Israel Is Reviewing a Proposal to Install a “Moderate Muslim” Puppet Regime in Gaza

The plan, which Israeli officials have called “brilliant,” calls for re-educating Palestinians, destroying UNRWA, and razing refugee camps

Abdullah Azzam Mosque is reduced to rubble by an Israeli strike in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, on July 17, 2024. Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty.

On Thursday, the Israeli Knesset voted overwhelmingly to thwart any effort to establish an independent Palestinian state and, in effect, doubled down on Israel’s longstanding project of confining Palestinians in increasingly isolated and uninhabitable ghettos. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he opposes any ceasefire with Hamas that does not allow for him to continue his military campaign in Gaza and has worked to sabotage a negotiated end to the war.

At the same time, the Israeli government has been entertaining dystopian and fundamentally unrealistic “post-war” plans for governing Gaza—either through occupation, or, as one influential paper suggests, installing a “moderate Muslim” puppet regime.

Israeli security officials praised the recent academic paper recommending the elimination of democracy in Gaza and the rebuilding of Gazan society into a “moderate Muslim entity” in the mold of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. In the plan are several ideas for entirely remaking Gazan society, including razing refugee camps, banning “every existing” schoolbook, and establishing total control of the media. The proposal also calls for the elimination of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and shutting down the social and humanitarian programs run by Hamas and replacing them with an alternative Israeli-controlled structure. 

“We, at the [Israeli] National Security Council, have read [this] excellent document,” its director Tzachi Hanegbi told i24 News in a recent interview, “and at the end of the day we, the decision makers, will have to take into account this analysis, because it’s a brilliant analysis.”

While some prominent Israeli political leaders and government officials have advocated a more extreme plan for Gaza that would entail a permanent military occupation or even the removal of the entire Palestinian population, the academics’ proposal opens a window into the range of options being contemplated at the highest levels of power in Israel. As Israeli officials conduct intellectual war games for a future in Gaza, Palestinians remain trapped in a hellscape of constant bombardment, military occupation, starvation, and threats of annihilation.

According to the four Israeli academics who authored the paper, which is titled “From a Murderous Regime to a Moderate Society,” it has had significant influence in the halls of power. “It was very well received. We know it was well read and circulated. Very senior people got it more than once with a recommendation of reading and discussing it,” Israeli professor Netta Barak-Corren said on a recent podcast hosted by Dan Senor, the former spokesperson for the U.S.’s military occupation regime in Iraq. 

The “day after” plan for Gaza received praise from the prominent American neoconservative who was a key player in Iraq in 2003, when the Bush administration imposed a sweeping agenda to forcibly erase the Ba’ath Party ideology from Iraqi society. “The entire effort, I think it’s extraordinary,” said Senor on his podcast. “I know a number of Israeli officials who feel that way as well. It’s certainly having an impact, and making the rounds.” Senor was a senior advisor to L. Paul Bremer, who ran the Iraqi occupation in its early stages and implemented a regime that was disastrous for Iraqis and helped spark a decade-long insurgency against American forces.

The paper was distributed to senior officials in Israel’s national security establishment, including staff at the National Security Council, the upper echelons of the Israeli Defense Forces and the Shin Bet intelligence agency starting in February 2024. It was also presented to the five members of the War Cabinet—the decision-making body which, up until its recent disbandment, had the final say over Israel’s policies in Gaza.

Israeli news outlets did not report on it until June, however, noting that the 28-page document hadn’t been released to the public. Danny Orbach, one of the paper’s authors and a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explained in a Facebook post that they kept it private because of “specific operational recommendations” in the original. Drop Site News obtained a copy shortly after that—which, at 32 pages, appears to be an edited or updated version—and the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University recently posted the 32-page version, as well.

The paper, which you can access in full here, aggregates lessons from four different historical regime change operations—Japan and Germany after the Second World War, and Iraq and Afghanistan after the U.S.-led invasions—and outlines recommendations for Israel’s current efforts to overthrow the democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza.

The social order before October 7, the authors claim, facilitated the emergence of a “socio-political structure which ... directly benefited Hamas.” Its breakdown, due to “the movement of many residents into ad-hoc safe zones.... the destruction of houses, public buildings and infrastructure.... the death of tens of thousands of the residents of the Strip, a significant portion of them terrorists, but alongside them more than a few civilians.... the humanitarian hardship and hunger” has created a “spectrum of possibilities,” which Israel must navigate carefully to ensure its desired outcome.

In December 2023, one of the paper’s authors, Dr. Harel Chorev of Tel Aviv University, appeared on the official IDF podcast, Ma’arachot, to discuss the question, “Can Hamas be eliminated?” He emphasized that Israel’s destruction of Gaza was an essential component of the efforts to marginalize Hamas: “Once you make it clear that [Hamas] not only did not win, but that it has brought about a horrific catastrophe upon itself, and also upon its people ... and when this ends with Hamas’s metaphorical and non-metaphorical corpse laying on the floor, robbed and finished off, this will have a very positive echo.”

