Op-Ed: Bonnie Glick: America needs to stop being naive in Gaza
The "New Gaza" plan looks a lot like the old Gaza plan, Bonnie Glick warns in her latest op-ed.
News reports from Israel and Gaza indicate that Israel and the United States have started to take steps toward the “New Gaza” plan. The idea behind the plan is flawed from the get-go and should be reevaluated based on the Palestinian population in both Gaza and Judea and Samaria — where the majority of Palestinians continue to support Hamas and oppose disarming the terrorists.
Currently, Gaza is divided by a “yellow line,” with 57 percent of the territory to the east controlled by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the west remaining under the control of Hamas. The “New Gaza” plan, which has support from Washington and is being financed by Gulf Arab countries, envisions relocating upwards of two million Gazans from Hamas-held districts into newly constructed neighborhoods inside the Israeli-controlled zones. This would provide shelter for those whose homes were destroyed or damaged during the Hamas-initiated war.
The idea is for those neighborhoods to later become permanent inside the Israeli-controlled zones. All movement between the IDF-controlled zone and the terrorist-controlled zone would be screened by Israeli security in order to keep Hamas members from infiltrating the “safe” zone.
The question is: “safe” for whom? Israel will take on all the risk of screening those crossing from the terror zone into IDF-controlled areas with no support from US or Arab forces. To date, no country has offered to put boots on the ground to disarm Hamas. What does that mean? Hamas will remain fully armed and will re-arm on a continuous basis.
There is something that the well-meaning Americans are missing. We don’t live in La-La Land. We cannot naively assume that members of Hamas, who have never honored a ceasefire, will suddenly see the light and allow for the establishment of democratic governance in the enclave.
They have never wanted this nor have their financiers and protectors in Qatar, Turkey, and Iran. Why should they start now? The incentives are not there. They do not worry about being killed given the rewards of paradise. They do not worry about the so-called civilian population because that population fundamentally supports them.
They certainly do not worry about America because the terrorists and their overlords know that the U.S. won’t commit to the steps needed to fully end Hamas. Only Israel will do that. And given how Hamas and Qatar are able to manipulate global media, the terrorists know that Israel will be blamed for any terrorist activities that follow.
For years, President Donald Trump has shown that he has very good instincts when it comes to what is best for America in the Middle East.
President Trump has met with dozens of former hostages. Each hostage he has met has told him the same thing. There are 2,000,000 terrorists in Gaza. The president asked every hostage he met with the same set of questions: “Did anyone give you a piece of bread? Did anyone smile at you? Did anyone say, ‘you’re gonna make it? Hang in there’? Did anyone pat you on the shoulder?” The answer to each of his questions was always the same: no, no one. Not a single Gazan “civilian” offered any type of encouragement for over two years. Instead, the former hostages said, “they are all terrorists.”
Like all of us, President Trump wants to believe that the “innocent” civilians in Gaza were also held hostage by Hamas. But the truth does not bear that out. Polling shows support for Hamas soaring. And who can forget the many videos of Gazan civilians celebrating as Israeli hostages were dragged through their streets, beaten, bloodied, and worse. Many so-called civilians even participated in the heinous acts of October 7, 2023. One was even arrested recently in Louisiana.
American taxpayers were sold a bill of goods by the Biden administration. Biden’s USAID flagrantly violated the spirit, if not the letter, of U.S. law by providing over $3 billion to Palestinians in Gaza and to the corrupt United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), which has been in cahoots with Hamas for decades in violation of both the Taylor Force Act and anti-money laundering legislation. The Biden administration may have foolishly believed that Palestinians in Gaza could be reformed if only Hamas terrorists were not in power.
The Trump administration needs to be smarter.
Israel should not be forced to set up an artificial “yellow line” across which only those Palestinians vetted by the IDF or Shin Bet can cross. This is not realistic and will lead to rampant fake IDs and false claims of non-affiliation with Hamas. It will open Israel up to security threats that are not unlike the silent killers in Gaza who laid in wait only to pounce in the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust.
The “New Gaza” plan looks a lot like the old Gaza plan. Ignore the reality that Gazans are majority-aligned with a U.S.-designated terrorist entity, Hamas, and hope for the best. In this scenario, Israel bears 100 percent of the risk of peace, and Hamas will attempt to penetrate the yellow line on a very regular basis. Indeed, Hamas will be comfortably ensconced on the Israeli side of the line.
Just as Americans should be sickened at the idea that Jews were forced to wear yellow stars in Europe, Americans should also be sickened at the naive idea that Israelis being forced to defend an artificial yellow line in Gaza is a good idea. This naive approach to a New Gaza will only place our greatest ally in the Middle East in grave and persistent danger.
Bonnie Glick is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and served as the Deputy Administrator of USAID in the first Trump administration.