The international command for the Gaza Strip, the – Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) – rapidly established in Kiryat Gat, is becoming a pilgrimage destination for American officials visiting Israel and sparking interest through the diverse composition of nations represented within it. Yet it remains completely unclear how this facility is meant to assist in achieving Israel’s primary objectives concerning Gaza.

One can reasonably estimate that its primary preoccupation will involve coordinating civilian aid entry into the Strip and preventing escalations that threaten the ceasefire. In both domains, Israel will probably be the principal address for pressure. Conversely, it’s challenging to envision this headquarters accomplishing anything beyond declarations concerning the more crucial areas for Israel: stripping Hamas of weaponry, preventing smuggling operations, and demilitarizing the Strip.

During a weekend interview with Al-Jazeera, Khalil al-Hayya, the Hamas leader, referenced the international forces’ role as providing separation and border supervision, along with managing ceasefire monitoring. He indicated his organization seeks elections leading to unified government, and presently doesn’t dismiss transferring “administrative control” to a mutually agreed committee and managing the Strip through “a national figure residing in Gaza.” One needn’t be an expert to comprehend which options this criterion eliminated.

Al-Hayya proceeded to lament Gaza’s humanitarian conditions and stressed it requires 6,000 aid trucks each day, plus entry of specific materials Israel currently prohibits. One can anticipate this message will reach mediating nations and every international actor. Winter’s approach will likely bring an accompanying “Gaza is freezing to death” campaign.

Hamas refuses to disarm

Concerning Hamas disarmament? Al-Hayya responds diplomatically, “The matter remains under discussion with factions and mediators,” and lest we harbor false expectations he clarifies, “Hamas’ weapons are connected to occupation and aggression’s existence. Should the occupation conclude, the weapons will transfer to the (Palestinian) state.”

Similar statements have been audible throughout recent periods from the organization’s spokespeople and senior officials. They’ve consistently emphasized: Our weapons are legitimate, we won’t disarm . Admittedly, in formal announcements they carefully stress their commitment to the agreement and avoid provocative declarations that might antagonize President Trump and his administration or mediating nations, but regarding the disarmament provision they leave no ambiguity about their stance.

While the Kiryat Gat headquarters continues taking shape and determining its functions and operational approaches, Hamas in Gaza has regained its footing. It operates efficient command and control systems, is restoring order throughout Gaza’s devastated streets, suppressing opposition, deterring and dominating. It allows everyone to debate agreement details’ interpretation and drafters’ intentions while concentrating on fundamentals: strengthening its position, replenishing forces, securing supplies, planning reconstruction.

It presumes Gaza remains lodged like a bone in Trump’s and other regional leaders’ throats, who seek to dispose of it as swiftly as possible to advance implementing major regional initiatives. Its expectation is that under these conditions they’ll accept a formula offering the semblance of resolution and permit it to capitalize on the “gaps” within it and the exhaustion from interminable debates regarding its interpretations.

Despite the intense desire to advance peace visions, we cannot compromise on critical matters for us in the Gaza Strip. We must eliminate the vagueness concerning headquarters and mediation and coordination entities, and also explain to the public what these will ultimately contribute toward accomplishing Israel’s objectives.

The rearming issue under humanitarian aid and reconstruction means’ cover demands particular Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee oversight and public reporting, preventing us from burying our heads in the sand and exploiting the secrecy veil typically covering this activity.

MK Amit Halevi’s public announcement about intensifying rules of engagement for IDF forces regarding Strip suspects requires IDF response and clarifications. It’s completely inappropriate to heighten risks merely from ceasefire collapse fears. Even those concerned about this should recognize that harming our soldiers could similarly cause that, beyond the immediate price paid.

Furthermore, rather than awaiting agreements and mechanisms, we should shape reality. Hamas tunnels should face attack not solely responding to harm against us. If avoiding casualties is desired, we can provide advance warning. We must leverage Hamas’ weakened position and all living hostages already being in Israel. Such an approach could enhance Israel’s and mediators’ negotiating position regarding weapons disarmament.

