Netanyahu said to deny security chiefs’ bids to discuss post-war plan for Gaza
PM reportedly hesitant to reveal expected role PA would have in managing Strip after Hamas is defeated; Dermer in Washington to discuss Gaza war, hostages with top US officials
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly rejected several recent requests from security chiefs to hold deliberations on post-war arrangements for the Gaza Strip.
Quoting political and security sources who said Netanyahu does not want to reveal the expected role that Palestinian Authority officials will have in managing Gaza’s civil affairs after Hamas is defeated, Channel 12 reported Tuesday that the premier rebuffed such requests on three separate occasions — including during the past day.
Among those said to have requested to discuss the matter were the chiefs of the Mossad, Shin Bet and Israel Defense Forces.
Responding to the report, Netanyahu’s office said that he had instructed his top confidants, including Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, to prepare for preliminary deliberations on the matter.
“A date for the deliberation has been set and it will take place in the coming days,” the Prime Minister’s Office said.
The report came as Dermer was in Washington to meet with top US officials to discuss the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and efforts to return the hostages taken by the terror group on October 7.
A spokeswoman for the US National Security Council said Dermer was set to hold talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on “matters related to the conflict in Gaza and the return of hostages held by Hamas.”
The war between Israel and Hamas broke out with the terror group’s October 7 massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border from the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing over 240 hostages — mostly civilians.
In response, Israel vowed to destroy the Iran-backed terror group, launching a wide-scale offensive in the coastal enclave that the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza claims has killed more than 20,000 people, most of them women and children. Those figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both Hamas terrorists and civilians, and people killed as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires.
The US says it opposes a ceasefire that would leave Hamas intact, as the terror group still vows to continue to carry out attacks on Israel of the type it perpetrated on October 7.
But Washington insists that the PA — which Israel has accused of supporting terrorism through education, payment of stipends to terrorists and a failure to condemn Hamas’s October 7 atrocities — eventually fill the vacuum in order to reunite the West Bank and Gaza under a single political entity and pave a path toward an eventual two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
The US concedes that the PA — which hasn’t held elections in 17 years and whose popularity continues to plummet amid longstanding allegations of corruption and an ever-expanding Israeli presence in the West Bank — will need to be “rejuvenated” before it can take responsibility for the Gaza Strip.
Unnamed security officials quoted in the Channel 12 report said the discussions are important for planning the next stages of the war and urged the government to swiftly address the matter, adding that their US counterparts were also demanding answers.
Jacob Magid and agencies contributed to this report.
