According to Israel Hayom, a War Cabinet official described an ongoing dispute between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on who will run the Gaza Strip the day after the war. Gallant has been repeating his mantra, “There are two possible ruling parties in the Gaza Strip – Hamas or Fatah.”
In the security-political cabinet, the majority of ministers oppose Gallant’s proposal––which is also the White House’s proposal––to hand over the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority.
In addition to the national-religious ministers who reject out of hand Gallant’s plan to import technocrats from Ramallah to govern Gaza, Netanyahu and most Likud ministers oppose it as well: Ron Dermer, Yariv Levin, Miri Regev, Eli Cohen, Israel Katz, and Avi Dichter.
Dichter, formerly head of the Shin Bet, issued a decisive statement, saying, “You don’t replace a terrorist organization with another terrorist organization. By law, the Palestinian Authority pays salaries to terrorists sitting in Israeli prisons or in Palestinian graves. In fact, after such a terrorist murders an Israeli in a terrorist attack, the Palestinian Authority makes him its official. Therefore, we will oppose and prevent in every way the entry of the Palestinian Authority into Gaza.”
Dichter continued: “Regarding the alternatives for the day after the war – they should be declared only after the end of the war in Gaza, when the goals of destroying the military capabilities of Hamas and Jihad in the Gaza Strip and weakening Hamas’s rule in Gaza have been achieved, at the same time as the return of all the abductees, including the four from before this war.”
Gideon Sa’ar and Yifat Shasha Biton from the National Right (a.k.a. New Hope) also rejected Gallant’s outline. Sa’ar stated, “After the defeat of Hamas, it is important that there be a process of de-radicalization in the Gaza Strip, as was the case in history with defeated nations. It is difficult to see the Palestinian Authority, an entity that is still engaged in inciting and supporting terrorism, as a participant in such a process.”
The Blue & White ministers Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot, and Hili Trooper, are the only ones who have not rejected Gallant’s plan outright, because their agenda includes a Palestinian State, even if for the time being they are not pushing it openly, seeing as this would be a suicidal move in the current public opinion in Israel.
THE WORLD LOVES A PA RULE IN GAZA
Daniel Byman best represented the Biden administration’s view on this matter in a Foreign Affairs article on January 4, 2024 (Can the Palestinian Authority Govern Gaza? How to Revitalize the PA for Postwar Rule).
“The best bet, and the preferred approach of the Biden administration, is for the Palestinian Authority to take the helm. Rule by the PA—the governmental body that currently controls parts of the West Bank and that ran Gaza before 2007—is better than a lasting Israeli occupation, chaos, or other options since the PA favors peace with Israel and has the support of much of the international community.”
“But it is hardly without problems,” Byman noted, “Because of its corruption, poor track record of governing with the West Bank, and perceived complicity with Israel, the organization lacks legitimacy among Palestinians. In the West Bank, it is increasingly losing the ability to suppress Hamas and stop violence without significant help from Israel. And then there is the problem of the current Israeli government’s lack of enthusiasm for the group: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that expecting the PA to solve Gaza’s problems is a pipe dream.”
In preparation for getting the nod from the White House, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas last week fired his prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, replacing him with US-educated economist Mohammad Mustafa. With no political base of his own, Mustafa will be Abbas’s and Biden’s loyal errand boy. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller congratulated Ramallah on its efforts to “reform and revitalize” itself, adding, “We think those steps are positive. We think that they’re an important step to achieving a reunited Gaza and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”
In other words, Israel’s nightmare, namely that it would be surrounded by terrorist states on either side of its borders, is becoming a reality, and in the end, it could turn out that all the Arabs had to do to get their own state was to rape, murder, behead and burn alive 1,200 Jews. Who knew?
Incidentally, even those in the West who support wholeheartedly a PLO takeover of Gaza, are aware that back in 2007, Hamas executed the PLO officials in Gaza, and that Hamas is braced to take over Judea and Samaria. And yet, the world is quite willing to impose this dreadful plan on the Jewish State because it is the magical formula for peace in the Middle East.
REMEMBER MUNICH
Here’s a reminder: the Munich Agreement that was signed on September 30, 1938, by Nazi Germany, Great Britain, the French Republic, and Fascist Italy, provided for the German annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, where some three million ethnic Germans lived. Munich was one of the final preludes for WW2, and the hilarious thing about that agreement was that Czechoslovakia wasn’t even included in the discussions.
France and England were member countries of the League of Nations who in 1924 signed a binding alliance agreement with Czechoslovakia. They were, how should we put it, its greatest allies.
