Bloomberg Balance of Power : Once Israel ends its military campaign to destroy the Palestinian militant group Hamas, what’s the future for Gaza?

 

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Welcome to Balance of Power, bringing you the latest in global politics. If you haven’t yet, sign up here. Once Israel ends its military campaign to destroy the Palestinian militant group Hamas, what’s the future for Gaza? While the operation could still last for months, American and Israeli officials are looking at the various options to run a post-conflict Gaza: A multinational force that includes US and possibly Arab and European troops, a peacekeeping operation modeled on the one that oversaw a 1979 Egypt-Israel treaty or putting the territory under temporary United Nations oversight. For US President Joe Biden, who’s seeking reelection next year, the idea of putting American boots on the ground, even a token force, carries particular peril, Peter Martin and Jennifer Jacobs write. All those ideas have their drawbacks, but one thing is clear: Neither of the two protagonists in the current fighting, Israel and Hamas — designated a terrorist group by the US and the European Union — should run the enclave. Israel had tolerated Hamas’s rule over Gaza, but the militants’ Oct. 7 attack that killed about 1,400 people and took more than 200 hostages has fueled a drive to eliminate the group. Whether that is possible remains an open question. Israel’s retaliatory action has killed more than 8,500 people, including thousands of women and children, according to the ministry of health in Hamas-run Gaza. An overnight strike on a refugee camp that Israel said was used by Hamas as a training center drew condemnation across the Middle East. At this point, there’s little sign that the Palestinian Authority, which administers the West Bank, would be able to run Gaza even if it wanted to. The West Bank itself is threatening to become a new front amid widespread arrests by Israel, a rising death toll and an economic slump. For most of the world, the long-term goal is a sovereign Palestinian state governing Gaza and the West Bank in peace with neighboring Israel. The challenge is how to get there. — Karl Maier An Israeli soldier walks among the rubble of a house in the Nir Oz Kibbutz on Monday. Photographer: Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg

Global Must Reads

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Washington Dispatch

Biden will travel to Minnesota today on a trip that underscores the conundrums he faces in his campaign for reelection. The unity of the Democratic electorate has come under stress over his unrelenting support for Israel in its war against Hamas. Minnesota has a young, diverse Democratic base and a large number of Muslim Americans. The state is also the home of Representative Dean Phillips, who announced last week that he could challenge Biden for the party’s presidential nomination. While not seen as a serious contender, Phillips has seized on worries about the economy and Biden’s age. Pollsters have found that those concerns weigh on the minds of many Americans. Republicans have longed to flip Minnesota, which has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1976. Biden holds only a narrow lead there over former President Donald Trump, according to a recent Emerson College poll.  One thing to watch today: The Treasury Department will release its quarterly borrowing plan. Sign up for the Washington Edition newsletter for more from the US capital and watch Balance of Power at 5pm ET weekdays on Bloomberg Television.

Chart of the Day

What’s likely to be the hottest year on record brought never-before-seen rain to five continents, killing thousands of people and causing millions of dollars in economic losses. UN-backed scientists project that flooding will get worse as climate change accelerates.

And Finally

As China pushes to challenge the US in outer space, Xi is taking a page out of the playbook NASA used for Elon Musk’s SpaceX by directly supporting the involvement of local startups. The China Manned Space Agency, which yesterday returned three astronauts to Earth who had been working since May on the Tiangong space station, wants to pay private-sector companies for future missions. It hasn’t yet disclosed the size or value of contracts it could award to the firms. Astronaut Zhai Zhigang climbs out of the return capsule of the Shenzhou-13 spaceship in April 2022.  Photographer: Cai Yang/Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images

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