Chorev’s framing of the destruction of Gaza and the immense human suffering it is causing as achievements of the IDF is consistent with recent comments from IDF field commanders like Brigadier General Yair Palai, who oversees thousands of Golani Brigade soldiers in Gaza. “When the residents of Gaza come back here, someday, they will not believe what Hamas did to them and their homes,” Palai said in an interview published by Israel Hayom. “It’s all [Hamas’s] responsibility. It destroyed their lives, their possessions.”

The strategic mentality reflected in these comments long predates the current Gaza war. More than a decade prior to the October 7 attacks, Dan Schueftan, a former lecturer at the IDF’s National Security College, the equivalent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, explained: “Ground invasions should be carried out, perhaps under the banner of ‘harming enemy forces,’ but their real significance is the devastation they leave behind them. I don’t mind that as a pretext we claim that there is some military objective, because that’s required by all these International Law people, so we can bring in some lawyer to explain how to do it, but the main thing is that [we understand] very clearly [the real purpose].” 

Blaming Hamas for Israel’s destruction of Gaza is essential to the plan to replace it.

The fourth co-author of “From a Murderous Regime to a Moderate Society,” Nathaniel Palmer of Bar-Ilan University, also articulated his view that the damage the war brings upon the Palestinian population as a whole is a benefit. “Who should [be made to] feel defeated? Hamas or the ordinary Palestinian? My position is quite clear and it is that based on the lessons from the historical record, it is the ordinary Palestinian[s who] should feel defeated,” Palmer said in an interview with Yediot Aharonot. The regime change proposal itself notes: “It’s important that among the Palestinian public, too, there will be widespread understanding that Hamas has been defeated.”

The post-“total defeat” rehabilitation plan envisioned in the paper seems increasingly irrelevant. Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades and its allies from other armed factions in Gaza have demonstrated a significant capacity to sustain a guerrilla war against the Israeli assault. At the same time, the Israeli military and political leadership remains committed to the implementation of a genocidal policy that would render Gaza permanently uninhabitable. And reviewing the plan’s details offers important insight into some of the concrete ambitions of Israeli policy planners, undermining claims that the assault on Gaza is a targeted operation focused solely on Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. 

Among its recommendations, the paper calls for:

Razing refugee camps and replacing them with “orderly” Israeli-built housing

The camps themselves, the paper notes, make up a significant portion of Hamas’s social base. “We recommend destroying the infrastructure of the refugee camps to the ground, and building orderly neighborhoods in their stead, which will ensure appropriate living conditions, and into which Gazan families will return,” it concludes. But the authors state this supposed rebuilding process, which is both technically impossible and politically unlikely, will have to wait until after a “total defeat” is inflicted on Hamas: “the historical record shows that until a total defeat [has been achieved]—there is no point in initiating attempts to carry out ... restoration of systems.”

Imposing a censorship regime on the education system, media broadcasts, and youth movements

The plan calls for the removal of “particularly extremist educators,” as well as an immediate ban on “every existing school book” and suggests replacing them with alternative textbooks based on the curricula used in UAE and Saudi Arabia. In February, around the time the paper was first distributed, the former head of the Mossad and Israel’s National Security Council, Yossi Cohen, stated: “The Emiratis did an amazing job with their school books. There were multiple examples [changes they've made], saying Israel is with us, an ally, an important ally. If only there was a [Palestinian] leader of the caliber of Mohammed bin Zayed, who is a giant.”

The paper also proposes the imposition of a censorship regime over media broadcasts, higher education institutions, and youth movements. The commissions overseeing the censorship would be staffed by “moderate Palestinians,” so as not to be perceived as an arm of the Israeli occupation. 

The paper rounds out its reeducation plan by proposing to circulate to Palestinians in Gaza materials about “Israeli history and culture” aimed at “developing empathy and encouraging peace and tolerance.” Similar mechanisms of surveillance and subjugation have been honed by Israel's Shin Bet and employed continuously against Palestinians citizens of Israel ever since its founding.

Installing limited government under constant threat by Israel

While Palestinians would be subjected to an Israeli-mandated brainwashing program, the day-to-day administration of Gaza would be handled by a mix of local leaders amenable to Israel’s agenda, and foreign Arab forces. In order to compel their collaboration, the authors suggest wielding over them the constant threat of a permanent Israeli military rule: “Israel must make it clear to its partners that it has an alternative: if no effective day-after solution for the control of Gaza is achieved, it will have no choice but to take the responsibility of itself and reassume control over Gaza. This has major significance, seeing as in the current Palestinian state of mind, loss of land is a much greater threat than the destruction of buildings or the loss, even if massive, of human lives.”