Concerning the international headquarters for the Gaza Strip, we must acknowledge this mechanism’s risks and also that participating in it might constrain the IDF and direct it toward preferring dialogue channels as default over operational activity. We need to establish what Israel gains from this mechanism, and concurrently determine rules now for our conduct within it, in ways that diminish its risks.

Published in  Israel Hayom, October 27, 2025.

Prof. Kobi Michael: Hamas showed every sign of racing to redefine the reality on the ground in post-war Gaza so as to make them impossible to dislodge, whatever the Trump plan says.

Every day they are making lots of progress. Hamas has not changed its DNA; they do not intend to disarm themselves. They do not intend to leave the Gaza Strip and not be part of the day after.

I don’t think they take it too seriously because they understand President Trump. They see that he is mainly interested in the first phase, the end of the war, and he will leave the details of the second and third stages to the professionals, to the clerks.

Published in The Telegraph, October 25, 2025.

Prof. Kobi Michael: The deal is not really fleshed out enough to be called a plan. It is a framework, principles that pave the way toward a general vision of President Trump to create a new regional architecture.

Published in Ami Magazine, October 21, 2025.

Main Points

• Israel neutralized Hezbollah’s missile threat but failed to dismantle its ground forces or Hamas’s rule in Gaza.
• The IDF lacks a coherent concept of operational maneuver – the coordinated use of ground forces to destroy enemy capabilities and achieve strategic goals.
• Brilliant air and intelligence operations were not matched by decisive ground campaigns, leaving enemy forces largely intact.
• Operations in both Gaza and Lebanon unfolded too slowly, allowing the enemy to recover and denying Israel strategic momentum.
• The IDF repeatedly fought over the same areas instead of seizing and controlling critical ground to deny Hamas sanctuary and supply.
• These operational shortcomings weakened Israel’s deterrence and may embolden regional actors, notably Egypt, to reassess Israel’s military credibility.
• The IDF must relearn the art of operational maneuver – integrating speed, initiative, and decisive ground action – to transform tactical superiority into strategic victory.

Press here to read the full publication

As the world turns its attention to Gaza’s ruins and the growing calls for reconstruction, a familiar cycle threatens to repeat itself. The guns fall silent, aid convoys roll in, diplomats speak of “political horizons” – and within a few years, or sometimes even less, rockets once again rain on Israel.

If the war that began on 7 October, 2023 is not to become yet another round in this endless loop, one lesson must be faced with honesty: what Gaza desperately needs is deradicalisation.

No amount of reconstruction will bring peace if the ideological foundations of Hamas – and of Palestinian society more broadly – remain untouched. The massacre of October 7 was not an aberration born of despair; it was the logical outcome of an idea that has animated Palestinian politics for a century: the refusal to accept Jewish sovereignty anywhere between the river and the sea. Until that changes, no peace plan will succeed, and no ceasefire will hold.

For decades, Western diplomats have misdiagnosed the conflict as a territorial dispute – about borders, settlements, and security arrangements. Yet at its core, for the Palestinians, it is about legitimacy: Israel is viewed not the homeland of the Jewish people but an alien colonial implant. Jews are viewed not as an indigenous nation returning home but as foreigners who imposed themselves through force. Like the French in Algeria, they are expected to leave. At best, they might be tolerated as a religious minority under Muslim rule – never as a nation entitled to self-determination.

This ideology has not only survived for more than a century but been institutionalised and sustained – through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or Unrwa. Created in 1949 as a temporary body to assist the roughly 700,000 Palestinians displaced during Israel’s War of Independence, Unwra has become a permanent agency with a single overriding purpose: to perpetuate the refugee status of Palestinians indefinitely. Whereas the role of the international community should be to create the circumstances for enhancing peace, in this case it did the exact opposite.

Unlike the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which resettles refugees and ends their statelessness, Unrwa enshrines it. Only in the Palestinian case is refugee status permanent and passed down to descendants for eternity. The result: the number of Palestinian “refugees” has swelled from 700,000 to some six million (Palestinian leaders routinely claim eight or nine million). In reality, more than 95 per cent of them were never displaced from anywhere. They were born in Gaza, Ramallah, Amman, or Beirut.

