The Biden administration keeps talking about the urgent need for Israel to have a post-war plan for Gaza. What that really means is that it wants the PLO to take over Gaza. Netanyahu has opposed that for now. The Palestinian Authority is run by Fatah, the body behind the PLO, and is just another Islamic terrorist group. And parts of it claimed to have taken part in the Oct 7 massacres. But none of that is stopping the Biden administration from its obsession.
The thinking is that if the Palestinian Authority takes over Gaza, it can force negotiations on a Two-State Solution and finally bring peace by empowering terrorists. A policy that has brought nothing but terror for 30 years.
And now that Israel’s government is in the way, it’s time to get it out of the way.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of the Palestinian Authority returning to the Gaza Strip is undermining US efforts to rally like-minded Arab countries around a strategy for stabilizing the coastal enclave after the Israel-Hamas war, an administration official and two senior Arab diplomats told The Times of Israel.
Netanyahu’s refusal to address who will govern Gaza if Israel succeeds in toppling Hamas, along with the premier’s mixed messaging regarding whether the Israeli military will re-occupy the Strip, have pushed away Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
The Biden administration believes the backing of those countries will be needed to help rehabilitate and manage the Strip for an interim period after the war, the three officials explained.
This is nonsense.
No Arab Muslim country would publicly back Israel bombing Sunni Muslims. For that matter the Palestinian Authority wouldn’t express support for it either. Not even if Netanyahu swore on a stack of bibles that Abbas would get to rule Gaza. Nor will those countries do anything to run Gaza beyond providing aid and some meaningless formalities.
Labor could be in power Israel and that would not change.
Once again, Israel is being blamed for Arab Muslim intransigence Some of which is motivated by their realistic assessments of their own people.
And then it’s time for a coup.
Sensing that Netanyahu is being hamstrung by his far-right coalition allies, the US has begun to ask about the possibility of a more moderate government being shuffled in, according to a former official.
To ask about? What a nice way of pushing regime change in exchange for political support.
“The diplomatic umbrella the US and other Western countries are providing Israel to continue operating in Gaza constricts, as civilian casualties mount,” a Biden administration official said on condition of anonymity. “Refusal to cooperate with — and even inhibiting — [our] efforts constrict that umbrella even more.”
Again, a fancy way of describing threatening to withdraw support from Israel unless Netanyahu rejects the results of a democratic election and forms a coalition with leftists with the aim of appeasing terrorists.
An Arab ambassador, speaking on condition of anonymity, argued that Netanyahu’s dismissal of proposals to return the relatively moderate PA to the Gaza Strip would lead to the creation of a vacuum in Gaza that would be filled with forces no less radical than Hamas, warning that the region would be further destabilized.
The PA is no less radical than Hamas. PA’s Abbas has said so himself. Putting the same terrorists in charge of parts of the West Bank, a terror spot, is going to stabilize Gaza how?
A second Arab official, a senior diplomat, appeared to link Netanyahu’s stance to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s recent rejection of a proposal by CIA director William Burns that Cairo help manage security in Gaza for an interim period after the war
Why would Egypt want to manage a terror zone? And why would Israel want an enemy nation, which not too long ago elected a Muslim Brotherhood government, the parent organization, of Hamas to have any role in Gaza?
“In addition to being an armed resistance group, Hamas is an idea that cannot be defeated only with a military,” said the diplomat. “If non-violent alternatives continue to be undermined, Israel will have accomplished nothing in this war.”
The Oslo Accords was supposed to be a non-violent alternative. Setting up the Palestinian Authority was a non-violent alternative. The only result was worse and more extreme violence.
Recognizing that the administration’s hands are tied as long as Netanyahu’s coalition remains, Biden officials have again begun to inquire into whether a more moderate government could be formed in Jerusalem, a former US official familiar with the matter said.
They pointed to meetings top Biden aides have held with war cabinet minister Benny Gantz, a top political rival to Netanyahu, as well as opposition chairman Yair Lapid and fellow former prime minister Naftali Bennett.
“They’re increasingly running into dead-ends with this government, and their entire regional agenda is on the line,” they added.
What agenda? All the Biden administration needs to do is allow Israel to defeat Hamas. There’s no regional agenda here. Nor will there ever be one.
{Reposted from FrontPageMag}
