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Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced<\/a>, \u201cWe\u2019re working with the United States very closely\u201d to find countries that will \u201cgive the Palestinians a better future.\u201d \u201cIf people want to stay, they can stay,\u201d he explained, \u201cbut if they want to leave, they should be able to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n Netanyahu\u2019s call for Palestinians to leave fits all too well with a series of Israeli policies that have made Gaza ungovernable and unlivable. Amid renewed discussion of a cease-fire and the lasting defeat of Hamas, the fact remains that Netanyahu has repeatedly prolonged the conflict and prevented the creation of a credible alternative to Hamas.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced<\/a>, \u201cWe\u2019re working with the United States very closely\u201d to find countries that will \u201cgive the Palestinians a better future.\u201d \u201cIf people want to stay, they can stay,\u201d he explained, \u201cbut if they want to leave, they should be able to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n Netanyahu\u2019s call for Palestinians to leave fits all too well with a series of Israeli policies that have made Gaza ungovernable and unlivable. Amid renewed discussion of a cease-fire and the lasting defeat of Hamas, the fact remains that Netanyahu has repeatedly prolonged the conflict and prevented the creation of a credible alternative to Hamas.<\/p>\n In June, Israeli opposition politicians railed<\/a> against Netanyahu\u2019s attempts to arm and equip anti-Hamas militias in Gaza. Critics also condemned<\/a> Israel\u2019s use of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to deliver aid within the territory. And indeed, the outcome of these policies has been disastrous. Over the course of the past month, Israeli-affiliated forces killed<\/a> nearly 600 Palestinians waiting to receive aid, just the latest manifestation of the territory\u2019s death spiral.<\/p>\n Ostensibly, both Israel\u2019s support for criminal gangs and its incompetent aid rollout look like two separate parts of a broader problem: Without a \u201cday after\u201d plan, Israel\u2019s policies remain shortsighted and ineffective. If, however, Netanyahu\u2019s goal is to increase chaos and suffering in the strip to the point where its residents choose to emigrate \u201cvoluntarily,\u201d he has already succeeded.<\/p>\n The best evidence that Israeli policy seeks to sustain anarchy rather than empower a new \u201cderadicalized\u201d leadership in Gaza lies in the Palestinian actors Israel is cooperating with. Netanyahu recently confirmed<\/a> that Israel had armed a Palestinian \u201canti-terror service,\u201d led by a man called Yasser Abu Shabab. Netanyahu nonchalantly responded to questions about this policy, by claiming: \u201c[W]e activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What\u2019s wrong with that?\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, there are several things wrong with it. First, Abu Shabab\u2019s militia is not a clan. It is a gang composed<\/a> mainly of castaways from many of the extended families in Gaza that are often referred to as clans. Many are pariahs for a reason; before Abu Shabab escaped from jail in late 2023, he was serving<\/a> a twenty-five year sentence<\/a> for drug trafficking. His own family has disowned<\/a> him.<\/p>\n Second, his dubious past belies Abu Shabab\u2019s claim<\/a> that his group are working to protect the aid convoys from looting. His gang has robbed<\/a> Palestinian civilians in Gaza\u2019s lawless streets. It has regularly looted<\/a> aid convoys. That it did so in Israeli-controlled parts of Gaza, under the watchful eye of Israel Defense Forces troops, illustrates Tel Aviv\u2019s complicity. According to a senior aid worker stationed in Gaza for over a year who spoke to me anonymously, Israel would ignore Abu Shabab\u2019s forces, while taking action against both Hamas\u2019s police force and clan-affiliated forces seeking to stop them. This was confirmed by a Palestinian diplomat who hails from Gaza.<\/p>\n Israel did not just turn a blind eye; it abetted these activities. In May, U.N. officials accused<\/a> Israel of directing its aid convoys through parts of Gaza where Abu Shabab\u2019s forces waited to ambush them. The aid worker told me: \u201cI\u2019ve been in meetings with senior [Israeli] military officers who told us that we need to \u2018work\u2019 with the gangs, meaning we needed to either pay them or let them steal some aid.\u201d<\/p>\n Another way Israel collaborated with Gaza\u2019s criminal gangs was through cigarette smuggling. Working with their contacts in Egypt, the gangs stashed cartons of cigarettes in aid convoys. At the Gaza border, Israel\u2019s aid monitoring systems miraculously missed<\/a> the cigarettes. Once the convoys reached Gaza, Israeli-backed militias and gangs would loot them, steal<\/a> the cigarettes, and sell them on the black market for $200 per pack.