Report: Blinken mulling post-war Gaza plan to present after US elections
Axios reports Israel, UAE asked top US diplomat to help bridge differences for joint proposal regarding Palestinian Authority involvement in Gaza
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is trying to coordinate a post-war plan for Gaza to be presented after the US presidential elections next month based on ideas offered by Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Axios reported on Wednesday citing unnamed US, Israeli, Palestinian, and Emirati officials.
According to the US officials, Blinken and others in the State Department believe that in the absence of a deal that would see Hamas hostages freed alongside a ceasefire in Gaza, an organized post-war plan would be the push needed to begin ending the war in the Palestinian enclave.
Having failed to help broker an end to the war during his term, a successful post-war plan would be seen as US President Joe Biden’s administration’s legacy, Axios said.
The plan Blinken is considering has reportedly caused internal fighting in the US State Department as officials have disagreed over various concerns, including that the plan would marginalize Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other Ramallah officials.
Both Israel and the UAE are seeking to keep Abbas out of the plan, with the Emirati sources accusing him of corruption and dysfunction, but the two nations differ on PA involvement in Gaza beyond Abbas.
The UAE reportedly wants to replace Abbas and PA Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa with a new “empowered and independent” Palestinian figure who would lead the post-war transition in Gaza, but Israel is strongly opposed to any immediate PA involvement, according to US and Israeli officials.
Israel, however, does not have the US’s support on this point with one State Department official telling Axios that “we will not support a day-after plan without a role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. How that role could look like is still under discussion.”
The issue could be less of a problem than it seems as three officials told The Times of Israel in July that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was more amenable in private to discussing PA involvement in post-war Gaza even though he continued to oppose it publicly.
Israeli officials told Axios in the Wednesday report that another point of contention was that the UAE wanted the plan to be based on a vision for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, but that Netanyahu was not even willing to consider it.
Meanwhile, a PA official told Axios that Ramallah was “highly suspicious” of the Israeli-Emirati plan and doesn’t think it would be supported throughout the region.
“Playing with Gaza governance is too dangerous. Any mistake could kill the Palestinian national project,” he said.
Planning for post-war Gaza has received a new push in recent months, officials told Axios, with Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, Blinken, and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed holding a secret meeting in Abu Dhabi in July.
According to Axios, the UAE and Israel have asked Blinken to help settle the disagreements between the two Middle Eastern nations.
The Israeli and Emirati embassies in Washington, DC, declined Axios’s request for comment.
The war in Gaza has been ongoing for more than a year since Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
In response, Israel launched a ground operation in the Gaza Strip with the proclaimed objectives of dismantling Hamas and securing the release of the hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 355.
