ISRAEL PLANS FOR LOCAL MILITIAS TO POLICE GAZA AFTER WAR ENDS
▶ Netanyahu seeks alternative to US-backed proposal for Palestinian Authority to take over coastal enclave
Israel is planning to create and arm local militias in the Gaza Strip to exercise influence over the enclave after the war, sources have told The National.
Israel also intends for the militias to oversee the distribution of humanitarian aid to prevent it falling into the hands of Hamas, the sources said.
Most importantly, in the long term, it wants the militias to take up law enforcement duties in the strip to replace or augment the existing police force.
“The scheme is partially designed to push Gaza into civil strife, with Hamas and militiamen fighting it out,” one source said.
“It is a repeat of the rivalries between Palestinian factions, which has weakened the Palestinians and prevented them from speaking with one voice.”
Forming militias to run Gaza’s day-to-day affairs, including matters of internal security, could reduce direct Israeli involvement in the enclave.
It would also allow Israel to focus on securing its border with the territory to prevent a repeat of the October 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israeli communities, when militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 hostages.
The attack drew a devastating response from Israel, whose air and ground campaign in Gaza have killed more than 32,400 people, mostly women and children, and injured more than 74,800, the enclave’s Health Ministry says.
However, the Israeli plan faces significant challenges given the considerable influence Hamas continues to wield over Gaza and its heavy-handed rule over the territory since 2007.
Hamas is known to have routinely held secret overnight trials for Palestinians suspected of co-operating with Israel’s security agencies, which usually ended with guilty verdicts. Executions are also carried out away from the public eye.
Israel’s reported reliance on militias in Gaza follows the rejection by tribal leaders of Israel’s plan to involve them in the postwar administration of the enclave.
The plan, reportedly drawn up by Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service, was never officially announced.
Earlier this month, a group representing Gaza’s tribes and clans said they were “not an alternative to any Palestinian political system”.
Gaza’s tribal system is a crucial part of the enclave’s social fabric and provided the enclave’s residents with an alternative to Israeli courts, police and other authorities during Israel’s occupation of the territory from 1967 to 2005.
Israel’s plan to create militias in Gaza also appears to be a substitute for the US-backed proposal that the Palestinian Authority, which governs the occupied West Bank, would take over the administration of the enclave after the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated his resolve to dismantle Hamas’s governance and military capabilities, but has also voiced opposition to the Palestinian Authority returning to power in Gaza.
Fatah, the dominant faction within the authority, was expelled from Gaza by Hamas in 2007.
Mr Netanyahu has also rejected suggestions that Israeli troops should make a full withdrawal from Gaza, saying Israel will have an indefinite overall security role there.
He has talked about relying on local Gaza “administrators” to run the strip, but has not specified where they would come from or who they would report to.
Israel has already divided Gaza into security zones, the sources said, with the intention of assigning control of these areas to militias.
According to the sources, the militias would be made up of groups who previously carried out smuggling through a network of tunnels that ran under Gaza’s border with Egypt. Is
Israel has previously used militias to maintain control of neighbouring territories, such as in southern Lebanon in 1978
rael has previously used local militias to maintain control of territories over its border.
One example came in Lebanon in 1978, when the Israeli military invaded and expelled Palestinians from the area south of the Litani River in response to a militant attack near Tel Aviv.
Israel engaged the South Lebanon Army, a militia comprising mostly Christians who had served in the Lebanese military, to help its troops police the area. Israel withdrew from the region in 2000.