“The day after,” has been a shorthand since the start of the war for what will happen in Gaza once the war is over. It would more fittingly be called “the days after,” since whoever governs Gaza will also have to grapple with the problem of who will rebuild it and how, and what can be safely done with the people currently inside the strip while Gaza is being made habitable — all immediate considerations will take considerably longer to sort through than the implied twenty-four hours.
At this interval, even while the discourse is as burning as it has always been, it is worthwhile to take stock of the suggestions being proposed if only to face that none are worthy of genuine consideration. This terrible moment demands a serious leadership. Alas, there are no serious leaders to be found — not in Gaza, Jerusalem, or Washington.
President Trump has proposed relocating all Gazans to Egypt and Jordan, but both countries rejected the proposal (Egypt outright and Jordan implicitly). Nevertheless, Gazans remain terrified, wandering aimlessly, exhausted from searching for shelter after Israel destroyed nearly eighty percent of residential buildings in the strip. The ceasefire announcement on January nineteenth moved the crisis into a new phase — displacement persists, tents remain, and every day Gaza is filled with lines of children gathering to collect water.
And Hamas oversees this misery. It continues to put on displays every time it hands over Israeli hostages. These dramatics are intended to remind both the people of Gaza and the world that Hamas retains its stronghold on power within the strip. However, Hamas is well aware that its fate is a dark one. The movement’s leaders insist they represent “the day after” for Gaza and that Gaza is purely a Palestinian concern, but these pronouncements amount to little more than feeble attempts to secure a role in Gaza’s post-war future. All parties are calling on Hamas to step aside to prevent Gazans’ forced displacement and to avoid a return to war, which, according to Israeli political and military leaders, would be even more brutal than before. Israel has received the green light from Trump to inflict utter devastation.
Much like Hamas, the Israeli government has no vision for Gaza beyond displacement or renewed warfare and destruction. No political solution has been proposed by either actor. In fact, after rumors were reported that Hamas had agreed to transfer the administration of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu declared that neither Hamas nor the PA can expect to govern the strip in “the day after.” Instead, Netanyahu reiterated his commitment to Trump’s plan, which amounts to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. He needn’t have bothered responding at all, though. The rumors were false: Hamas never made such a commitment. In fact, Hamas leader Osama Hamdan stated at the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha that anyone attempting to replace the occupation would be treated as an occupier. In other words, if the PA tries to assume control, Hamas will resist and treat it as a hostile force. So, once again, Hamas and Netanyahu remain mutually reinforcing.
Egypt is preparing a plan for the day after in Gaza, which they have proposed as an alternative to Trump’s, though as of now the plan has not been made public. Nor has Egypt made plain how it intends to gain international backing for this plan, including from Israel, the U.S., Arab states, and Europeans. The plan’s stance on Hamas’ role remains unclear. Egypt has yet to clarify how it intends to convince all parties to accept its vision, knowing full well that any proposal involving Hamas’ continued presence will be summarily rejected by all parties.
Hamas has shown no flexibility in dealing with the severe threats to the Palestinian cause. On the one hand, there is a plan to forcibly remove Gaza’s residents, while on the other, the West Bank faces annexation. Netanyahu’s extremist government sees this moment as an ideal opportunity to dismantle the Palestinian cause — annexing the West Bank while displacing Gaza’s population. Yet Hamas remains entrenched in its “us or no one” stance, even at the risk of ethnic cleansing. Hamas leaders have declared that even if they are expelled to the Sinai, they will use it as a base for their resistance.
Every powerful actor — whether Hamas, Israel, or the Palestinian Authority — is jostling to impose its own vision over Gaza and in the meanwhile the Gazans themselves remain locked in a terrible limbo. The PA has worked diligently with Arab and regional actors to position itself as an alternative to Hamas. Such a plan would mean a reinstatement of PA governance over Gaza which was terminated in 2007 by Hamas’ coup. Yet, for now, the PA remains a bystander, waiting for an Arab reconstruction plan and gauging the U.S. and Israel’s positions, as well as the outcomes of any upcoming negotiations — if they even happen.
The ones excluded from all these discussions and plans are the people of Gaza themselves. They have no voice, no say in their fate. For seventeen years, they have been silenced by Hamas and besieged by both Israel and Hamas, paying the price for Hamas’ actions and Israel’s ascendant right. Now, they wait to see how Hamas and Israel will determine their fate — will they be displaced, or will war return, bringing with it more death, suffering, and starvation? The cruelty is unconscionable. The very people who launched the protest movement under the slogan “A masked man will not govern me” are once again forced to wait and watch while masked men decide their future.
As the Gazan resident Muhammad from Gaza wrote on his Facebook account on February nineteenth:
Around 90% of people living in Gaza view October 7 as a catastrophe and a profound disaster, while roughly 90% of those outside Gaza believe its residents are experiencing “glory, dignity, and honor,” having gained significant achievements. Those outside try to convince those inside that they are perceiving things incorrectly. This stark contradiction exists because those outside Gaza watched Al Jazeera, while the people of Gaza witnessed the reality firsthand.Hamas is proposing, with the support of some Palestinian figures, the formation of a so-called national unity government and the retention of the so-called “resistance weapons,” which is absurd. They pretend that world leaders’ concern is not with precisely those weapons which Hamas seeks to retain, but rather who has civil control over Gazan civilians. That proposal evinces complete detachment from Hamas political reality. They must know — as the rest of us do — that Hamas has utterly isolated itself within its so-called “axis of resistance,” and its only card left is the Israeli hostages.
While mad men in tunnels or government buildings around the world play macabre games with the innocent people trapped in Gaza’s rubble, those of us who are sane and capable of compassion must continue to repeat what the cruel in power ignore. And so it bears declaring again and again: first, to prevent the demise of the Palestinian cause, Hamas must step aside and remove any pretext for Israel to return to war or displace Palestinians from Gaza. Otherwise, it guarantees only more Palestinian blood, destruction, and death at the hands of the Israeli military machine that Israeli right-wing leaders and generals are eager to return to whirl back to full strength.
Hamas’ retreat and dissolution must involve handing over its weapons. But the question of justice for Palestine remains. And so after Hamas’ dissolution, the question of who will run Gaza must at the same time address another, dire concern: settlement expansion and settler terrorism in the West Bank. Hamas cannot be considered an isolated problem — because the true problem is not Hamas but Hamas’ victims: and those victims include not only Israelis lost on, before, and since October seventh 2023, but also the Palestinian People, who need protection, who need a state. If Palestinians rid themselves of Hamas tomorrow the problem of the occupation will remain, with no sign of its end. Smotrich has stated that his goal for 2025 is to demolish more than what Palestinians built in the West Bank.
And so the lesson of these bloody years must be what we have always known: the only solution for regional stability is the establishment of the Palestinian state along the 1967 borders. That is the only Day After Solution. All other tomorrows are merely another, ugly yesterday.