Israel will face growing international and domestic pressure to move from a military occupation of Gaza to an Israeli-Palestinian governing solution, but political constraints in Israel and international partners' competing interests could make co-governance ineffective, potentially resulting in the emergence of more extreme militancy in Gaza. Israel's government is facing growing international and domestic pressure to release a plan to wind down combat operations and restore civil and political responsibilities to a local authority in Gaza as the conflict shifts to a less intense combat phase. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly considering bringing in the Palestinian Authority to partner with Israel in Gaza while military operations are ongoing. However, Israel's international allies and various regional powers are pushing for other solutions. During his tour of the Middle East in early June, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly told his Arab counterparts that Egypt and the United Arab Emirates supported sending security forces to Gaza as part of a post-war plan under the condition that Israel establish a pathway toward Palestinian statehood. Separately, both Egypt and the United Arab Emirates advanced their own proposals: the former has demanded a complete withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, from the Gaza Strip, while the latter has asked for U.S. involvement in a post-war peacekeeping force. Meanwhile, the Arab League has proposed deploying a U.N. peacekeeping force to Gaza to internationalize the governing solution. 

• In addition to seeking Arab partners for a peacekeeping force and avoiding sending a contingent of its own, the United States is reportedly looking to Saudi Arabia to provide financial support for the Gaza Strip's reconstruction. 
• Israel's government has been reticent about spelling out a deliberate governing solution for Gaza due to fears of domestic political fallout, as the country's far-right wants Israelis to rebuild settlements there and establish an open-ended occupation. But that plan is unpopular both within Israel and among Israel's key allies like the United States, which still sees Gaza as part of a future Palestinian state as planned under the Oslo Accords. 
• Israel reportedly attempted to covertly convince Palestinian Authority officials to help oversee the Rafah border crossing in May shortly after taking control of it. However, the Palestinian Authority rejected the offer because it believed cooperation would make its officials look like enablers of the war effort and because a clandestine offer weakened its legitimacy to govern Gaza. 

In the short term, Israel's policy in Gaza will resemble a militarized version of its occupation in the West Bank, but this will only increase domestic and international pressure on the government to find a comprehensive solution to the Gaza challenge. Israel will likely conduct raid and withdrawal operations in Gaza for at least several months as it continues to hunt Hamas fighters and leaders, increase military pressure on the Palestinian militant group, and look for Israeli hostages. However, this open-ended conflict will continue to incur domestic and international costs as long as fighting remains ongoing in Gaza. Recurrent IDF casualties, as well as limited and undecisive territorial gains, will continue to undermine Israelis' morale and support for the war, while Palestinian civilian casualties will increase criticism from the West and the Arab world, which could increase their pace of sanctions and boycotts against Israel to pressure its government to change course. As a result of this pressure, center-right nationalists in the Israeli government may threaten to defect, which could pressure the government to negotiate a new coalition that excludes the far-right, or even call for early elections to create a new coalition able to implement a governing solution. 

• Over 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the Gaza ground campaign so far, matching the estimates of those killed during the Second Intifada (2000-05) and more than twice those lost in the 2006 Lebanon War. Protests in Israel have started to focus on casualties as a reason to initiate hostage talks with Hamas. 
• Former unity government member Benny Gantz quit the government in early June because it had failed to articulate a post-war strategy, which he claimed would lead Israel into a strategic challenge it could not resolve. Although Gantz and his National Unity Party's departure from the wartime coalition was not enough to collapse the Netanyahu government, it decreased Netanyahu's majority in the Knesset and increased domestic pressure on the coalition's center-right lawmakers to call for early elections.

