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
Iran
Top image credit: An Iranian man (not pictured) carries a portrait of the former commander of the IRGC Aerospace Forces, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, and participates in a funeral for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, Iranian nuclear scientists, and civilians who are killed in Israeli attacks, in Tehran, Iran, on June 28, 2025, during the Iran-Israel ceasefire. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto VIA REUTERS)

First it was regime change, now they want to break Iran apart

Middle East

Washington’s foreign policy establishment has a dangerous tendency to dismantle nations it deems adversarial. Now, neoconservative think tanks like the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and their fellow travelers in the European Parliament are openly promoting the balkanization of Iran — a reckless strategy that would further destabilize the Middle East, trigger catastrophic humanitarian crises, and provoke fierce resistance from both Iranians and U.S. partners.

As Israel and Iran exchanged blows in mid-June, FDD’s Brenda Shaffer argued that Iran’s multi-ethnic makeup was a vulnerability to be exploited. Shaffer has been a vocal advocate for Azerbaijan in mainstream U.S. media, even as she has consistently failed to disclose her ties to Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR. For years, she has pushed for Iran’s fragmentation along ethnic lines, akin to the former Yugoslavia’s collapse. She has focused much of that effort on promoting the secession of Iranian Azerbaijan, where Azeris form Iran’s largest non-Persian group.

keep readingShow less
Ratcliffe Gabbard
Top image credit: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA director John Ratcliffe join a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and his intelligence team in the Situation Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. June 21, 2025. The White House/Handout via REUTERS

Trump's use and misuse of Iran intel

Middle East

President Donald Trump has twice, within the space of a week, been at odds with U.S. intelligence agencies on issues involving Iran’s nuclear program. In each instance, Trump was pushing his preferred narrative, but the substantive differences in the two cases were in opposite directions.

Before the United States joined Israel’s attack on Iran, Trump dismissed earlier testimony by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, in which she presented the intelligence community’s judgment that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” Questioned about this testimony, Trump said, “she’s wrong.”

keep readingShow less
Mohammad Bin Salman Trump Ayatollah Khomenei
Top photo credit: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (President of the Russian Federation/Wikimedia Commons); U.S. President Donald Trump (Gage Skidmore/Flickr) and Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei (Wikimedia Commons)

Let's make a deal: Enrichment path that both Iran, US can agree on

Middle East

The recent conflict, a direct confrontation that pitted Iran against Israel and drew in U.S. B-2 bombers, has likely rendered the previous diplomatic playbook for Tehran's nuclear program obsolete.

The zero-sum debates concerning uranium enrichment that once defined that framework now represent an increasingly unworkable approach.

Although a regional nuclear consortium had been previously advanced as a theoretical alternative, the collapse of talks as a result of military action against Iran now positions it as the most compelling path forward for all parties.

Before the war, Iran was already suggesting a joint uranium enrichment facility with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Iranian soil. For Iran, this framework could achieve its primary goal: the preservation of a domestic nuclear program and, crucially, its demand to maintain some enrichment on its own territory. The added benefit is that it embeds Iran within a regional security architecture that provides a buffer against unilateral attack.

For Gulf actors, it offers unprecedented transparency and a degree of control over their rival-turned-friend’s nuclear activities, a far better outcome than a possible covert Iranian breakout. For a Trump administration focused on deals, it offers a tangible, multilateral framework that can be sold as a blueprint for regional stability.

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.