Peloni: Aynaz provides an important overview of the Israeli plan to offshore its responsibilities in Gaza in an effort to ignore realities. Peaceful outcomes are impossible to find at the end of paths which fail to eliminate Iranian/Qatari/Turkish threats. Hamas must be removed root, stem and leaf before any credible replacement might be credibly fashioned, and the failure to do so will only serve to turn the clock back to October 6, as the grass mowing begins anew. Eliminating security threats of an existential nature can not be considered to be optional, they can not be left for others to eliminate, and they can not be allowed to strengthen and grow.
Aynaz Anni Cyrus | Dec 09, 2025
When a Band-Aid solution becomes the strategy
Yasser Al Shabab. Screengrab via Youtube
In August, I warned what would happen if Israel continued relying on shortcuts in Gaza, tribal intermediaries, warlord placeholders, and improvised “local governance” models that pretended Hamas was negotiable. At the time, Yasser Abu Shabab was being introduced as the newest alternative: a tribal militia leader, recently escaped from prison, suddenly elevated as the man who might help fill the imagined vacuum that Israel and Washington pretended would be created in Gaza after Hamas leaves. I described him as a Band-Aid on a wound no one wanted to clean. His death has now confirmed that warning.
The collapse of the U.S.–Israel 20-point “peace plan” only sharpens this point. That document was built on the fantasy that Gaza could be stabilized through a patchwork of forces, partnerships, and tribal actors who would somehow operate beneath Hamas without being consumed by it. Every mechanism in that plan depended on the assumption that Hamas would cooperate with its own replacement or at least tolerate parallel authority. Abu Shabab’s assassination shows exactly why that assumption was never grounded in reality.
Hamas does not share space. It removes competitors. This is not new information; it is the fundamental rule of Gaza’s political landscape. Any local rival empowered by Israel becomes a target. Any tribal figure who tries to enforce order becomes a threat. Any structure inserted into the vacuum without dismantling Hamas is guaranteed to collapse. The people demanding “a solution” while avoiding the elimination of Hamas are not seeking solutions at all. They are seeking comfort. And comfort is not strategy.
The reaction to Abu Shabab’s death makes that clear. Arab media described it as a setback for Israel’s post-war model, a disruption of the alternative-governance experiment, and an exposure of the fragility of Israel’s reliance on local proxies. Israeli commentators were equally unsettled, acknowledging that the experiment suffered a blow. Most telling, however, was the reaction from Abu Shabab’s own tribe. The Tarabin publicly disowned him, rejected any use of their name for Israel-backed militias, and emphasized that Gaza has no space for collaborators. Without tribal legitimacy, no proxy survives. Without eliminating Hamas, no alternative authority functions. And without a real governing structure, every “plan” becomes improvised crisis management.
The article is quite right. Hamas will not cooperate with anyone. The only chance is maybe Qatar as long as the money flows but not a minute longer.
We know this today and we have known that since Hamas was born. They may go into Hudna mode for a while but they will not work with any of the clans in Gaza or with the PA as we saw 20 years ago. As the article says, Israel has had a few chances to relieve us of Hamas but didn’t use them.