Yesterday, a Qatari newspaper reported that Washington has agreed to an IDF operation against the Hamas stronghold of Rafah in exchange for Israel’s abstention from retaliation against Iran. Such reports must always be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism, but regardless of the truth of this one, the war in Gaza will come to an end somehow, and Israel will then have to determine how the Strip should be administered afterward. Robert Silverman takes a look at this most difficult problem, and the domestic political considerations that make it even thornier:

The current governing coalition wouldn’t be able to agree on any postwar plan whereby Israel relinquishes even partial control, so the issue is left off of cabinet agendas. Key members of the cabinet, especially Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, want Israel to remain in Gaza permanently, as do elements within Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Likud party.

Given the ability of this issue to split the governing coalition wide open, dissolve the government, and lead to elections in the midst of a war, Netanyahu has decided not to bring it before the cabinet. . . . This highlights a general weakness of parliamentary systems like Israel’s.

Moreover, writes Silverman, the Israeli national-security bureaucracy is averse to the kind of the planning necessary for resolving Gaza’s fate. He suggests what an acceptable postwar approach might look like:

The Palestinians have a legitimate interest in a political future independent of Israel. Israel has a legitimate interest in the security conditions of a hostile Gazan neighbor located less than 40 miles from its largest city. The workable solution is for Israel to negotiate with the U.S. over the conditions of its transfer of authority in Gaza to a U.S.-led multinational body, a transfer in which it keeps sufficient ability to intervene in Gaza when needed to protect its security and in which it provides assurances of a Palestinian political horizon, also subject to governance conditions.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.