Power-Sharing in Post-War Gaza: Can Israel & Arab States Find Common Ground?

Senior Israeli officials are reportedly mulling inviting Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to help oversee the post-war Gaza Strip, a plan that also includes the normalization of relations between Tel Aviv and Riyadh.

The proposal envisages the Arab-Israeli alliance working with the United States and appointing Gaza leaders to redevelop the devastated territory, overhaul its education system and maintain order. Arab officials have, meanwhile, rejected the idea because it doesn’t ensure Palestinian statehood.

“There are serious questions about how these plans will actually be implemented,” Dr. Foad Izadi, an associate professor at the faculty of world studies at Tehran University, said in an interview with Sputnik.

"There are a number of plans that Israelis and Americans are thinking about. The only problem is that these plans and the realities on the ground do not match. [For example,] they wanted to destroy Hamas. And they have not been able to do that in the last seven months. We have had Western media reports that in northern Gaza and Hamas has about 4000-5000 fighters on the ground and underground in northern Gaza, which was supposed to be cleared," Izadi said.

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When asked whether Tel Aviv’s plans on the power-sharing deal contradict the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict that’s been called for by UN Security Council and Arab states, the pundit pointed out that such a solution “has been dead for many years.”

"Israelis could actually implement the agreement. And if they had done that, we would not see all this bloodshed today. But they continued to refuse to do it. They don't want to do what is right with regard to the Palestinians," Izadi stressed.

He was echoed by Dr. Shaul Bartal, a retired lieutenant colonel and researcher at Israel's Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, who said that he doesn’t see "any Arab or international entity volunteering to enter the Gaza Strip and control it."

“Israel needs to understand that the solution is ultimately [an] Israeli military rule or a Palestinian government in which the Palestinian Authority with the consent of Hamas will enter the territory and operate in it."

Currently, any solution to the Gaza Strip issue is a temporary one and “even if a multinational or Egyptian force enters the Gaza Strip, it will be limited in time,” Bartal concluded.