Unrwa has become a symbol, in the eyes of Palestinians, of their desire to “return” – in space, to their previous homes inside Israel (most of which do not exist any longer), and in time, to an era before the creation of the Jewish state. Given the demographics, such a “return” would mean the end of the Jewish state. Under the auspices of the international community, Unrwa has become the political vehicle through which the number of Palestinian “refugees” has been exponentially inflated, to serve the political goal of “return” and, ultimately, of undoing Israel’s existence.

This political mechanism has devastating consequences. It teaches generation after generation that their homes lie not in Gaza or Nablus but in Haifa and Jaffa – that their birthright is to “return” to cities inside Israel, and that Israel’s very existence is a temporary injustice waiting to be undone.

In Unrwa schools, textbooks glorify “martyrs,” maps erase Israel, and pupils are taught that “return” – meaning the destruction of Israel – is not a dream but a duty. Unrwa has become part and parcel of Palestinian rejectionism.

The leaders of Hamas, including Yahya Sinwar, spoke openly in the days before October 7 of an imminent “return” – a chilling reminder that the concept is not a metaphor but a call to violent action.

If Gaza is to have a future different from its past, Unrwa must be dismantled and the very concept of a “Palestinian refugee” in Gaza must disappear. One cannot be a refugee from the place one was born.

The message should be clear: you can live next to Israel in peace, but not instead of it.

Gaza’s reconstruction must be explicitly conditional. Any new governing authority – whether local Palestinians, a joint Arab body, or an international trusteeship – must adhere to a few non-negotiable principles: recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and a formal end to the state of war against it; renunciation of claims inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders; acceptance that Gaza’s residents are not refugees and that they do not possess a “right of return”; and a firm commitment to demilitarisation, with all aid monitored to prevent its diversion into weapons or tunnels.

These are not maximalist demands but the bare minimum for any sane policy. Without ideological surrender, military defeat is meaningless. Israel can destroy Hamas’s arsenal, but if children are still taught that Jews have no right to be there, a new Hamas – or any other organisation different only in name – will rise from the rubble.

For too long, Western diplomacy has tiptoed around these truths, preferring to pour concrete and hope for moderation. But real hope for a different future will come only when Palestinians choose life over grievance, reality over myth, and coexistence over the dream of “return” and erasure. The war will end only when the ideology that caused it ends.

Published in The Jewish Chronicle,  October 16, 2025.

When Canada, France, the United Kingdom and Australia rushed to recognize a Palestinian state, they did not advance peace; they rewarded terror. They handed political and legal legitimacy to the same movement that, two years ago, committed the most barbaric massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

If these governments, including Canada, now insist on treating “Palestine” as a state, they must also accept the consequences of that recognition: bringing “Palestine” before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the charge of genocide.

For the past year, Israel has faced a grotesque inversion of justice at The Hague, accused by South Africa and others of genocide for defending its citizens after Hamas’s October 7 slaughter. Even though Israel has gone to unprecedented lengths to follow the laws of armed conflict, the ICJ has allowed that political stunt to proceed, giving moral cover to Hamas and ignoring its own explicit statements of genocidal intent.

If Palestine is indeed a state, as these governments now claim, professing their commitment to international law, that commitment must be tested in practice. The law cannot be applied selectively, nor can recognition be treated as a symbolic act divorced from its legal effect. Recognition carries not only diplomatic weight but enforceable responsibility under international law.

It follows that “Palestine” must bear legal responsibility for the actions of Hamas on October 7 and for everything that has followed, including the ongoing torture and captivity of hostages.

This is where the absurdity of these recognitions becomes clear. Western leaders proclaimed support for Palestinian statehood, yet in the same breath insisted they do not recognize Hamas, which governs Gaza. So who exactly are they recognizing? The Palestinian Authority, a corrupt, unelected body that has no control over Gaza, whose president is now in the twentieth year of a four-year term and continues to pay salaries to terrorists? Or Hamas, which still boasts of the “fruits of October 7”?

Under the Genocide Convention, a state is responsible not only for acts committed by its agents, but also for failing to prevent or punish genocide committed on its territory or under its control.

