From Hebrew Israel Time

Now that a hostage release agreement has been reached, we enter the "day after" phase in Gaza, and here we encounter serious complications—not only between Israel and Arab states, but among Arab states themselves.

At the root of the dispute lie the conflicting interests between Egypt and Qatar. For Egypt, the war has highlighted its strategic concern that masses of desperate Gazans will flood into Sinai, undermining Egypt's fragile stability and connecting with the Muslim Brotherhood, the primary enemy of Sisi's regime. In other words: Egypt's perspective has been to prepare for the danger of a Muslim Brotherhood coup in Egypt resulting from Gaza's collapse.

Qatar's interest is the opposite. It is a Muslim Brotherhood power with a vision of dominating the Arab world, and through it, the West. What Egypt saw as a danger, Qatar saw as an opportunity—and this is the root of the tension that developed between Egypt and Israel. Egypt has watched with concern the special relationship between Qatar and Israel, and its basic assessment has been that Israel also wants to topple Sisi's regime. The tension between Egypt and the United States is also attributed in Cairo to Israeli subversion.

Israel's intention to divide the Strip with Qatar—whereby Israel would establish settlements in northern Gaza while Qatar would receive southern Gaza through   Kerem Shalom—created a situation where Israel pushes millions of Gazans southward into a Qatar-controlled area, illustrating for Egypt the danger that Qatar would be the one pushing Gazan refugees into Sinai.

Now, Egypt's primary focus will be to push Gazans northward, and the political translation of this position is conditioning all developments in Gaza on the context of a Palestinian state connecting Gaza and the West Bank. In other words: after Israel tried to push them south, Egypt is pushing them north—not physically, but in terms of the political solution—Gaza is linked with the West Bank, not with Sinai.

To the inherent difficulty with Qatar, complications with Turkey have been added, whose broader aspects. For our purposes, Turkey has become a power involved in Gaza, multiplying Qatar's strength and elevating Egypt's concerns to even higher levels, since Turkey will claim the future Gaza port for itself. If this happens, it will fulfil Erdoğan's old dream of controlling the eastern Mediterranean basin in dangerous proximity to Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, and Greece, and will also create problems for the Gulf states invested in gas drilling in the eastern Mediterranean basin—which are essentially allies of Israel, Greece, and Cyprus.

Turkey's entry into the "day after" frame raises another concern for Egypt—and not only Egypt, but also Israel and other Arab states—that a Turkish army will participate in the international peacekeeping force in Gaza.

Perhaps it's time for "Israeli diplomacy," if such a thing exists, to enter discreet talks with Egypt to restore the shattered trust, in order to unite forces to repel Ottoman aspirations on their doorstep.

One could say that in the eastern Mediterranean basin there is "peaceful coexistence," if not an alliance, between Israel, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, and the Gulf states, which could be challenged by Turkey's penetration into this space.

This is the perspective from which the "day after" arrangements must be examined. But Egypt, which wants to connect Gaza arrangements to the Ramallah parameter, has problems convincing what should be its ally in the Arab camp—Saudi Arabia—because Saudi Arabia has different priorities. Saudi Arabia is currently in the midst of transforming Arab mentality from a militia mentality to a political party mentality, and we see this clearly in Lebanon with the demand for Hezbollah to disarm.

When translating Saudi Arabia's position from Lebanon to Gaza, Saudi Arabia's emphasis is on disarming Hamas, while Egypt has not joined this demand for two reasons. First, it's clear that whoever is assigned this task would be Egypt, and it's unwilling to enter Gaza when it wants to disconnect from Gaza, and further entangle itself with its public opinion, which would accuse the government of collaborating with "the Israeli occupation."

But no less important, it's crucial for Egypt that the focus in international discourse be on the connection between Gaza and the West Bank, not on Gaza's internal situation disconnected from the West Bank, while the discussion about disarming Hamas focuses on Gaza without the West Bank.

When Saudi Arabia understood that Egypt wouldn't support it on disarming Hamas, it torpedoed Egypt's initiative to coordinate Gaza reconstruction funds, and went on a separate track with France.

But it wasn't just the lack of coordination with Saudi Arabia that derailed Egyptian policy—Abu Mazen in Ramallah also played a role. Egypt understood that the Palestinian Authority couldn't be tasked with Gaza reconstruction, and proposed a committee of experts to take on managing and reconstructing Gaza. Abu Mazen immediately vetoed the Egyptian proposal, declaring: only the Palestinian Authority, and it alone. Hamas must immediately relinquish power and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority.

No one takes Abu Mazen's positions seriously, and against this backdrop came Trump's plan to establish a "Peace Council" under his leadership, with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair managing it.

The purpose of the proposal is to bypass all the inter-Arab complexity with a kind of Western mandate—a bitter pill for "Arab nationalism" to swallow, as it means Palestinian nationalism has failed, Palestinians are incapable of managing their affairs, and raises the general question: given the total destruction of the Arab world, to what extent has "Arab nationalism" destroyed Syria, Libya, Iraq, and destabilized other Arab states?

This is why Saudi Arabia is silent. It's waiting for the criticism and insult regarding Blair's "Peace Council" to subside before supporting it, because it aligns with dismantling militias and disillusionment with Arab nationalism and its sister, militant Islamism.

And where is Israel in the "day after" picture? As things appear today—Israel is out. No inter-Arab or international force will enter Gaza as long as the IDF is inside. There's a fear that not only will Israel have no role in the reconstruction process, but the IDF will also be forced to completely withdraw. The battle now is over the perimeter. And one can only hope the government will be wise enough to at least maintain that.