Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s postwar plan pushes for indefinite military control over Gaza. In Paris, negotiators are trying to reach a hostage release deal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a postwar plan for Gaza, his most detailed yet, that pushes for indefinite military control over the Palestinian enclave. The Palestinian Authority condemned the plan Friday as a bid for “reoccupying the Gaza Strip and obstructing American and international efforts to establish the Palestinian State.
” According to the document, Israel would maintain security control over all land west of the Jordan River, including the occupied West Bank and Gaza. It includes Israel maintaining a security zone in northern Gaza as long as it deems necessary, and having a presence on the enclave’s southern border with Egypt. Netanyahu’s vision — including indefinite security control over territories meant to be part of any future Palestinian state under diplomatic efforts — clashes with calls by Israel’s Western allies for a deal that aims for Palestinian sovereignty after the war. The United States has been opposed to the creation of a permanent buffer zone, saying there should be no lasting change to Palestinian territory, and the idea of Israeli forces stationed at Gaza’s southern border with Egypt has set off alarm bells in Cairo. The plan presented by Netanyahu to Israel’s cabinet envisions “local entities” without links to Hamas running a civilian administration in Gaza and conditions the reconstruction of Gaza, much of which has been battered by Israel’s offensive, on its “complete demilitarization.” In the long term, it rejects “unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state” or “any international conventions regarding a permanent agreement” with Palestinians. It says any such agreement would only be achieved through direct negotiations between the two sides, without identifying which Palestinian entity that would involve. The Ramallah-based Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described it as “a formal declaration of the reoccupation of the Gaza Strip,” while a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority’s president condemned it as part of Israeli “attempts to change the geographical and demographic reality in the Gaza Strip.” Hazem Balousha and Ellen Francis contributed to this report.
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