What makes this even more striking is that the Palestinian Authority acceded to the Genocide Convention in 2014. By doing so, it accepted the duty to prevent and punish genocide. Having claimed the benefits and status of a state party, it cannot now evade the responsibilities that come with it.

The acts of October 7, which Hamas vowed to repeat “again and again” until Israel was annihilated, satisfy every element of genocidal intent described in Article II of that Convention.

If the act of recognition is to mean anything, it must bring with it the same standards of accountability applied to every state under the Genocide Convention. Otherwise, recognition becomes performative — a political indulgence that undermines the very rule of law it claims to uphold.

You simply cannot have it both ways. Either the Palestinian Authority is the governing representative of this so-called state, in which case it bears responsibility for the genocide carried out from the territory it claims, or Hamas is the ruling authority, in which case these governments have legitimized a terrorist organization.

Either way, the consequence of this recognition is that “Palestine,” as a self-proclaimed state, must bear legal responsibility for the crimes committed from its territory, including the genocidal massacre of October 7.

This legal logic is unavoidable. Recognition is the act that transforms a political claim into a juridical reality. Once that threshold is crossed, obligations arise. A state recognized as such must answer for the actions of those operating under its flag or from its territory. Anything less would hollow out international law and render the Genocide Convention a political tool rather than a binding instrument.

This would force an uncomfortable reckoning for those same governments that so eagerly joined the diplomatic campaign against Israel. It would compel them to face the legal and moral implications of their decision, and to acknowledge that recognition carries responsibility as well as rhetoric.

Recognition means owning that record. It means accepting that a state must answer for its crimes, and that the victims of October 7 — the murdered, the raped, the burned and the still-held captive — deserve justice as much as any other victims of genocide.

For too long, the international system has indulged the hypocrisy that Palestinians are eternal victims without agency, while Israel alone bears responsibility for every tragedy in the region.

Recognition of Palestine cannot mean impunity for terror cloaked in sovereignty. It must mean responsibility. Either international law applies to all — or it applies to no one.

That starts with holding the Palestinians accountable before the International Court of Justice to answer for the real genocide on October 7 — the one committed with merciless, salivating glee by Hamas.

The credibility of the international legal order depends on consistency. Those who claim to uphold it cannot invoke the law for political expediency to condemn Israel, while shielding the Palestinians from accountability for the atrocities of October 7.

The article was written together with Alan H. Kessel is the former Assistant Deputy Minister Legal Affairs and Legal Adviser at Global Affairs Canada and is a senior fellow at the Macdonald Laurier Institute.

Published in National Post, October 12, 2025.

The following policy paper does not address the plusses and minuses of the hostage release agreement, which is now a fait accompli, nor does it address the ongoing mechanisms within the framework of the deal. Rather, its purpose is to recommend ways to cope with the security challenges that the new reality is likely to pose for the State of Israel.

Five Challenges:

1. Policy on use of military force: It is critical to adapt and clarify the policy for use of military force in the Gaza Strip at the different stages of implementation of the agreement. The sharp transition from a state of combat to a ceasefire while Israel’s forces are still deployed in areas of the Strip may create a lack of clarity, disrupt the forces’ ability to respond to various scenarios, and also endanger our soldiers. It is important to decide and make clear to IDF forces that in every situation, the leading consideration is the security of the IDF troops on the ground.

 Israel should determine ahead of time the responses to the following plausible scenarios: how to act when armed Hamas operatives, tunnels, or weapons are detected; how to respond to “rogue” rocket fire; and how to react to Hamas activity aimed at repairing or reestablishing military capabilities.

2. Protecting the security zone and preventing its erosion through creeping attrition: The rules of engagement must be set so as not only to prevent a direct risk to IDF soldiers, but to protect the security zone and prevent its erosion through a Hamas strategy of creeping attrition. Hamas or other terrorist elements are likely to attempt to gradually erode the enforcement of this zone by habituating our forces to the arrival of children, women, or the elderly into these areas under various pretexts. This must not be allowed to happen.

