US adviser and Palestinian Authority president to discuss plans for Gaza Strip
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has travelled to the occupied West Bank to discuss the Gaza Strip’s future with the Palestinian Authority president in the face of opposition from Israel to any post-war Palestinian administration of the coastal territory.
Sullivan, a senior figure in the Biden administration, was visiting Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Friday after two days of meetings in Tel Aviv with Israeli officials including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the defence minister, Yoav Gallant.
He and Abbas were scheduled to discuss potential post-war arrangements for Gaza, which could include the return of Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces to the strip 16 years after they were driven out by Hamas.
“We do not believe that it makes sense for Israel, or is right for Israel, to … reoccupy Gaza over the long term,” Sullivan told reporters in Tel Aviv on Friday. “Ultimately the control of Gaza, the administration of Gaza and the security of Gaza has to transition to the Palestinians.”
“Ongoing efforts to revamp and revitalise” the Palestinian Authority and rein in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank were also on the agenda, he said.
Joe Biden has provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid in the aftermath of the 7 October Hamas attack that killed 1,139 people and sparked the latest war in Gaza. The 10-week-old conflict has already claimed more than 18,000 lives and left the strip’s population of 2.3 million facing a devastating humanitarian crisis.
But there are growing differences in opinion and strategy between the US and Israel over the war’s execution. Washington has been pressing Israel for weeks to reduce civilian casualties and allow more aid into the besieged territory, as well as share concrete plans for how the war will end and who it expects to control Gaza when the fighting stops.
People across Gaza reported heavy fighting on Friday, with an influx of dead and wounded at hospitals in Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis and Rafah. Communications services remained patchy since going down on Thursday.
Airstrikes and tank shelling overnight as well as fierce street battles continued overnight and into Friday, suggesting that after two months of aerial and ground operations Israel is struggling to achieve its stated aim of completely eradicating Hamas. A surprise ambush in Gaza City earlier this week, where Israel is supposedly in control, killed nine Israeli soldiers.
“The Gaza Strip turned into a ball of fire overnight, we could hear explosions and gunshots echoing from all directions,” Ahmed, 45, an electrician and father of six, told Reuters from a shelter in a central area of the densely populated enclave. “They can destroy homes and roads and kill civilians from the air or through blind tank shelling, but when they come face to face with the resistance, they lose. We don’t have anything to lose after all they had done to our Gaza.”
Netanyahu and his ministers told Sullivan on Thursday that the country would fight until “absolute victory against Hamas”, warning that the war could last “more than several months”.
However, international pressure is mounting for Israel to wind down its major operations, currently focussed on the southern town of Khan Younis, before the end of the year.
In a news conference on Friday, Sullivan called his meetings with Netanyahu “very constructive”, saying that the war would shift from the current campaign of heavy, wide scale bombing and armoured ground operations to a new phrase focussed on precise targeting of Hamas leaders and on intelligence-driven operations.
“The conditions and the timing for that was obviously a subject of conversation” with Netanyahu, other Israeli government leaders and military commanders, he said.
Many unanswered questions still remain about post-war control of the territory. Israel’s war cabinet appears to favour maintaining an open-ended security presence in the 41km by 12km strip.
Netanyahu stated earlier this week that Israel would not allow the PA or its ruling party, Fatah, to return to Gaza. Hamas defeated Fatah in parliamentary elections in 2006, and took over the territory a year later following a brief civil war.
The US wants governance of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to revert to a unified Palestinian administration, as a precursor to the revival of peace talks with Israel aimed at a two-state solution.
The 88-year-old Abbas and the PA, however, are deeply unpopular. After 17 years without elections, the authority is viewed by most Palestinians as little more than a subcontractor for Israeli security. Washington has not publicly called for personnel changes within the PA, or general elections.