<\/p>\n These activities illustrate that Abu Shabab\u2019s gang has little intent to replace Hamas as Gaza\u2019s governing party. It also lacks the ability to do so: The gang may be notorious, but it is a tiny<\/a> force of around 300 men. Collaborating with Israel, stealing aid, and robbing Palestinians in Gaza have also not enamored them to the territory\u2019s population. According to the aid worker, \u201cIsrael has empowered the only people hated in Gaza more than Hamas and Israel.\u201d The Palestinian diplomat claimed: \u201cHamas is hated in Gaza. But at least they keep law and order.\u201d<\/p>\n In May, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich boasted<\/a> that \u201cwe\u2019re eliminating [Hamas\u2019s] ministers [and] bureaucrats.\u201d Yet rather than search for alternatives, Israel has co-opted thugs with no interest in governance. They are not a poor alternative to Hamas; they are no alternative at all. When given a choice between lawlessness and a semblance of order under Hamas, it is little wonder that Palestinians might choose the latter.<\/p>\n In short, Israel has not mitigated Gaza\u2019s anarchy; it has exacerbated it. This seems increasingly deliberate, given that the number of armed criminal gangs receiving Israeli support has proliferated. Hamas, in turn, has created its own<\/a> plainclothes militia, ostensibly to fight the criminal gangs. The result is chaos\u2014thugs fighting thugs over aid and thus power over Gaza\u2019s civilians. As one Gaza resident claimed<\/a>: \u201cI no longer know who belongs to a clan, who\u2019s a criminal, and who\u2019s Hamas.\u201d<\/p>\n Alongside its cooperating with the Abu Shabab gang, Israel\u2019s work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation further suggests a commitment to keeping the strip unlivable. The foundation\u2014a nongovernmental organization with murky origins that is apparently bankrolled by the United States<\/a> and Israel<\/a>\u2014pledged to regulate aid delivery in Gaza and, most critically, stop<\/a> Hamas or other groups from looting and selling it for profit.<\/p>\n The foundation worked with Israel to restrict aid delivery to several sites. These were supposed to be heavily secured<\/a> by the Israeli military and foreign contractors to keep the peace. The foundation\u2019s employees would<\/a> use facial recognition scanners on-site to filter out any members of Hamas or other groups on Israel\u2019s blacklist. It would also ensure that the foundation only gave each recipient the exact amount of aid necessary, thereby preventing black market sales.<\/p>\n None of this happened. The sites are understaffed and overburdened. Israeli troops use constant<\/a> live fire\u2014including mortars and machine guns\u2014to keep aid seekers away. Only when the firing stops can they approach. An Israeli soldier described the sites as \u201ca killing field. \u2026 Our form of communication is gunfire.\u201d<\/p>\n The sites have not only failed to prevent gangs from looting the aid, but they have also institutionalized the practice. Alongside Israeli troops and American contractors, Gazan gangs guard the sites, including<\/a> Abu Shabab\u2019s group. According to the Palestinian diplomat, these individuals get first pick of the aid, allowing them to \u00a0\u201ctake the most expensive items, like flour and sugar, to sell on the black market.\u201d Only when these groups have left can civilians enter. This explains why the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation\u2019s goods are now commonplace<\/a> on market stalls throughout the territory.<\/p>\n Then there are the logistical issues. The foundation\u2019s stocks can feed less than half<\/a> of Gaza\u2019s population. Whether they could even achieve this, however, is doubtful: Whereas the U.N. used to operate around 400 aid sites throughout the territory, the foundation has just four<\/a>. Three of these sites lie on the border with the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian territory that Israeli officials have repeatedly suggested Palestinians could be expelled to. All four are in no-go evacuation areas that Israel advises Palestinians against entering.<\/p>\n All of these issues were easily foreseeable. That Israel did not act to prevent them hints at either unbelievable incompetence or deliberate design. This is the required context for understanding Israel\u2019s increased support for armed thugs and its disastrous aid rollout. It can provide aid on paper, while making receiving it a life-threatening endeavor in practice. It can claim to be empowering non-Hamas actors, even as doing so actually consolidates support for Hamas.<\/p>\n The truth is hiding in plain sight. Israel\u2019s latest operation in Gaza\u2014Gideon\u2019s Chariots\u2014calls for dramatically increasing and expanding Israel\u2019s military presence throughout Gaza while<\/a> moving the territory\u2019s population southward toward the Egyptian border. Now, Israel\u2019s defense minister has said<\/a> the strip\u2019s population will be relocated to a \u201chumanitarian city\u201d while expressing support for a broader \u201cemigration plan.\u201d<\/p>\n This is Israel\u2019s proposed \u201cday after\u201d for Gaza. Whatever cease-fire agreements are discussed or signed in the coming weeks or months, Netanyahu\u2019s policies have already laid the groundwork for the Gazan population\u2019s forced displacement.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n