Follow us on social

The ghost of Ariel Sharon hovers over the Gaza Strip

The ghost of Ariel Sharon hovers over the Gaza Strip

Washington offers little but ineffective bromides as Israel shapes 'the day after.'

Analysis | Middle East

Ariel Sharon, more than any other Israeli or Palestinian leader, has defined the terms and the context of the war in the Gaza Strip.

There are two decision points in this narrative that exercise a decisive influence on the current situation.

The first is the IDF’s reoccupation of the entire West Bank beginning in April 2002 –Operation Defensive Shield. This military operation effectively ended the bargain sealed at Oslo, eliminating Israel’s interest in empowering the PLO in the West Bank and indeed in the Gaza Strip as well. Like the current conflict, Defensive Shield was a military operation with wide-ranging political and security ramifications.

The second is Sharon’s decision to evacuate all settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip in September 2005. This surprising policy, was taken by an aging leader anxious to establish principles that would survive his passing. Redeployment marked Sharon’s recognition that settlements and occupation by the IDF—at least in Gaza -- were not sufficient guarantors of Israel’s security. By removing settlers and the IDF from Gaza proper, Sharon hoped to force Egypt to police Gaza and to make Gaza into a foreign country for which Israel’s responsibilities as an occupying power – responsibilities that constrained its freedom of military action against potential security threats– no longer applied.

On this important point however, Sharon’s intentions were partially thwarted. Egypt continues to resist becoming Gaza’s jailer. And Israel’s foreign ministry ruled that because Israel, after its redeployment, remained in “effective control” of Gaza, Israel could not disavow its responsibilities as an occupying power.

Nothing that has happened since Israel’s redeployment in 2005 — including the electoral victory of Hamas in elections or the movement’s subsequent assumption of power in Gaza, or indeed the current war itself, contradicts this view. The current war offers considerable evidence that Israel has indeed been able to conduct policy in Gaza according to the rules of war — a policy supported as self-evident by Washington and others.

The new reality Israel is creating in Gaza is the product of blood and fire rather than negotiation or diplomacy, certainly during the critical period when the territorial outlines of the future are being established. Israel will not easily permit the intrusion of considerations other than those it deems vital in the conduct of its operations. The war’s first month offers ample evidence attesting to its success in this regard.

Just as the Second Intifada signaled the end of Oslo, the model for Gaza imposed by Sharon after 2005 has failed. It will not be resuscitated. In tomorrow’s Gaza, the IDF sees no value in empowering the PLO, or indeed any Palestinian actor, to exercise anything but the most nominal governing and security powers — under an ever-present Israeli eye. From now on, Israel will go back to the future — attempting to reinvigorate a model used in the first decade of occupation in which Israel exercises exclusive security control while empowering strictly local authorities to conduct day to day life.

The international community finds itself woefully unprepared and indeed uninterested in confronting the faits accompli that have always been the hallmark of Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A particular responsibility falls upon the US in this regard. Yet the policy bromides offered by the Biden administration reflect this ambivalence.

Today US policy has given Israel the space to wage war against Gaza. Washington offers clichés about Gaza’s future and options for the day after that have little relationship to the facts that Israel is creating on the ground. For Benjamin Netanyahu, there is no win-win solution, but rather only one dictated by Israel, the peace of the victor.

This article has been republished with permission from Geoffrey Aronson.


Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Army Chief of Staff General Shaul Mofaz (L) arrive for a meeting with army officers at the Nahal Oz military outpost on the border with the Gaza Strip. April 10, 2001. (Reuters)

Analysis | Middle East
US Navy Arctic
Top photo credit: Cmdr. Raymond Miller, commanding officer of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Bainbridge (DDG 96), looks out from the bridge wing as the ship operates with Royal Norwegian replenishment oiler HNoMS Maud (A-530) off the northern coast of Norway in the Norwegian Sea above the Arctic Circle, Aug. 27, 2025. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Cesar Licona)

The rising US-NATO-Russia security dilemma in the Arctic

North America

An ongoing Great Power tit-for-tat in which U.S./NATO and Russian warships and planes approach each other’s territories in the Arctic, suggests a sense of growing instability in the region.

This uptick in military activities risks the development of a security dilemma: one state or group of states increasing their security presence or capabilities creates insecurity in other states, prompting them to respond similarly.

keep readingShow less
Trump Vance Rubio
Top image credit: President Donald Trump meets with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance before a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Monday, August 18, 2025, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

The roots of Trump's wars on terror trace back to 9/11

Global Crises

The U.S. military recently launched a plainly illegal strike on a small civilian Venezuelan boat that President Trump claims was a successful hit on “narcoterrorists.” Vice President JD Vance responded to allegations that the strike was a war crime by saying, “I don’t give a shit what you call it,” insisting this was the “highest and best use of the military.”

This is only the latest troubling development in the Trump administration’s attempt to repurpose “War on Terror” mechanisms to use the military against cartels and to expedite his much vaunted mass deportation campaign, which he says is necessary because of an "invasion" at the border.

keep readingShow less
President Trump with reporters
Top photo credit: President Donald Trump speaks with members of the media at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on Sunday, September 7, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

Is Israel forcing Trump to be the capitulator in chief?

Middle East

President Donald Trump told reporters outside a Washington restaurant Tuesday evening that he is deeply displeased with Israel’s bombardment of Qatar, a close U.S. partner in the Persian Gulf that, at Washington’s request, has hosted Hamas’s political leadership since 2012.

“I am not thrilled about it. I am not thrilled about the whole situation,” Trump said, denying that Israel had given him advance notice. “I was very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect of it,” he continued. “We’ve got to get the hostages back. But I was very unhappy with the way that went down.”

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.