Similar allusions to, and in some cases explicit calls for a “second Nakba” have been made by several Israeli politicians. Knesset member Gideon Sa’ar, head of the right wing New Hope party, which joined the emergency unity government established in October and quit the coalition in late March 2024, proclaimed: “Gaza must be smaller by the end of the war. ... They must lose that territory ... they must pay a price, with them, human life or damage to property is less important—but this, they understand.”

Pushing UNRWA out of Gaza

The Israeli government has long sought to obliterate from existence the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA. Established in 1949 to protect the right of return of Palestinians violently expelled from their land and homes during the establishment of the state of Israel, UNRWA serves as the premiere provider of humanitarian and educational programs in Gaza. Throughout the 9 months of war in Gaza, Israel has falsely characterized UNRWA as an affiliate of Hamas and has bombed its facilities and killed its staff. Israel also convinced the U.S. and other major Western powers to suspend funding to the group by waging a propaganda campaign accusing its staff of complicity in the October 7 attacks.

The authors assert the UN agency uses its schools to spread “terroristic indoctrination” and that it publishes “reports that falsify the information about the conditions in the [Gaza] Strip”—presumably a reference to UNRWA’s carefully compiled situation reports documenting IDF attacks on civilian targets in Gaza and efforts by Israel to impede the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Israeli politicians have frequently expressed a desire to shut down UNRWA: On Twitter/X alone, members of the Knesset and Israeli government ministers have posted 277 tweets referring to the agency between October 7, 2023, and June 1, 2024. Of these, 135 alleged that UNRWA workers were terrorists or aiding terrorism, 65 called for UNRWA to be dismantled, another 66 called upon other nations to defund UNRWA, and 10 called for unspecified “reforms” in UNRWA. Only one post asserted UNRWA’s legitimacy.

A similar prescription is made in relation to Hamas’s Dawa (charity and social services) networks. The academics assert that Hamas must be prevented from providing any “rehabilitation, welfare, aid, charity, or religious” services to the Gazan population, or “any other actions which might allow it to capture the hearts of the residents.”

Introducing “humanitarian bubbles”

After shutting down UNRWA’s and Hamas’s vast networks of humanitarian services in Gaza, the paper advocates establishing alternative institutions under Israel’s control.

The paper envisions an Israeli central command structure to coordinate a mechanism staffed by workers of international aid organizations and employees of the Palestinian Authority, who would distribute humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in certain designated “bubbles.” Recent reporting in the Washington Post and the Financial Times suggests the IDF is beginning to implement a version of the “humanitarian bubbles” model, with the latter attributing the scheme to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Details of the plan were reported in the Israeli media in April, but no mention of the term “humanitarian bubbles” appeared prior to the circulation of the academics’ paper in February.

By all available indications, the “bubbles” model would merely be a distraction from Israel’s actual policy of starving the Palestinian population. Gallant, who reportedly championed the implementation of the bubbles model, had previously vowed to impose a total siege on the city of Gaza: “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” Months into Israel’s assault on the Strip, when IDF soldiers confronted him and demanded “no aid goes in, we will stop the aid,” Gallant appeared to endorse their demands. Such statements, coupled with the IDF’s manifest efforts to limit the entry of aid into Gaza, have led the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor to recommend the issuance of an arrest warrant against Gallant, for, among other charges, the crime of starvation.

His fellow Israeli decision makers are similarly determined to deny basic humanitarian relief to Gaza. Members of the hawkish Ministerial Committee on National Security Affairs, also called the Security Cabinet, reportedly proclaimed, “In this war—there’s no such term as ‘humanitarianism.’” 

The War Cabinet was similarly single-minded: At the liberal end of the spectrum, both Benny Gantz and Gadi Eizenkot of the Blue and White party have called for limiting the humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza in order to “increase the pressure.” Eizenkot reportedly presented the War Cabinet with his own “day after” proposal, which stated: “Israel does not have a policy of starving the residents of Gaza despite the deep involvement of the Gazan [civilian] population in the atrocities of October 7 and in holding hostages ever since. However, the aid will be limited until the abductees are returned and will be provided by any positive international agency that coordinates this with Israel.”

Eizenkot’s plan was authored by the MIND Israel institute, a national security think tank headed by Major General Amos Yadlin. The former IDF military attaché to Washington, Yadlin has reportedly been engaging in second-track diplomacy with Biden administration officials while praising the blocking of humanitarian aid trucks by Israeli civilians as a way to circumvent Israel’s public commitments to provide sufficient aid to Gaza.

Despite the talk of various proposals for what comes after the war, Israel appears dedicated to implementing a policy of “no day after” for the Palestinians in Gaza. This is consistent with the recommendations by the former head of the National Security Council, Yaakov Amidror, who advised Netanyahu in the early days of the war. “Israel has a huge freedom to retaliate ... and yes, there will be many casualties on the other side,” he said. “I think it was the decision of the people of Gaza. They elected Hamas in open elections, so they’ll have to take the consequences.” He added: “Nothing is too much, in this case.”