What next for Gaza?

The current Israeli campaign in Gaza has two objectives. The first is to secure the return of those abducted by Hamas terrorists on October 7. The second is the elimination of Hamas as a political and paramilitary force, preventing it from ruling Gaza in the future. But military success against Hamas alone will not be enough to establish a durable peace.

Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. It is a criminal enterprise whose leaders, with the material and financial support of the Iranian regime in Teheran, have taken control of the political and administrative functions of government in Gaza. Understanding this is key to understanding both its intractability, and the magnitude of the challenge facing, not just Israel, but the rest of the free world the day after the guns fall silent.

Collateral damage in armed conflict is normally assessed in terms of the number of non-combatants killed or injured and physical damage to non-military buildings and infrastructure. In the case of the current fighting, however, any calculation of collateral damage must also include the complete collapse of civil government, which Hamas has been providing. Health care, for example, is mainly run by Hamas with the assistance of UN and other international humanitarian groups. Destroying Hamas may not necessarily entail the physical destruction of hospitals, but it does mean undoing the administrative and logistical systems whereby those hospitals are run.

Education is another item provided by Hamas in its capacity as civil government, as is justice. These functions may have been corrupted to advance the goals of Hamas and its leaders, but that does not negate the administrative roles played by the group.

Food and fuel distribution, sanitation, postal services – all of these and more have been run either directly by Hamas or under its supervision. Their restoration will have to be provided for when Hamas is no longer on the scene. This is not meant to imply that Israel is wrong in pursuing its objectives. It does, however, paint a realistic and sobering picture of what will be required once those objectives have been achieved.

The good news – such that it is – is that we have been here before.

World War II may have ended in Europe in May of 1945 with the surrender of Germany, but that is only part of the story. To ensure that there was no possibility of a resumption of hostilities with the emergence of a new and embittered generation of Germans, it was necessary to also win the peace.

On 5 June 1945 the supreme commanders of the four powers occupying Germany - the United States, the UK, the USSR and France - signed the Declaration Regarding the Defeat of Germany, formally confirming the total dissolution of National Socialist Germany and termination of any German governance over the nation:

The Governments of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Provisional Government of the French Republic, hereby assume supreme authority with respect to Germany, including all the powers possessed by the German Government, the High Command and any state, municipal, or local government or authority.

The enormity of the task assumed by the Allied Powers is not widely known or appreciated these days. With no functioning government, no public services, and no economy, Germany in the spring of 1945 simply ceased to exist as a viable state. Most of its major cities had been reduced to rubble, having been subjected to systematic bombing that not only destroyed buildings and infrastructure, but that left thousands, and in many cases, tens of thousands of civilians dead with each raid. Millions of men – the backbone of any future labour force – had been cut down in the prime of their lives while serving in the German military, leaving only the young, the elderly and the sick or crippled to carry on.

This was the legacy left by National Socialism to the German people.

Staving off disease and starvation, and providing medical aid to former enemies, became the responsibility of the victorious allies in the aftermath of the fighting. To accomplish these and commence the monumental task of repair and reconstruction, the major allied governments established the Allied Control Council (ACC).

In addition to repair and reconstruction, the ACC was also responsible for ensuring that the perverse and corrupt ideology represented by the Nazis was eradicated, thereby posing no threat to the future peace. To accomplish all this the ACC promulgated laws, directives, orders and proclamations addressing issues ranging from the abolition of Nazi laws and organizations and the demilitarization of German society, to the restoration of phone and sanitary services.

The most well-known aspect of denazification was the Nuremberg Trials, but this was only one of several initiatives undertaken by the occupying powers in post-war Germany for that purpose. The following provides a sense of the breadth of activity the Allies sought to control:

Order No. 1 of the ACC prohibited the wearing of German army uniforms. Law No. 2 permanently outlawed the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party. Directive No. 23 prohibited athletic activities related to military or para-military training. Directive No. 24 barred anyone who held significant positions in the Nazi Party, or who joined the Nazi Party prior to 1937 (when membership became compulsory), from employment in the civil service, labor unions, industry, education or the press. Order No. 4 banned the publication and dissemination of Nazi or militarist literature and mandated the handing over of any existing such literature to the Allied authorities. Law No. 57 dissolved all German insurance companies that had been associated with the Nazi German Labor Front.

All the above measures and more were also taken in varying degrees in occupied Austria and – in context – in Italy and Japan. In Germany, meanwhile, perhaps the most significant punitive action taken was the expulsion of an estimated 12 million civilians from their homes between 1945 and 1950, and their forced resettlement within that country’s truncated post-war borders, a policy that has been all but ignored by historians.

