Thread by @afalkhatib

1🧵The Gaza Vacuum? Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an activist hailing from Gaza, argued U.S. engagement would be necessary to allow the ceasefire to graduate into a broader peace process that could truly pave a new path.
newsweek.com/trump-israel-h…

2🧵What that would take, he said, is "U.S. involvement," including "U.S. pressure on the Israeli government to roll back some of the aggressive occupation-oriented policies in the West Bank, and then Hamas to really slow down from the violent rhetoric that's coming out towards the clans, towards the Gazan people and their feeling that they just got legitimized by the United States because Trump said, 'Oh, we're giving them time and space to do what they want.'"

3🧵Alkhatib argued that a battle-hardened Hamas, despite its losses throughout the conflict, would remain poised to fill any power vacuum that could emerge in post-war Gaza once the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pull back.

4🧵"And it's not just the physicality of the Israeli withdrawal that's creating the vacuum, but it is the multi-layered absence, if you will, of state and societal institutions," Alkhatib told Newsweek, "when you don't have schools, when you don't have local councils, when you don't have jobs, when you don't have security services, when you don't have the police, when you don't have judges, when you don't have courts that are functional, when you don't have a broad political context that Gaza is part of."

5🧵"That sense of physical, political, societal and philosophical vacuum is just exacerbated and certainly worsened by the sense of just the hellish landscape that you have in Gaza," he added. "And so, the totality of the aforementioned is what causes the vacuum."

6🧵Already, he said, there were signs that Hamas was taking the opportunity to regroup and settle scores with rivals as the current situation "gives Hamas time, without a military solution or a political solution, to reestablish itself, and kind of reemerge as the only viable entity that can facilitate life in Gaza."

7🧵Yet Alkhatib said that the PA still maintained "very professional" security forces capable of overseeing Hamas' disarmament and the dismantling of militant infrastructure in Gaza—if it was sufficiently supported in doing so.

8🧵"I do believe the Palestinian Authority can take that on, if they're really given adequate support and the personnel and the mandate and the freedom to operate," Alkhatib said, "but building that capability and capacity is going to take time, and it has to be framed as part of institution and state-building, rather than Fatah is coming in and building."

9🧵And time is of the essence, he argued, as, "unfortunately, there's a diminishing opportunity for moderate Palestinians, not just the path the PA, but even those who are truly independent, even under a technocratic committee."

10🧵Like Alkhatib, however, Lianne Pollak-David felt time was already running out to find and implement an effective substitution for Hamas. "The next immediate task is establishing the international/inter-Arab task force that will dismantle Hamas," Pollak-David said. "Ideally this should have been done before the IDF 50% withdrawal. We are already seeing now how Hamas is taking back some charge in areas where the IDF pulled out."

"Every day that this happens without there being an alternative force makes it harder to implement the plan later," she added. "So, this is very time-sensitive."