American Ambush? Israel Has Lost Control of Gaza, America May Demand Full Withdraw Soon

Now that Israel controls about 50 percent of the Strip, Hamas will try to attack or push back its forces through fire and propaganda, in an ugly war of attrition reminiscent of Lebanon 1982. Alternatively, it will make use of foreign Muslim forces that will enter Gaza under an American Israeli agreement to “sort things out.” Either way, it will all bring Israel back to exactly the same point it was on October 6.

Once foreign forces enter the Strip and Israel remains behind, holding enclaves in the east and south, at some stage the “world” will notice that even in areas with an Israeli presence there is a large Arab population. Pressure to evacuate the area will increase, and Israel will be required to withdraw so that the Arabs can “unite” and live under the additional Arab or Muslim side that has entered the Strip’s territory with American Israeli approval. It is almost clear that this is planned to allow the process to develop slowly over the coming year. This serves the interests of Hamas, Qatar, Egypt, Indonesia, and Jordan, not to mention Turkey. And if these parties promise that the transfer of rule will be carried out smoothly and quietly, the United States will already make Israel agree, regardless of the question of Hamas’s disarmament.

Meanwhile, Hamas’s current objective is to advance the implementation of the agreement in such a way that, on one hand, it will pave the way for expelling Israel from the Strip, while on the other hand preventing the kind of strict enforcement that would compel it to disarm.

There is another issue as well: handing over supervision of the ceasefire to the Jordanians or others is not necessarily a dreadful idea, even if impractical. Yet the reason all the senior American officials are flocking to Israel is not only to coordinate security policy, but mainly to ensure Israel’s compliance, or more precisely, to make sure that the fragile and artificial “peace” holds, knowing that no Jordanian can truly maintain a ceasefire.

The Americans know that Hamas will continue to violate the ceasefire, meaning continue to grow stronger. But the United States, which seeks to maintain calm at this stage, knows that to achieve it, it must exert pressure only on Israel. In effect, just as Israel sold its own security for quiet over the years, now the United States is selling Israel for quiet. Because if Israel kills, the global media will break the silence far more than if Hamas kills.

It is even possible that those Muslim and Arab countries will promise the United States that only they are capable of silencing Hamas. Then a classic Arab American checkmate will unfold to force an Israeli withdrawal: Hamas is merely stepping out for a bit of “civilian refreshment” on its way back to October 7.