Arab states urge Israel, US to let Palestinian Authority oversee Gaza recovery | Gaza

Israel and the incoming Trump administration are being urged by Arab states to avoid a dangerous political vacuum in Gaza and allow the Palestinian Authority (PA), in cooperation with the UN’s Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, to oversee the area’s recovery.

The future governance of Gaza is to be discussed at the start of negotiations on the second phase of the agreement 16 days after a ceasefire begins. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to address the issue since the war began, regarding any “day after” discussions as likely to open up destabilizing internal political divisions within his coalition.

The Israeli government is also due to end all cooperation with UNRWA by January 30, raising questions about how the planned increase in post-truce aid might be distributed in Gaza.

Arab states, with the support of most European powers, insist that there is no alternative organization of Unrwa’s breadth and organization capable of overseeing the emergency distribution of food and supplies.

The outgoing Biden administration’s view of how Gaza could be managed was finally aired this week in a farewell speech by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a delay that has left Arab states frustrated.

Blinken said the goal is to “allow Israel to fully withdraw from Gaza, prevent Hamas from withdrawing and provide for Gaza’s governance, security and reconstruction” and outlined a plan centered on a UN-mandated interim administration consisting of ” Palestinians from Gaza and representatives from the PA” to run key services such as banking, water, energy and health that would hand over to a fully reformed PA administration as soon as possible.

He also proposed “a temporary security mission … of partner nation security forces and vetted Palestinian personnel” to create a secure environment for humanitarian and reconstruction efforts and to ensure border security to prevent smuggling, which could allow Hamas to rebuild its military capabilities.

Blinken set no timetable or details on how consultations on appointing PA representatives would be conducted, and speaking in Norway on Wednesday, Mohammad Mustafa, prime minister of the PA, which since its 2007 split with Hamas has been confined to the West Bank, rejected any tentative events. He said that “any attempt to consolidate the separation between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank or to create transitional entities will be rejected”.

Blinken added: “Gaza after all this pain needs a responsible and capable government to heal the wounds of the people of Gaza under one state, one government, one law and one system.”

Blinken’s plan for a security mission may also need a single Palestinian government. Without identifying the likely Arab participants, he said some had expressed their willingness to contribute troops and police, but only if it is agreed that Gaza and the West Bank “reunite under a reformed PA as part of a path to an independent Palestinian state”. The Israeli Knesset is currently opposed to a Palestinian state, meaning that such a prerequisite for a security force is absent.

In his speech, Mustafa outlined a plan for Gaza that he insisted the PA was ready to start implementing immediately. However, talks in Cairo in November between Hamas and the PA failed to agree on the composition of a joint Hamas-PA committee to lead Gaza.

But Arab diplomats believe Hamas is willing to take a back seat if the PA is given authority to rule Gaza, but will begin to back away if anything it sees as closer to colonial rule is attempted. They also recognize that the PA is deeply unpopular in the West Bank.

Hugh Lovatt of the European Council on Foreign Relations also warned that a PA takeover of Gaza “will be complicated by the PA’s deepening domestic unpopularity, increasing financial fragility, and growing authoritarianism” and that, while affected, Hamas “continues to have a veto over Gaza’s future”.

Despite differences with aspects of the Blinken plan, Arab diplomats hope the Trump team will pick up on its themes and not “overthink things,” leading to delays. A key objective of an interim security force would, for example, be to separate the Palestinians from the Israelis, prevent the establishment of an Israeli-occupied buffer zone inside Gaza, and prevent infiltration and new cross-border attacks.

So far, Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Mike Waltz, has simply said: “Gaza must be fully demilitarized. Hamas must be destroyed to the point that it cannot reconstitute itself, and Israel has every right to protect itself.”

The fear that Israel will act on its promise to end all cooperation with UNRWA, with the support of the Trump team, is one of the most pressing issues given the planned increase in aid from Sunday when the ceasefire starts.

As many as 500 aid trucks must enter Gaza a day, but parts of Gaza are lawless.

Robert Satloff, the director of the influential Washington Institute think tank, has suggested that if other UN agencies such as the World Food Program or Unicef ​​refuse to take on Unrwa’s current tasks, they should be threatened with a 40% loss of US funding.

Many in the US say Unrwa is infiltrated by Hamas supporters and has an ideological role as an advocate for Palestinian refugees. The Knesset passed bills that effectively end Unrwa’s work in the Palestinian territories due to Israeli allegations that Unrwa staff in Gaza were involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks. The UN launched an investigation into the Israeli claims and fired nine UNRWA staff as a result.

Several years before, the first Trump administration suspended US funding for UNRWA in 2018, saying the organization was irreparably flawed. Satloff said: “There is no way Trump’s first major initiative in the Middle East will be to twist Israel’s arm to save Unrwa.”

Philippe Lazzarini, the agency’s commissioner-general, argued that “Unrwa cannot be replaced,” and the Badil Resource Center, a Palestinian NGO, has warned that any “day-after” plan that excludes the agency and imposes an “international interim administration” would be “just another face of colonization and the continued denial of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination”.