The occupation of Germany was slowly relaxed as services were restored and reconstruction was well underway. Local, state and finally national governments were gradually established in both east and west under the strict supervision of the Allied authorities. It wasn’t until the early 1950s that West Germany was re-integrated into the Western European family of nations as an independent country through a series of trade and mutual defence pacts. East Germany, meanwhile, never entirely escaped from under the thumb of its Soviet masters.

Full German sovereignty was not restored until 1991 with the coming into force of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany – signed 12 September 1990 – wherein members of the ACC agreed to the country’s reunification and the new German government formally recognized the post-war borders imposed by the Allies. The Allied Control Council was officially dissolved on 2 October 1990 and the last of the Allied troops did not leave Berlin until 31 August 1994.

The emerging situation in Gaza is in many respects similar to that of Germany in 1945 – a defeated enemy; a deeply indoctrinated population; a collapsed economy; a largely destroyed infrastructure; no viable governing authority; no public services... the list goes on and on. Just as the Allied Powers stepped in to ensure basic services were restored and infrastructure rebuilt in Germany in 1945, the international community must now be prepared to do the same for the long-suffering residents of Gaza. Most importantly, it must take steps to expunge the demented ideology of Hamas and undo the damage done by years of indoctrination of Palestinian youth.

The first thing that must be on the table for consideration is voluntary resettlement. Most of the residents of Gaza are descendants of refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars, not actual refugees themselves. This multi-generational refugee status - unique in both law and practice - has been a disaster for those trapped in it by accident of birth. Without exception, the successful solution for tens of millions of refugees worldwide since the Second World War has been resettlement and integration. This includes hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Only in the case of some – not even most – Palestinian Arabs dislocated by the fighting in 1948 and 1967 has the world taken a different and ultimately unsuccessful approach. This must end.

For those who choose to remain, Gaza must, for the time being, be governed by some sort of third-party control commission similar to the ACC whose job it will be to oversee the territory’s reconstruction and the rehabilitation of its residents. As with post-Hitler Germany – and unlike the timid policy implemented in post-Saddam Iraq – the administration must include complete control of education, media and other cultural and political institutions. A political arrangement must be imposed on Gaza to achieve freedom and prosperity for its residents. It goes without saying that such an arrangement must include the complete severing of ties with the Iranian regime.

Under these conditions, there is every reason to be hopeful that Gaza can emerge from the current conflict as a sovereign, demilitarized state, but it will take time and treasure to achieve this goal. This is a task best performed by a small coalition of democracies rather than Israel and certainly not the United Nations. Israel should have a place at the table, but it probably should not lead the effort.

There are many states of comparable size to Gaza that might serve as models to emulate. Three of these are situated in Europe: Liechtenstein (160 square kilometres and a population of 38,800), Monaco (2 square kilometres and a population of 49,200) and Andorra (468 square kilometres and a population of 79,000). Other sovereign states of comparable size that are not in Europe are Singapore and Maldives, occupying 728 and 298 square kilometres respectively. In the Middle East itself, the Arab Kingdom of Bahrain, with a population of approximately 1.5 million, spans some 760 square kilometres.

October 7 is a turning point in the Middle East. It remains to be seen whether it is for better or worse. For decades Palestinian refugees and their descendants have been used as pawns against Israel, first by the Jewish state's Arab enemies, and most lately by the Iranian regime as it seeks to destabilize the Arab world and undermine the growing peace between Arabs and Jews. This is not the place to recount the long and lamentable history of manipulation and abuse the Palestinian refugee community has endured at the hands of its Muslim brothers. Suffice to say that the result has been the creation of a fertile recruiting ground for gangs like Hamas and Hezbollah, and before them the half-dozen or so that comprised the PLO – including Fatah, the chief rival of Hamas headed by Mahmoud Abbas, "president" of the Palestinian Authority since 2005 when elections for the position were last held.

All this occurred under the eyes of an international community that – I must say it – has seemed more concerned with expiating guilt for the Holocaust by finding fault with Jews than it has with alleviating the plight of the Palestinian refugee community. For years Israel has accepted the role of whipping boy in the Middle East, tolerating the consequent low-intensity warfare imposed on its citizens by this status quo. This tolerance has now come to an end. The only question that remains is whether the international community understands this and has the courage to take the steps necessary to finally solve this problem.