3. Preventing the rehabilitation of Hamas’s military capabilities under the cover of humanitarian efforts: Among the hundreds of supply trucks entering the Gaza Strip will be weapons as well as dual-use materials and equipment needed to produce weapons and ammunition. The claim that goods will be transferred to Gaza only after inspection and verification, even if true, does not address dual-use materials. Fiberglass sheets, electrodes, adhesives, etc., will be presented as intended for legitimate civilian use but will be used by Hamas and other terrorist groups for military ends.

The challenge is even more complex regarding tractors and heavy mechanical equipment, whose entry is ostensibly required for clearing rubble and road repairs. It is clear that such equipment will also be used to prepare tunnels. Effective oversight in this domain will not be feasible given the reality that will prevail in Gaza. All that can be achieved is to slow and complicate the enemy’s efforts by limiting the types of equipment that may be brought into Gaza.

4. Israeli civilian policy toward the Gaza Strip: Israel may quickly find itself facing a flood of requests from Palestinians in Gaza, encouraged by the mediating countries, to enter Israel for medical treatment in hospitals or to transit to Judea and Samaria (West Bank.) The Israeli political echelon should decide now in a manner that leaves no room for interpretation that under no circumstances will Palestinians from Gaza be permitted to enter Israel. In this context, there is reason to be concerned that members of Gazan clans who fought against Hamas will seek refuge in Israel. The solution for them should not lie within the territory of the State of Israel.

5. Terrorism trends in Judea and Samaria (West Bank): Given that the war is ending with Hamas still standing and with the release of numerous Palestinian terrorists, support for Hamas is expected to increase, and the potential for terror attacks originating in the West Bank, already on the rise, is expected to grow even further. Against this background, an immediate hardening of Israel’s security policy in this arena is required. Israel should continue the offensive approach adopted at the outset of the war, including the use of targeted prevention measures. The Shin Bet has a key role in monitoring each of the terrorist prisoners who will be released. No tolerance should be shown toward any attempts by them to return to terror activity in any form.

With President Trump bringing comprehensive peace to the Middle East starting with freedom from Hamas hands of Israeli hostages, only a few minor details still need to be worked out – like what to do with all the terrorist trawlers. These are the “flotilla” boats left behind by anarchists, antisemites, and other fanatic pro-Hamas activists who have tried to bust Israel’s necessary naval blockade of Gaza.

Remember the “Mavi Marmara”? The ship was the lead boat of the 2010 Turkish attempt to (supposedly) highlight humanitarian needs in Gaza. In reality, the so-called “freedom flotilla for Gaza,” led by the terrorist-supporting Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH), was nothing more than a violent attack on Israel, meant to bolster Hamas.

Since then, Israel has been assaulted by similar “flotillas” packed with many bad actors and very little humanitarian aid – in 2011, 2015, 2016, 2018, and this year too. The latest attempt to sail into Gaza in support of Hamas involved over 50 ships, all intercepted by Israel last week. The rag-tag collection of terrorist-supporting trawlers came from Algeria, Greece, Italy, Libya, Spain, and Tunisia, with participants from 16 noted “peace-loving” countries like Ireland, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden, and Venezuela.

Deporting the malicious anti-Israel activists was easy, although an argument could have been made for locking them all up on criminal offenses and throwing away the key.

More difficult is the question of what to do all the “humanitarian attack boats.” Israel does not need these bothersome rink-a-dink ships crowding its ports, and there is absolutely no reason to give the boats back to their evil operators and owners.

So, after getting our hostages home, before major IDF withdrawals from Gaza, and before conjuring-up broader peace deals, it is time for a little payback against the nasty actors out there. Here are ten punishing and purposeful things Israel could usefully do with the terrorist trawlers.

1. Load the ships with humanitarian supplies (and perhaps a few weapons too) for the persecuted Armenians and downtrodden Kurds and set sail for the shores of their oppressor – Turkey. In the ports of Mersin, Marmaris, and Antalya we can unload all the wheelchairs, Band-Aids, chocolate bars, baby toys, bullets, slingshots, electric steel-cutting saws, knives, and other goods donated by peace-loving Israelis. While we’re at it, in each city Israel could set up an expansive traveling museum exhibit on the Armenian genocide and the inalienable rights of the Kurdish people to independent statehood.

