Senior PA official: Hamas must ‘reconsider all its policies and methods’ after war
Hussein al-Sheikh, seen as potential successor to Mahmoud Abbas, says ‘after all this [killing],’ there must be a ‘serious, honest and responsible assessment’ of Palestinian cause
A senior Palestinian Authority official appeared to express criticism of Hamas for employing terrorism against Israel, saying the terror group needs to reconsider its approach following the ongoing war.
Hussein al-Sheikh, the PA civil affairs minister and the secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, made his comments in an interview with Reuters published Sunday, as US officials have sought to paint the PA as a potential ruling body over the Gaza Strip after the war, while Israeli officials have dismissed any such possibility.
Speaking to Reuters in Ramallah, al-Sheikh suggested that the methods employed by Palestinians in pursuit of statehood until now have failed to bear fruit.
“It is not acceptable for some to believe that their method and approach in managing the conflict with Israel was the ideal and the best,” al-Sheikh said. “After all this [killing] and after everything that’s happening, isn’t it worth making a serious, honest and responsible assessment to protect our people and our Palestinian cause?”
“Isn’t it worth discussing how to manage this conflict with the Israeli occupation?” he added.
Al-Sheikh said Hamas must engage in a “serious and honest assessment and reconsider all its policies and all its methods” once the fighting ends, while calling for the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem to come under PA rule: “There must be a single Palestinian government governing the Palestinian homeland,” he said.
Al-Sheikh’s comments regarding Hamas echoed those made by another senior PA official Mahmoud Habbash who told The Times of Israel last month, “We didn’t want or need this war. What was the point? Did Hamas imagine that it could win?”
Al-Sheikh is often seen as a potential successor to the 88-year-old PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who has yet to publicly condemn or discuss Hamas’s murderous rampage on October 7, in which 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists massacred 1,200 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians slaughtered amid brutal atrocities, and seized 240 hostages. But he is seen as deeply unpopular in the West Bank, since he is the key PA figure who cooperates with Israeli officials and the IDF.
Following meetings in Ramallah on Friday, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said during a press conference that “we do believe that the Palestinian Authority needs to be revamped and revitalized, needs to be updated in terms of its method of governance, its representation of Palestinian people.”
Sullivan added: “That will require a lot of work by everybody who is engaged in the Palestinian Authority, starting with the president, Mahmoud Abbas, who I will go to see… And ultimately, it’s going to be up to the Palestinian people to work through their representation.”
Al-Sheikh revealed to Reuters that PA officials have told Sullivan that Israel needs to be convinced by world bodies to agree to a larger solution to the conflict including the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
The PLO official suggested that the PA is the sole legitimate body that can represent the Palestinian people and control Gaza once the ongoing war has finished.
Israel, meanwhile, has said the PA is unfit to take control of the Strip, citing its refusal to condemn Hamas terrorism as well as its ongoing payments to the families of jailed Palestinian terrorists and families of slain assailants.
A poll released last week showed soaring Palestinian support for Hamas in the West Bank, with 44 percent in the territory saying they support Hamas in general, up from just 12% in September. Of those Palestinians polled in the West Bank, 82% said they believe Hamas was “correct” to launch its October 7 onslaught, compared to only 57% in Gaza.
At the start of a press conference in Tel Aviv on Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited that survey in reiterating his opposition to the PA playing a role in Gaza following the war.
“I will not allow us to replace Hamastan with Fatahstan, that we replace Khan Younis with Jenin,” he said. “I will not allow the State of Israel to repeat the fateful mistake of [the] Oslo [Accord], which brought to the heart of our country and to Gaza the most extreme elements in the Arab world, which are committed to the destruction of the State of Israel and who educate their children to this end.”
Netanyahu added that “as of this moment, the Palestinian Authority senior leadership simply refuses to condemn the massacre and some of them even praise it openly. They will control Gaza on ‘the day after’? Haven’t we learned anything? As the prime minister of Israel, I will not allow that to happen.” Netanyahu said instead that “after the elimination of Hamas, the Gaza Strip will be demilitarized, will be under Israeli security control, and no element in it will either threaten us or educate its children to destroy us.”
