Responding to Gallant, Netanyahu says he won’t replace ‘Hamastan with Fatahstan’ in Gaza

By Sam Sokol 15 May 2024, 7:44 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a recorded statement on the war with Hamas in Gaza, May 15, 2024. (Screenshot/GPO)

Responding to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s declaration that he would “not allow” Israeli “civil or military governance of Gaza after Hamas,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares that he is “not ready to replace Hamastan with Fatahstan.”

Fatah is Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s party.

“After the terrible massacre on October 7, I ordered the destruction of Hamas,” Netanyahu states in a video response to Gallant’s televised address. “As long as Hamas remains intact, no other party will step in to manage civilian affairs in Gaza, certainly not the Palestinian Authority. 80 percent of the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria support the terrible massacre of October 7,” Netanyahu said, referring to the West Bank.

“I am not prepared to switch from Hamastan to Fatahstan,” he says, referencing the Fatah-dominated PA.

The data cited by Netanyahu appears to come from a December poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research which showed that 82 percent of West Bank Palestinians supported the events of October 7. A second poll released by the same organization in March showed that number had dropped to 71%.

“The Palestinian Authority supports terror, educates for terror, funds terror. And so the first condition for preparing the ground for another party is to eliminate Hamas, and to do so without excuses,” Netanyahu adds.