Israel needs to be asking itself the long-term question: What danger will Hamas still present to Israel over a more extended period of time?
Almost all of the attention regarding the Hamas peace deal is focused on getting back the 48 Israeli hostages, at least 20 of whom are estimated to still be alive.
That makes sense given that this has always been one of the critical goals of the war, especially for many Israelis.
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But now that it seems that, one way or another, Israel and Hamas are nearing the endgame, the strategic perspective of what the next five to 20 years will look like looms large.
Basically, the long-term question is: What danger will Hamas still present to Israel over a more extended period of time?
The first key to answering this question is to examine the IDF’s withdrawal patterns as detailed in US President Donald Trump’s conflict-ending proposal to Israel and Hamas.
Eliya Cohen, a hostage held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, is escorted by Hamas militants as he is released as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, February 22, 2025. (credit: Ramadan Abed/Reuters)
Will the incremental Israeli retreats and the final withdrawal line enable Israel to maintain systemic pressure on Hamas to keep its head low even after Trump and much of the world have stopped caring about Gaza?
Or will the withdrawals be so fast and the final one so complete that Israel will lose most of its built-in future leverage over Hamas? The next key is to look at what kind of raids the IDF will be permitted to undertake within Gaza, beyond any perimeter that the IDF may hold within the enclave’s outskirts at the end of the deal with Hamas.
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Will post-war IDF raids against Hamas be defined more like the reality vs Hezbollah in Lebanon in the October 6, 2023 era? Or, rather, will they resemble the post-November 27, 2024 era?
The reason that Israel needs a security perimeter in Gaza for a long-term period of time, even in a post-war Gaza era, is partially to prevent the next October 7 massacre by putting soldiers further up to block any invasion attempt, certainly before such an attempt reaches civilian communities.
But more importantly, Israel needs such a buffer zone as a way to maintain pressure on Hamas not to try to scramble the board and retake Gaza.
Having soldiers on a frontal perimeter is not the same as having troops deeper inside the Gaza cities. But it does project to Hamas a deterrence message – that the army still has boots on the ground in Gaza and can jump in quickly to prevent the terrorist group from a coup against a new, more Western-friendly Palestinian body governing the enclave. Also, this would make such a physical intervention more possible.
Mistakes from October 7
To be clear, it is the combination of both deterrence and the actual capability to act that makes the difference here, meaning not relying solely on deterrence to save the day – a mistake from the October 7 era that proved to be detrimental.
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Suppose the IDF withdraws from too much of Gaza too quickly and, at the end of the process, has little or no security perimeter. In that case, the military may be no better prepared than it was on October 7 to prevent future invasions and may lack leverage to block a future Hamas takeover.
However, all of this is just about the worst-case scenario if Hamas were to start recovering enough over the upcoming years to consider trying to take over again.
What about blocking Hamas from even getting to a point where, instead of regrading itself as the ragtag group of small guerrilla warfare cells, which is what it has been reduced to, it might start to see itself as having the ability to take on a national governing role?
This is where the IDF raids come in.
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On October 6, 2023, Lebanon had a government that was not ruled by Hezbollah. Still, this terrorist organization was so powerful there that it was pulling all the strings from behind the scenes and could do whatever it wanted in Lebanese territory to threaten Israel.
The world tolerated this because it embraced the failed fiction that Hezbollah – at least officially – was not running Lebanon.
One of the most significant debates concerning a post-war Gaza has been about how to avoid a situation where Hamas says it will allow some other Palestinian body to run Gaza officially, but where, behind the scenes, like Hezbollah in 2023, it too has the most guns and calls the shots
So the question is whether the US and the world will permit IDF raids and surgical strikes against Hamas terrorists who quietly try to break ceasefire rules and attempt to rebuild the group’s long-term power.
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Such permission would be akin to the way the globe has permitted the IDF to target Hezbollah since the November 27, 2024, ceasefire between Jerusalem and Beirut.
Since the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire, the IDF no longer strikes dozens or hundreds of Hezbollah terrorists and infrastructure per day, but it does frequently strike one target a few times per week.
This keeps Hezbollah on its heels and has prevented the group from reconstituting its power.
Replicating Hezbollah success easier said than done
Can the IDF replicate the same success in Gaza? Easier said than done
In Lebanon, the IDF cleared all of southern Lebanon and has not allowed the Lebanese to return. Part of the reason the IDF “got away” with doing this is that there really is no land dispute between Israel and Lebanon. In 2000, the Jewish state withdrew from any remaining areas in dispute, even according to the UN.
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Also, in Lebanon, the IDF killed far fewer civilians compared to in Gaza.
Whatever merits the ongoing hostilities between Israel and Hamas since October 7, it is important to remember that there is a 58-year dispute between Israel and the Palestinians over the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.
Any action Israel takes in the enclave will be scrutinized far more than in Lebanon.
Further, even according to former IDF chief Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Herzi Halevi, Israel, has killed or wounded over 200,000 Gazans, and this before subtracting 30%-40% who were Hamas terrorists.
This means that any future action Israel takes in Gaza that harms a civilian, even by mistake, will be treated much more gravely than in Lebanon.
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Finally, if the world mostly dislikes Hamas, there has still been a bizarre and dangerous sympathy with it as an underdog, given Israel’s two-year invasion of Gaza.
Post-war era just getting started
In contrast, the world unambiguously dislikes Hezbollah and treats it as the bad actor that it is in all respects. So, whatever understandings Trump, the next US administration, and other Western allies like Germany, France, and the UK reach with Israel about the kinds of raids it can conduct into Gaza post-war are as critical as the perimeter debate.
With the hope that all of the hostages will be home soon, the significant chapter of a post-war era is still just getting started.
[SRC] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/idf-withdrawal-future-raids-gaza-193037515.html
