Preparing for the Next Battle of Gaza

The current situation in Gaza is a laboratory for the kind of conflicts that we are likely to see in the immediate future throughout the world. The best case solution would be to broker an agreement where the Hamas radicals and the more moderate Fatah faction can agree to accept that the existence of Israel is a fact and for Hamas to stop shooting rockets at the Israelis and threatening to annihilate them, which Hamas is not in a position to do in any case. If that fails, the big question for America and her allies is whether or not to support a Fatah military attempt to retake Gaza.

Fatah is now like 'Sarge' in the Beetle Bailey cartoon. It has gone over the brink and is holding onto a tree on the side of the cliff. The Americans and Israelis have offered Fatah a rope. The question is both whether the Fatah leadership will grab it and whether the Americans and Israelis will know how to handle the lifeline. None of this is a given. This is, at best, a tenuous situation. It might lead to a happy ending, or it might be a debacle. Everything depends on how Fatah handles Israeli and American support, and how they handle Hamas.

First, Fatah has to commit to real reform and transparency. Its own people and its allies have every right to demand it. There should be a rigorous World Bank audit of how every dollar in aid is spent. Hamas did not win the last election because of its stand toward Israel; it won it by providing the only responsive social services in the Palestinian territories. Fatah must work with non governmental relief agencies to create a truly responsive social service network that will be prepared to create a climate of confidence in the West Bank and prepare the political battlespace before Fatah counterattacks militarily in Gaza. Once Fatah regains military control, it must be prepared to win the battle for the hearts and minds of Gaza's population. If they cannot do that, no amount of military force is relevant.

From an American and Israeli perspective, we must keep our fingerprints off the direct planning for the Gaza counteroffensive, which will take at least a year to prepare. We should finance the Jordanians, Egyptians, and Sunni Gulf states to provide training, advisors, and equipment to the abysmal Fatah security forces. All of those nations have a vested interest in eliminating the unholy alliance between Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian Quds organization. However, direct American or Israeli involvement in the conflict would likely be the kiss of death for Fatah.

It will likely take at least a year for Fatah to be ready to launch a counter-attack in Gaza. The Fatah security forces must be instilled with pride, training and discipline to match Hamas. They need to gain confidence in their reformed political leadership; if Fatah can reform, and that is a big if, the Israelis have to accept the fact that, to win in a stand up fight, Fatah will need a reasonable amount of tanks and some attack helicopters. The quantity of such weapons needed to retake Gaza would never pose even a minimal threat to Israel, but the thought of such weapons in the hands of any Palestinians in any amount has long been anathema to the Israelis.

The is won't happen overnight, and that is not necessarily a bad thing The best way to prepare the battlefield for the return of Fatah is for the secular and relatively sophisticated Gaza Palestinians to live under the fundamentalist yoke of Hamas for a while under continued western sanctions. Let's see how they vote in eighteen months.

The Hamas victory in Gaza was not necessarily a bad thing. The Palestinians have long needed a dash of cold water. Their great weakness is that the Palestinians have always found others to blame. To be sure, they will still try to do so. Until they realize that their future is in their own hands, they will never be a viable society.

We should encourage our Arab allies to train the Palestinians differently than we have done with the Iraqis. We have tried to build the Iraqi Army in our image. This is alien to Arab soldiers who have a much different view of male bonding and unit cohesion. Our Arab friends should be encouraged to give the Palestinians basic weapons familiarization and small unit skills training as well as building clearing drills. However, they should pick the best and brightest of the students and make them small unit officers and NCOS. At that point, they should allow the students to work out their own tactics. They know how Hamas fights. Ironically, this is how the Israelis built their nascent army in the 1940's.

If we Americans can indirectly help our Arab allies solve this situation it could prove to be a model for how we handle such challenges in the future.

Gary Anderson was a UN Observer in Lebanon and Gaza and has traveled extensively in the region. He has also served as a counterinsurgency advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.