What will happen in Gaza after the war? The US and EU have pressed Israel to offer a framework for the Palestinian enclave, assuming they succeed in destroying Hamas as a functioning entity in the region. The Israelis clearly would prefer to avoid a re-occupation in anything other than the short term, and Egypt has also make it well known that they want nothing to do with Gaza or the Palestinians, for reasons I laid out at the start of the conflict.

As it happens, the US and Israel have already begun planning for the end of the war. The plan for now envisions a ‘multinational’ peacekeeper force to prevent a re-infiltration of Hamas or Hezbollah into Gaza. But who will send troops there?

Talks are underway to establish a multinational force in Gaza after Israel uproots Hamas, two senators confirmed Wednesday, the clearest sign yet that the U.S. and its partners are seriously weighing deploying foreign troops to the enclave.

Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told POLITICO that there’s early, closed-door diplomacy over establishing a peacekeeping force in Gaza, though it was not likely to include American troops.

Ahem. We tried that before. The US stationed forces in southern Lebanon to keep the peace between Israel and Hezbollah, only to withdraw after Hezbollah killed over 230 Marines in a bombing at their barracks. The retreat only emboldened radical Islamists such as Osama bin Laden, who assumed that the US would retreat even further with more terrorist attacks on American assets. It took 9/11 to wake America up to the war that had been declared on us by al-Qaeda and other jihadi terror groups.

We’re still fighting that war in western Iraq and eastern Syria. The last thing we need is to make ourselves a target for Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza, especially since the population would almost certainly be entirely hostile to our presence. This administration would likely adopt engagement rules that prevented any real “peacekeeping” but instead set us up for target practice by radical Islamists of all stripes in Gaza.

To succeed in a peacekeeping mission in Gaza, the troops involved would have to be (a) Muslim, and (b) harsh enough to enforce the new status quo. The US and Israelis have a partner in mind that could satisfy both conditions:

Blumenthal said the congressional delegation that he traveled with to Israel last month discussed the possibility of having Saudi Arabian troops in the force. He noted, however, that he hadn’t heard of U.S. troops heading to Gaza as part of the deliberations.

“There certainly has been discussion with the Saudi about their being part of some international peacekeeping force if only to provide resources, and, longer term, supporting Palestinian leadership and a separate state, obviously. Reconstruction of Gaza will require a vast amount of resources, which the Saudis potentially could help provide,” he said.

That could work, if the Saudis agreed to the partnership. They had already signaled their intent to normalize relations with Israel, and their foreign minister said that the process of joining the Abraham Accords would continue after the war concluded. That would make both Israel and Egypt more comfortable, plus it would be in the Saudis’ interest to ensure that Iran be kept from regaining influence in Gaza. Tehran has used Hamas and Hezbollah as well as the Houthis to encircle the Sunnis in the region and impose their hegemony. Dislodging Hamas and asserting direct control of the Palestinians in Gaza would go a long way to damaging Shi’ite plans to dominate. Jordan and the UAE might join as peacekeeper partners for the same reasons.

On the other hand, such an arrangement runs the risks of direct conflict with Israel if the Saudis couldn’t keep the terrorists from rocket launches and attacks on kibbutzes. One would imagine that the Saudis would be cognizant of that risk and impose rather draconian penalties on those who want to cause trouble. Maybe they’d rather not bother, but the problems of Gaza are not going to disappear without some sort of inclusive arrangement that keeps the Iranians out — and Lebanon and Syria are great reminders of the alternative.

We’ll have plenty of time to contemplate that, as the IDF estimates that they will have “several months” of fighting to destroy Hamas in Gaza. They also anticipate an insurgency phase that the Saudis will certainly want to see concluded before they choose to deploy their own troops in Gaza:

The combined stages of the current invasion and expected later stages of insurgency, lower-grade fighting will take several months, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

While to date, the IDF and top political officials have talked about an invasion lasting more than weeks, and other processes lasting a couple of months or more, the impression now is that it will be longer.

This will probably not mean several months of intense fighting like now, but rather a combination of strategies, followed by months of fighting an insurgency after the initial stage.

There may also not be any one marker day for an end to the fighting, as Hamas is not expected to surrender at any point, but rather, the expectation is that just as over the past week ground forces escalated their fighting, at some later point, that scale of fighting will be gradually reduced.

That seems like a realistic set of expectations, with the possible exception of what happens to Israel’s international support. It hasn’t taken long for its partners to start their throat-clearing about collateral damage, and Western media hasn’t helped either. Israel has spent the last two days attacking a Hamas command center and tunnel system in Jabaliya, for instance, in which a Hamas commander has been killed and their tunnel system partially collapsed. The media insists on referring to it as a ‘refugee camp’ rather than a city, and won’t connect the dots between the presence of a Hamas commander and a command-and-control presence. Hamas also declared that the Jabaliya attack killed seven of the hostages, which makes it very clear that Hamas did have command functions in Jabaliya and that is a legitimate military target.

Don’t expect the media to get less stupid in the weeks ahead.