel the Palestinians from Gaza and build Israeli settlements there. Others want Netanyahu to promise that Israel will not occupy Gaza.
There’s not much unity or momentum elsewhere in the region, either. Many Arab officials wonder why they’re on the hook at all — why should they pay for post-war reconstruction, as some plans anticipate, when they didn’t cause the destruction?
With no real plan, or power player, to guide them, people on the ground — from terrified Gazans to Israeli soldiers — may have to improvise. They are likely to find themselves in a “day after” that’s still chaotic, even if the bombing has stopped and Hamas is dismantled.
Dangers abound in this scenario, said Jonathan Lord, a former Defense Department official who has offered his own “day-after” plan.
“They include Hamas succeeding in reconstituting itself and Israel getting swallowed into a conflict it did not plan for nor is able to afford based on all of its other competing threats,” said Lord, now with the Center for a New American Security. “It also is untenable for Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
Washington takes the lead?
As I evaluated various plans, one thing that became clear is that many analysts and officials want Washington to take charge of the immediate post-war scenario.
Some are subtle about this. Others are blunt.
“Only the United States has the capacity and resources, civilian and military, to start this up fast enough and to get other key countries to participate — and, other than Israel, only the United States has the political will to assure that Israel’s security stays as one of the paramount objectives in postwar Gaza,” states one plan from a group of former officials and scholars.
Several plans, such as ones from scholars with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Israel Policy Forum, want some sort of multinational force to handle security inside Gaza once the big battles end.
In general, such plans expect most of the security forces to come from Arab countries, and that the need for such forces will be temporary until Palestinians themselves can take over. One plan, promoted by The Vandenberg Coalition and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, suggests using private security contractors if necessary.
