Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged not to repeat the mistakes made under the Oslo Accords by allowing the Palestinian Authority to return to Gaza after its military campaign to oust Hamas from that enclave is over.
“One thing for sure I am not doing. I am not ready to delude myself to say that the defective act that took place under Oslo through a terrible error” must now take place a second time with the return of a “hostile entity” to Gaza and the West Bank, he told reporters on Saturday night.
Netanyahu referenced the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s initial exit to Tunisia. He noted that this was a correct decision, adding that the error that had been made was to allow it to return in 1994 with through the Palestinian Authority under the auspices of the 1993 Oslo Accords.
“I won’t repeat this mistake and return this body to Gaza, because the same thing will happen,” he said. He referenced the 2007 coup in which Hamas ousted the PA’s Fatah party from Gaza and forcibly seized control of the enclave
The Palestinian leadership has split into two, Netanyahu said, but the ideology that denies Israel’s right to exist is common to both those who rule in the West Bank and in Gaza.
Instead of seeing the kind of governmental reform that took place in Germany and Japan after defeat in World War II, the opposite will occur if “we will return the same entity – that has not undergone any reform or transformation — into Gaza,” Netanyahu said.
“This is what even our good friends are proposing,” he said.
“I think differently and I oppose this. We have to build something different” once the war is over, he said. He emphasized that Israel must have general control over the territory, including security, but that the internal governance would be Palestinian,” Netanyahu said. He clarified that this reference newly created government entity and not the PA.
“The PA doesn’t fight terror it supports it. It doesn’t educate for peace, it educates for the destruction of Israel,” he said.
“This isn’t the entity that needs to enter there [Gaza],” he said.
The international community and the United States has pushed Israel on the issue of what happens to Gaza after Israel completes it military campaign to destroy Hamas. It did so after the terror group infiltrated southern Israel, killing over 1,200 people and seizing some 240 captives.
The United States supports Israel’s military campaign in Gaza but is concerned about the high number of displaced people due to aerial bombings, some 1.9 million out of the 2.7 million that live there, as well as by the high death toll. Hamas has asserted that some 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza war-related violence, without specifying how many of those are combatants.
The United States and the international community have called on Israel to minimize civilian casualties and ensure a flow of aid. But they have also looked to the day after and stressed that the PA should govern Gaza, even though they have not offered a viable security alternative for that option. Israel has insisted that the IDF must maintain military control of the enclave.
US Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday addressed the Biden administration’s day-after vision for Gaza, when she spoke with reporters on the sidelines of the United Nations COP28 Climate Conference in the United Arab Emirates.“Hamas can not control Gaza and Israel must be secure,” while the Palestinians have a political horizon, she said, explaining that this included the return of a revitalized PA to Gaza.
“The PA security forces must be strengthened to eventually assume security responsibilities in Gaza,” Harris said.
“Until then there must be security arrangements that are acceptable to Israel, the people of Gaza, the PA, and the international partners,” Harris said.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza
“The PA must be revitalized driven by the will of the Palestinian people,” she said, adding that this revitalized PA must be able to govern Gaza as well as the PA.
Moving forward, she said, “we can not conflate Hamas with the Palestinian people.”
Harris clarified that “Hamas is a brutal terror organization that has vowed to repeat October 7 until Israeli is annihilated. No nation could possibly live with such danger.”
But how Israel conducts its military operations against Hamas, “it matters how” and international law must be respected.
“To many innocent Palestinians have been killed. The scale of humanitarian suffering and the images coming from Gaza have been devastating,” she said.
“Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians,” she said.
On Saturday night in Ramallah PA President Mahmoud Abbs said that Gaza was “an integral part of the Palestinian state and that “any political solution” must include that enclave as well as the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
According to his statement posed on the Palestinian news agency, WAFA, the only solution to the bloodshed, he told PA leaders, is recognition of a Palestinian state on that territory, including UN membership.
Abbas called for an international conference to discuss and set a timetable for an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.
“We continue with our people to remain steadfast in the battle for survival, freedom, and independence. We will not kneel. We will not surrender to the fait accomplice. We will not allow the Nakba of Palestine in 1948 to be repeated, whatever the circumstances, and no matter how costly the sacrifice.”
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