UAE vows it won’t take part in Gaza’s ‘day after’ without Palestinian state
Hamas said to tell ceasefire negotiators it will accept Israel remaining in Philadelphi Corridor, on condition a date is set for when it would leave and war ends completely
The United Arab Emirates will not play any role in the “day after” the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip unless a Palestinian state is established, its Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed said Saturday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners staunchly oppose creating a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza, which began on October 7, 2023, when Palestinian terror group Hamas led a massive attack on southern Israel from the coastal enclave.
“The United Arab Emirates is not ready to support the day after the war in Gaza without the establishment of a Palestinian state,” bin Zayed posted to his X account.
It is not the first time the UAE’s top diplomat has set red lines over the country’s potential involvement in Gaza. Bin Zayed in May denounced a suggestion by Netanyahu that Abu Dhabi might assist local Palestinians in managing Gaza after the war.
Bin Zayed at the time tweeted a denunciation of Netanyahu’s proposal that his country “participate in civil administration of the Gaza Strip, which is under Israeli occupation.”
“The UAE stresses that the Israeli prime minister does not have any legal capacity to take this step, and the state refuses to be drawn into any plan aimed at providing cover for the Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip,” he added.
The war in Gaza erupted when Hamas-led terrorists rampaged through southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages to Gaza while committing brutal atrocities. Vowing to destroy the terror group and free the hostages, Israel launched a wide-scale military operation in Gaza.
Washington has repeatedly urged Israel to craft a realistic postwar plan for Gaza and warned that failure to do so could trigger lawlessness and chaos as well as a comeback by Hamas in the Palestinian territory.
Netanyahu has indicated he is considering options that revolve around enabling groups unaffiliated with Hamas to manage areas of the territory with the assistance of Arab states. However, after the prime minister addressed Congress in July, a top US general said Israel has not shared much of its “day after” planning with Washington.
Palestinians have previously said only an end to Israeli military rule and the creation of a Palestinian state will bring peace.
The US, Egypt, and Qatar have been mediating talks for a potential three-phase ceasefire deal that would include the release of hostages. However, the negotiations have been held up with Israel and Hamas blaming each other for adding demands to a framework promoted by the US at the end of May.
Netanyahu, for his part, has insisted that he would not agree to a deal that required Israel to withdraw from the so-called Philadelphi Corridor, which runs along the Gaza-Egypt border, citing the need to prevent Hamas from smuggling in weapons under the boundary via tunnels.
Bin Zayed’s remarks came as Hamas was said to indicate it would relinquish a demand that Israel pull out from the Egypt-Gaza border during the initial stages of a proposed ceasefire deal, thereby removing what is seen as a key obstacle to a deal.
Whereas Hamas in the past had demanded that a ceasefire deal include a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Haaretz reported Saturday that senior officials in the terror group recently told Palestinian factions in Gaza they would agree to Israel maintaining a presence along the border on condition that the deal specifies when it would eventually leave and includes a complete end to the fighting.
In addition, they said they would agree to similar conditions for Israel to retain control of the strategic Netzarim Corridor, which bisects Gaza east to west. Israel says it needs to control the route during the phased ceasefire under discussion in order to prevent Hamas from moving its fighters to different areas within Gaza.
The Hamas officials reportedly said they raised the arrangement with Egyptian and Qatari negotiators.
Unnamed senior Palestinian officials who spoke with Hamas representatives in Qatar said that the terror group believes Netanyahu has no interest in actually signing a deal to end the war and pull out of Gaza and is prepared to drag out the fighting until after the coming US presidential election in November, according to the report.
That assessment led Hamas to soften its stance on the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors on condition that Israel agrees to completely end the war.
Netanyahu has recently stressed the importance of controlling the Philadelphi Corridor, including during a recent prime-time press conference when he insisted on the need for Israeli troops to remain on the territory during the initial phase of the proposed deal. Though vague about the later stages of the ceasefire, Netanyahu was seen as indicating that Israeli forces would retain some kind of presence along the corridor for the foreseeable future.
Despite his comments, reports say Israel has told the US it is prepared to withdraw from the corridor under the right circumstances.
On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of Israelis gathered at locations across the country to demonstrate against the government and call for a hostage release-ceasefire deal.
Demonstrations calling for a hostage deal have taken place on a near-weekly basis following the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror onslaught.
The protests surged in numbers at the start of September, following the recovery from a tunnel in southern Gaza of the bodies of six hostages, who autopsies revealed had been shot by their captors just days before Israeli soldiers reached them.
