One hears two responses to the exit strategy question from the Israeli government. The first is that power in Gaza will be given to an outside group of technocrats, or the PA, or the UN, or some group to be named later. The second is that Hamas is a group of Nazis, and the story will end the way World War II did, after the unfortunate but justifiable deaths of thousands of civilians. Is this a workable strategy?
Option 1 is an exercise of wishful thinking; no outsider is going to come in and save the Israelis from the costs of an occupation. If you accept the World War II analogy, you are implicitly tolerating the need for a lengthy and expensive occupation. The Israelis would prefer to avoid that.
Barring a switch to the “cut the grass” strategy discussed in my last post, the fact is that Israel will be faced with two options at the end of the war. The first is an occupation of indefinite length; the second is a political initiative that would actually seek a reasonable solution to the Palestinian problem. The second choice is obviously the better one from an American perspective. Is it plausible? It would actually make the war worth fighting, but if push comes to shove, Bibi will undoubtedly pick occupation over the two-state solution.