Photo: Abir Sultan Associated Press Benjamin Netanyahu submitted his plan Thursday evening to the government security cabinet.
Guillaume Lavallée – Agence France-Presse and Delphine Matthieussent – Agence France-Presse in Jerusalem
3:23 p.m.
- Middle East
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed his first plan for the “post-war” with Hamas, including maintaining Israel's “security control” in the occupied West Bank and the Strip. of Gaza, a possibility immediately rejected by the Palestinian Authority.
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, also reacted by affirming the United States' opposition to any “reoccupation” of Gaza.
The document in several points, which Mr. Netanyahu submitted Thursday evening to the government security cabinet and which AFP was able to consult on Friday, recalls in the preamble the objectives of the army in Gaza: dismantling Hamas and Islamic Jihad and release of all hostages still held.
The Israeli army “will exercise security control over the entire area west of Jordan, including the Gaza Strip,” “to prevent the strengthening of terrorist elements there.” and stemming “threats against Israel,” the document emphasizes. Israel will retain “its operational freedom of action throughout the Gaza Strip, without time limit,” the document continues.
“Perpetuate the occupation”
On the strategic border between Egypt and the south of the Gaza Strip, where Hamas had dug tunnels for more than a decade to smuggle weapons, Israel will “maintain a closure” in “cooperation with Egypt and with the help of the United States” in order to avoid rearmament of the Palestinian factions there, specifies the document.
Other provisions include the “complete demilitarization of Gaza […] beyond what is necessary for law enforcement purposes,” as well as “deradicalization in all religious institutions , educational and social of Gaza”.
Like the project presented at the beginning of January by his Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, Netanyahu's plan provides that the administration of the Gaza Strip be entrusted to “local officials with administrative experience” and which are “not linked to countries or entities that support terrorism.”
The project does not mention the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, rival of the Islamists of Hamas and which sits in the occupied West Bank, without however explicitly excluding its participation in the management of Gaza. Above all, the plan does not provide for the creation of an independent State of Palestine, a perspective advocated by Washington, London and Paris.
“The plans proposed by Mr. Netanyahu aim to perpetuate the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state,” reacted Friday Nabil Abou Roudeina, spokesperson for Mahmoud Abbas .
Only a plan recognizing Gaza as an integral part of “an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital will be acceptable. Any project to the contrary is doomed to failure. Israel will not succeed in changing the geographic and demographic reality of the Gaza Strip,” he said in a statement.
A Hamas official in Beirut, Osama Hamdane, for his part affirmed that the Israeli plan would “never” succeed.
The announcement of this plan comes as talks intensify for a several-week truce in the clashes in Gaza and the release of the approximately 130 hostages still in the hands of Hamas.
An Israeli delegation led by the head of Mossad, the foreign intelligence services, arrived in Paris on Friday, the recent scene of talks on this subject, in order to promote an agreement.
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UNRWA in the spotlight
In addition, the Netanyahu plan provides for the dismantling of the United Nations agency for the support of Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), several employees of which have been accused by Israel of having participated in the attack on Hamas on October 7 on Israeli soil, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,160 people, most of them civilians. The Israeli retaliatory offensive has so far killed more than 29,500 people, mostly civilians, in Gaza.
The UN fired the employees accused by Israel and began an internal investigation into UNRWA. Several countries have suspended their funding to the agency.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini stressed Thursday that the agency, the main source of aid to civilians in Gaza, had reached a “breaking point” with repeated calls from Israel to its dismantling and the freezing of donor funding in the face of humanitarian needs.
“I fear that we are on the brink of a monumental catastrophe with serious implications for peace, security and human rights in the region,” he added.