2. Rename the boats for Israeli hostages held for two years in barbaric captivity by Hamas in Gaza, then load the boats with several hundred Hamas terrorists held in Israeli prisons. (Even after the coming releases, there will remain plenty more Palestinian mass murderers in Israeli prisons, including the Nazi-like Nukhba raiders of October 7.) Anchor the boats off the coasts of Qatar and Turkey under heavy guard, with no food and no visits from the Red Cross. Tell the dictators of Doha and Ankara that they can have their terrorist buddies and the boats too, if all political and financial aid to Hamas ends. Wait them out.

3. Rebrand the ships as “Karine A,” “Karine B,” and so on, then launch an Israeli flotilla for peace. Sail our armada into the ports of Doha, Imam Khomeini, Istanbul, and Jeddah broadcasting messages of reconciliation and democracy. The Israeli “Voice of Peace” radio station will broadcast from the ships into every home in the Mediterranean and Arabian seas. News broadcasts will spotlight Israel’s academic, cultural, and high-tech successes, and its global medical/humanitarian efforts; alongside reports on racism, discrimination, slavery, terrorism, and antisemitism in the Arab and Moslem worlds.

4. Christen the ships as “Donald J. Trump I,” “Donald J. Trump II,” and so on, and refit them as escape vessels that will sail refugees from Gaza to new lives elsewhere in the world – far away from the ruinous military kill zone of Gaza wrought by Hamas, a strip of land pockmarked by over 750 kilometers of attack tunnels and weapons manufacturing bunkers dug underneath almost every school, hospital, and home.

5. When done giving safe passage from Gaza to all those European countries who so love the peaceful Palestinians of Rafiah, Khan Younis, and Dir-al-Balach (– evidence repeat UN resolutions endorsed by Europeans swearing faithfulness to Palestinian freedoms), the boats can be retrofitted as tax free casinos for Trump’s grand “Riviera” plan. They can be anchored off the rebuilt golden resort city of Gaza. European lords and princesses, and Qatari emirs along with their American business partners, will enjoy preferential access and VIP gambling privileges.

6. Rename several ships as “Exodus I,” “Exodus II,” and so on, and set sail for the Iranian ports of Bandar-Abbas and Bushehr to force the release of Iran’s remaining Jews. With a sufficient media pool, a high-profile inter-faith delegation, and a smattering of Nobel laureates aboard, we should be able to embarrass the clerics of Tehran into ending their blockade against Jewish emigration. While visiting Bushehr, we could also take a tour of the nuclear reactor, to see up-close, first-hand, how Iran is producing peaceful medical isotopes there.

7. Rename the ships for 50 Israeli towns and farming communities ravaged by Hamas invasion and missiles, then sail the ships for the Arabian (formerly “Persian”) Gulf and block Kharg Island, which handles over 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports. Consider this Israel’s contribution to the “snapback” of international sanctions against Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, which mandates no international oil trade with Iran. China will suffer from this the most, deservedly so.

10. Retrofit the ships as passenger ferries for Ultra-Orthodox (haredi) Israelis who prefer to emigrate rather than serve in the IDF or do national service. First to sail can be the radical former chief Sephardic rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who keeps threatening to demonstratively decamp for the Diaspora in order to avoid participation in what he callsshemad,“spiritual annihilation.” (This is how he views any sharing by haredi Jews, G-d forbid, in the Israeli national burden of military service.) I will help Yitzhak Yosef pack his bags and walk the gangway up the deck.
11. Sell the ships on the international market to cover the health expenses of wounded Israeli soldiers and of Israeli families destroyed by Hamas’ October 7 attack. Leftover funds can help rebuild southern and northern Israeli towns devastated by Hamas and Hezbollah. Alternatively, Israel could cut the boats up into pieces and sell chunks as souvenirs on E-Bay, to fund psychological rehabilitation and provide income support for the very many Israeli war widows and orphans.
12. Sink the ships just outside the territorial waters of Britain, Canada, France, Ireland, and Spain to protest their hubris, hypocrisy, and hostility to Israel. Just blow the boats up in their faces.

Published in The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom, 10.10.2025.