To offset this pressure, Israel will likely seek Palestinian partners to create an Israeli-Palestinian authority that leaves civil authority to the Palestinians and security to Israel. Israel will likely first seek to create new civil authorities run by Gaza or West Bank Palestinian officials who are unaffiliated with either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority to restore basic services in and de-radicalize the Gaza Strip. However, Israel will struggle to find unaffiliated candidates with sufficient governing experience, so it will likely turn to Palestinians who have ties to more established groups over time. For instance, some mid-level former Hamas officials have expressed interest in participating in a post-conflict government in Gaza, and Israel could be willing to utilize them in such a government if they were not part of Hamas' military wing. Additionally, the Palestinian Authority has said it would be open to ruling the strip again, but only as part of a process that would lead to a Palestinian state. While this demand makes the Palestinian Authority's direct inclusion in governance unlikely in the short term, Israel may eventually be more willing to coordinate with the group as pressure to move away from a military occupation mounts, in part due to the Palestinian Authority's experience governing the strip. However, Israel's government would likely still slow-walk any path toward Palestinian statehood. Regardless, Israel would likely plan for the IDF to retain security rights and continue to conduct operations against remaining militants, making this strategy functionally a military occupation in the eyes of the Israeli public and the international community. As a result, this co-governance plan would struggle to attract the massive reconstruction aid needed to rebuild Gaza, which the United Nations estimated in May 2024 could surpass $50 billion and take nearly two decades to complete. 

• The Israeli government launched a pilot program in the Gaza Strip for humanitarian aid distribution helmed by Palestinian community leaders. However, the project was ineffective and rife with corruption, as aid was preferentially distributed and many Israeli-approved community leaders did not have public sector experience. 

Israel may also reach out to regional partners to help restore security and economic stability in Gaza, but splits between allies would undermine the effectiveness of this strategy. Israel could tap Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain as possible security partners in Gaza once combat operations end, aiming to create an informal buffer between Palestinians and Israeli forces. The inclusion of such forces would also reduce constraints on the Palestinian Authority to join a pan-Arab mission to restore security and stability in Gaza. Additionally, Israel could call on the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Turkey for financial aid to rebuild Gaza. However, this security and economic cooperation would face constraints due to competing goals. For example, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt would want the new civil authority to focus on weakening or eradicating political Islam, which might cause friction with many of the most experienced civil servants who have associations with Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood. On the flip side, Qatar's pro-Islamist foreign policy might see its aid end up back in the hands of militants, undermining the efforts of its partners. Meanwhile, the United States, the European Union and Arab countries would leverage their aid to push for a Palestinian state, and Israel's opposition to this plan could obstruct aid flows. Additionally, Arab security partners would be extremely hesitant to stabilize Gaza forcefully due to fears of domestic repercussions, and if their troops suffer casualties, they would face pressure to withdraw.

• The United Arab Emirates previously deployed troops to Lebanon from 1977 to 1979 as part of the Arab Deterrent Force's peacekeeping mission and more recently to Somalia as part of the peacekeeping mission there from 1993 to 1994. The United Arab Emirates would likely leverage this experience in Gaza.
• Some states would likely want to use their role in Gaza to project influence through their Palestinian proxies, which could further reduce regional cooperation. For example, the United Arab Emirates would likely push to place UAE-based Palestinian politician and exile Mohammed Dahlan in a senior position in Gaza.

These splits could create a weak and unpopular civil authority that gives rise to the return of militants in Gaza, which would challenge Israel's ability to maintain forces in the strip in the long term. As various actors pursue different goals in Gaza, policy coherence will be unlikely, weakening civil authority and creating security gaps. Israel will also continue military raids in Gaza, further undermining the legitimacy of any post-Hamas civil authorities. After major military operations conclude, rising militant groups will likely take advantage of this disunity, widespread disapproval of local governing structures, and anti-Israeli sentiment by recruiting Palestinians against both the civil authorities and Israel. In such a case, new radical factions could emerge, including those influenced by the Islamic State, newer Palestinian factions like the Lions' Den or existing factions like Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Fueled by radical ideologies, these factions would be more committed to waging open-ended war against Israel without negotiation. This threat would pull Israel back into direct conflict and/or force Israel to leave Gaza to hostile entities that carry out sustained attacks on Israel's southern border. 

• Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Lions' Den have long been more radical than Hamas in their willingness to engage in combat with Israel, with the former conducting more frequent attacks on Israeli forces. The Islamic State and al Qaeda have also long existed in Gaza, but Hamas has suppressed them over local rivalries and fears that these groups could spark unwanted conflicts with Israel.