Quest for Demilitarization of Gaza Is Seen Getting Netanyahu Only So Far

JERUSALEM — After years in which Israel’s prevailing approach to the Gaza Strip was a simple “quiet for quiet” demand, there is growing momentum around a new formula, “reconstruction for demilitarization.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is only the latest in a string of Israeli leaders who saw Gaza mainly as an irritant to be controlled with periodic crackdowns and as a roadblock to resolving the nation’s broader conflict with the Palestinians. But as Israel’s latest military bout with the Islamist Hamas faction, which dominates Gaza, has proved tougher than previous rounds, even Mr. Netanyahu has begun talking about Gaza’s need for “social and economic relief” from decade-old Israeli restrictions on trade and travel.

Mr. Netanyahu, who spent two months denouncing his Palestinian counterpart, President Mahmoud Abbas, for reconciling with Hamas, seems to be opening to the notion that a unity government led by Mr. Abbas might be the way to unlock Hamas’s hold on Gaza and quell violence. While these steps have won him some praise, analysts said they were still more tactical management than long-term strategy, and held little promise unless Mr. Netanyahu shifted positions on the larger Palestinian question.

“I don’t see any vision,” said Shlomo Brom, director of the program on Israeli-Palestinian relations at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies. “He’s trying to react to what is happening, trying to minimize the damage of anything that is happening, and to return to the status quo, to a kind of equilibrium that existed before the crisis.”

Diplomatic fits and starts continued on Wednesday, the 23rd day of Israel’s latest bloody battle with Hamas and other Gaza-based militants, as Israel’s top ministers debated both a cease-fire and an expansion of the operation. Palestinian factions were still trying to coordinate a delegation to Cairo for talks.

Sari Bashi, co-founder of Gisha, an Israeli human rights group focused on Gaza, was one of several experts who said the involvement of Mr. Abbas in cease-fire talks, his April reconciliation with Hamas and shifting regional alliances created opportunities for real change compared with the cease-fires that ended Israel-Hamas fighting in 2012 and 2009.

This time, Ms. Bashi said, more can be accomplished than “vague promises to expand access coupled with vague promises to stop firing rockets, all of which have been broken.”

Nathan Thrall, a co-author of a recent International Crisis Group report on Gaza, said it was “somewhat dangerous” for Mr. Netanyahu to emphasize demilitarization “because I don’t think anyone is under the impression that he can get it any other way than doing it forcefully.” Still, Mr. Thrall said, “he can use demilitarization as a card in order to limit the amount of concessions that he makes in the cease-fire negotiations.”

As the Israeli-Palestinian tug over territory and historical narratives has devolved over generations, Gaza — a dense seaside pocket where most of today’s 1.7 million residents descend from families displaced by Israel’s establishment — has played a particularly fraught role. Israel took control of the strip during the 1967 war, then withdrew its soldiers and settlers in 2005 in what remains one of the most contentious issues in Israeli politics.

In the years since, and particularly after Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006 and routed opposition forces from Gaza the next year, Israel has maintained an uneasy occupation. It restricts fishing and farming zones; monitors goods going in and out, ostensibly for security; and gives rare exit permits, mainly for medical treatment. But it is also Israeli power lines that provide Gaza’s limited electricity and Israeli trucks that, even during the raging fighting of recent days, ferry in milk, rice and sugar.

“You cannot win against an effective guerrilla organization when on the one hand, you are fighting them, and on the other hand, you continue to supply them with water and food and gas and electricity,” said Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser. “Israel should have declared a war against the de facto state of Gaza, and if there is misery and starvation in Gaza, it might lead the other side to make such hard decisions.”

Mr. Eiland has long argued that Israel should engage Hamas as the government of Gaza rather than try to isolate it, and advocated a Marshall Plan to rebuild the battered territory. Until recently, his was a rather lone voice.

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s right-wing foreign minister, proffered a plan that would lift all limits on Gaza but seal its borders with Israel, essentially pushing the territory toward Egypt. Others imagined that making life in Gaza miserable might lead to Hamas’s downfall. But that approach failed as poverty helped foment violence, because Israel’s occupation of the West Bank hardly made it seem like paradise, and because the Palestinian struggle is inspired by ideas about liberation and identity.

Neither idea, in any case, accounted for the fact that Palestinians see Gaza as an integral part of their future state, as promised by the Oslo Accords signed in the mid-1990s.

“The Gaza Strip is not viable on its own, it’s certainly not viable being blockaded, and it’s not viable if it’s disconnected from the West Bank,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who lived in Gaza for more than a year and is now based in Ramallah, in the West Bank. “Violence is not just for the sake of violence. Violence is because there are political issues that haven’t been dealt with.”

Since the July 8 onset of Israel’s assault on Gaza, there have been growing calls from Israeli politicians and the Israeli public for a more aggressive effort to topple Hamas. Mr. Netanyahu and his defense minister have set limited goals for the troops, even as they warn that the operation could expand.

“We understand that in this part of the world there aren’t perfect solutions,” said one senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share internal thinking. “If you can, through this operation, significantly weaken them militarily, if you can reinforce with them the thinking that it’s not in their interest to shoot rockets into Israel, and if you can have the international community on board to prevent Hamas from rearming, these are elements of an endgame.”

Dore Gold, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, said demilitarization had worked elsewhere in the Middle East, pointing to United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, which required Saddam Hussein to give up weapons of mass destruction after the first gulf war in 1991, and President Bashar al-Assad’s agreement in Syria to turn in chemical weapons last summer. Mr. Gold said that in demilitarization, Mr. Netanyahu now had “a very clear strategic goal.”

But Gilead Sher, a former Israeli peace negotiator, said it was a far too limited one. Like Mr. Thrall and others, he said the key was strengthening Mr. Abbas and his reconciliation government — the opposite of Mr. Netanyahu’s tack this spring.

“We have to have a policy, not just a reactive policy and an automatic kind of response to the developments,” Mr. Sher said. “We need to get our act together vis a vis the Palestinian people in the territories altogether. The odds for that to happen right now are, interestingly, more plausible than before this last round of bloodshed.”