The National said on Wednesday that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians cannot be managed indefinitely. Gaza faces a choice: renewed war, prolonged uncertainty, or a political framework involving Israeli withdrawal and Palestinian civilian governance.
The occupation and its aftermath
In an editorial published on the third anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel, The National said the attacks didn’t begin the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The assault originated in a besieged and impoverished Gaza Strip, killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostage into Gaza, according to a separate commentary by Nickolay Mladenov.
Mladenov, identified as the high representative for Gaza under the Board of Peace and director general of the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi, wrote that the attacks shattered Israeli security assumptions and left wounds that remained open. The ensuing war devastated Gaza and killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. For children, displacement, hunger and fear became part of daily life.
The National’s editorial said the attacks inflicted profound hurt on Israelis and left Palestinians in Gaza defenceless against Israel’s retaliation. Families of Israelis killed or kidnapped marked the anniversary, while families of thousands of Palestinians killed, and many more injured and displaced in the subsequent Israeli offensive, continued to suffer.
The editorial said Israel had launched or supported military action against targets linked to Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Syria and Iran. It also said Israel attacked Hamas figures based in Qatar in September 2025. The response to October 7, the editorial argued, had become part of a wider regional confrontation, as the geography of violence expanded.
Three possible futures for Gaza
In “Gaza and the choice ahead,” published on October 7, Mladenov set out three possible futures. The first was a return to a cycle in which Hamas rebuilds its military capabilities, Israel prepares for another confrontation, and a ceasefire follows another round of violence without changing underlying conditions.
A second possibility, he wrote, was an indefinite state of uncertainty: humanitarian aid trying to substitute for governance, reconstruction proceeding slowly or not at all, and the world gradually losing interest. Mladenov said political vacuums rarely remain empty. Despair can help recruit people to extremism.
The third path would involve verified weapons decommissioning, deradicalisation, accountable Palestinian civilian governance, phased Israeli withdrawal and reconstruction. Mladenov said accountable Palestinian civilian institutions, not competing armed factions, should determine Gaza’s future. Under US President Donald Trump's Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict, he wrote, security should operate through lawful structures answerable to a civilian transitional authority.
About one year before October 7, 2026, the parties accepted a framework aimed at moving Gaza away from full-scale war through demilitarisation, deradicalisation, transitional Palestinian governance, Israeli withdrawal and reconstruction. Mladenov said the challenge was turning commitments into reality.
Political arrangements and accountability
Mladenov said reconstruction required permanently decommissioning weapons and dismantling military infrastructure so investors, donors and families could trust that war wasn’t merely being postponed. He argued that walls, buffer zones and repeated military operations couldn’t provide lasting security if Gaza remained unstable and controlled by armed factions. “A strategy built entirely around managing the next war is not, in the long run, a strategy for peace,” he wrote.
The National’s editorial condemned Hamas’s crimes against civilians but said security couldn’t serve as a permanent justification for open-ended war. It called for an end to the occupation, saying the Palestinian question couldn’t be postponed indefinitely or Gaza simply managed. Lasting security, it said, required political arrangements that fulfilled Palestinians’ right to a credible future of their own, free from occupation. Palestinian elections, the editorial added, were increasingly necessary.
Mladenov said regional partners and the international community had responsibilities to provide credible security guarantees, support reconstruction and equip Palestinian transitional institutions to succeed. The plan, endorsed by U.N. Security Council resolution 2803, would require sustained commitment after international attention moved elsewhere. “While the dead deserve remembrance, the living deserve a future,” he wrote.