The simmering tensions between Israel and the Biden administration over the plan for post-war Gaza have now come to a boil.
The U.S. is doubling down on its insistence that Gaza must be run by a revamped Palestinian Authority. The Americans are still obsessed with a “two-state solution” to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.
This week, U.S. President Joe Biden told a White House Chanukah reception that there has to be a Palestinian state in the future and that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to make an effort to strengthen, change and “move” the P.A.
Netanyahu riposted that Israel would permit neither Hamas nor the P.A. to rule Gaza. Israel, he said, would not repeat the “mistake of Oslo,” a reference to the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization under which control of Gaza and parts of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria were handed over to the newly-created P.A.
The previous day, Netanyahu had caused outrage by stating that the Oslo Accords caused as many deaths as the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, “though over a longer period.”
His enemies immediately claimed that the comparison was invidious, that he was seeking to shrug off any blame for Israel’s vulnerability to the Hamas pogrom and that he was already campaigning to win the general election that many assume will follow the war.
Whether or not such criticisms are well-founded, they are irrelevant to the key point at issue: Giving the P.A. control of Gaza and establishing a Palestine state would expose much more of Israel to atrocities similar to those that took place on Oct. 7—and worse.
The idea that the P.A. would suddenly turn into a reliable guarantor of peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state is for the birds. Currently, Israel is locked in a desperate struggle in Judea and Samaria to contain a huge spike in terrorism by Hamas and other armed groups, which have vastly expanded in scope and weaponry under P.A. administration.
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