No, Israel Doesn’t “Occupy” Gaza

In 2014, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled that Israel should be considered an occupying power in Gaza, despite the fact that every Israeli soldier and civilian was removed nine years earlier. The ICC’s conclusion is frequently echoed by various UN bodies as well as journalists and politicians; as Gilead Sher and Dana Wolf explain, it is patently absurd:

Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations outlines legal requirements for occupation, which include the physical existence of hostile troops in an area, so that the legitimate government is incapable of exercising effective powers of government. Conversely, military withdrawal is a prerequisite for clearly demarcating the end of occupation. As such, never since the enactment of the Hague Regulations has an occupation been recognized without a foreign army present. [Yet] the international community still erroneously perceives the [Gaza] Strip as a territory under Israel’s responsibility, . . . without consideration of the fact that Israel does not meet the basic criteria of an “occupier” under international law. . . .

This is why the international community should intervene and amend the legal distortion that has been perpetuated since Israel’s disengagement from Gaza. It should explicitly declare that Israel’s occupation of Gaza has ended. In exchange for such a formal declaration, Israel should [offer to] join the international effort to rehabilitate Gaza under careful security measures, [with] international coordination and supervision. Israel could further propose that if, as a result of successful rehabilitation, Hamas’s attacks on Israel subside for an extended period, it would seriously consider the alleviation of the closure of the Strip in coordination with Egypt, and the construction of a Gaza seaport. Everyone would benefit except the terrorist groups in Gaza.

Read more at War on the Rocks

More about: Gaza Strip, ICC, International Law, Israel & Zionism

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF