A US plan splits Gaza in two — one zone controlled by Israel, one by Hamas
Jared Kushner floats a plan to rebuild the Israeli-controlled half of the Palestinian enclave until Hamas can be disarmed.
The US and Israel are considering a plan that would divide Gaza into separate zones controlled by Israel and Hamas, with reconstruction only taking place on the Israeli side as a stopgap until the militant group can be disarmed and removed from power.
Vice President JD Vance and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner summarised the thinking in a news conference Tuesday in Israel, where they had arrived to press both sides to abide by the current ceasefire, under which Israel pulled back its troops so that it now controls about 53 per cent of the enclave.
Vance said there are two regions in Gaza, one relatively safe and the other incredibly dangerous, and that the goal is to geographically expand the area that is safe. Until then, Kushner said, no funds for reconstruction would go to areas that remain under Hamas’s control, and the focus would be on building up the safe side.
“There are considerations happening now in the area that the IDF controls, as long as that can be secured, to start the construction as a new Gaza in order to give the
Palestinians living in Gaza a place to go, a place to get jobs, a place to live,” Kushner said, referring to Israel’s military by its initials.
Arab mediators are alarmed by the plan which, they said, the US and Israel have brought up in peace talks. Arab governments strongly oppose the idea of dividing Gaza, arguing it could lead to a zone of permanent Israeli control inside the enclave. They are unlikely to commit troops to police the enclave on those terms.
A senior administration official said it is a preliminary idea and updates would be given in the coming days.
The Trump-brokered ceasefire that took effect October 10 drew a yellow line on the map that marks the Israeli military’s area of control. It is essentially a thick cushion hugging the enclave’s borders and surrounding the area of Palestinian control. The Israeli zone is supposed to shrink as various benchmarks are hit.
At its core, the idea of a divided Gaza gets at the still unresolved difficulties of disarming Hamas and establishing an alternative government that could oversee the enclave and create an environment that would be safe for the billions of dollars in investment needed to rebuild.
Trump’s peace plan calls for a panel of technocrats to administer Gaza and an international force to provide security, but details haven’t been worked out. Many Arab governments believe the enclave needs to be overseen by the Palestinian Authority, which governs much of the West Bank, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is strongly opposed to allowing it a role.
White House officials said Kushner is the driving force behind the split-reconstruction plan, having devised it alongside special envoy Steve Witkoff. They said Kushner has briefed Trump and Vance on the plan and has secured their support.
Some officials, however, note the plan still needs to resolve significant questions before becoming viable, including how to provide daily services for Palestinians living under an Israeli-occupied portion of Gaza, assuming they were even willing to relocate there.
The administration had considered rebuilding areas that Hamas didn’t control even before a ceasefire was reached, in hopes it would improve conditions for Palestinians and serve as a symbol of a post-Hamas Gaza, officials said.
There is also concern about how to make sure Hamas members don’t enter the Israeli side. One idea proposed by some US officials would be a vetting program led by Israeli authorities.
Some mediators said the US appeared to be trying to buy time while figuring out the difficult issues of post-war governance.
The top US priority is maintaining adherence to a ceasefire that has been challenged by a string of incidents and disputes over Hamas’s failure to return the bodies of some of the dead hostages still in Gaza. The administration sent Vance, Kushner and Witkoff to Israel to keep up momentum. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is due to arrive on Thursday.
Hamas hasn’t committed to disarm. Instead, it has cracked down on opponents to reassert its control over Gaza’s population, most of which is outside the Israeli area of control. It has taken shots at Israeli soldiers on a number of occasions, the Israeli military has said.
The idea of a divided approach to reconstruction received backing by some analysts in Israel, who saw it as an opportunity for Israel to further undermine Hamas.
The plan to build up Israeli-controlled areas in Gaza could weaken Hamas politically while enabling Israel’s military to conduct operations that further erode the group’s ability to fight, said Ofer Guterman, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies.
Over time, Israel could take more territory from Hamas’s control, while at the same time strengthening a security buffer between Israeli towns near the border with Gaza that were attacked during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, assault that sparked the war.
“It’s doable and optimal,” Guterman said of the plan.
The initiative, which is still in the early stages, is influenced by previous Israeli plans to create Hamas-free islands within Gaza to undermine the militant group’s grip on power, said Amir Avivi, a former senior defence official still close to Israel’s security establishment.
Those plans never got off the ground and were criticised as unworkable. A more limited Israeli and American-backed effort to create Hamas-free zones for distributing food was plagued by chaotic scenes and deaths, as aid-seekers made their way through combat zones to the undersupplied sites.
The idea wouldn’t be to permanently partition Gaza, Avivi said, but to put pressure on Hamas to disarm. Avivi said he wouldn’t be surprised to see Israel try to expand its zone of control if Hamas doesn’t step aside.
Any plan to split Gaza is likely to face serious resistance from Palestinians, said Tahani Mustafa, a fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations.
From the start of the war, Palestinians have worried that Israel would try to replicate in Gaza what it has done in the West Bank, with Israel taking full security control while forcing Gazans into small, unconnected areas of control.
“Gaza has represented the only patch of territorial contiguity for a Palestinian state,” Mustafa said. “A plan like this could end up creating what Palestinians feared.”
The Trump plan’s demand that Hamas disarm without any concrete guarantees of a peace process is the core of the problem, he said. “Ultimately, the reality will be one of deadlock,” he said.
Wall Street Journal
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