Netanyahu rules out role for current Palestinian Authority in post-war Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday ruled out a role for the current Palestinian Authority government in Gaza once the war between Israel and Hamas is over.

“There will have to be something else there,” he said, when asked whether the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has partial administrative control in the occupied West Bank, may govern Gaza after the war.

“There won’t be a civilian authority that educates their children to hate Israel, to kill Israelis, to wipe out the state of Israel.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said late last month that the PA should retake control of the Gaza Strip from Hamas, with international players potentially filling a role in the interim.

But in a meeting with Blinken earlier this month, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said the PA could only assume power in Gaza if a “comprehensive political solution” is found for the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict encompassing the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Hamas gunmen stormed across the border from Gaza into Israel on October 7 in an unprecedented attack that killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials. In retaliation, Israel announced it would destroy Hamas and began a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip that has killed over 11,000 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.

“There can’t be an authority headed by someone who over 30 days after the massacre, has yet to condemn the terrible massacre,” said Netanyahu said Saturday.

“But either way there will have to be our security control,” he said.

In an interview earlier this week, Netanyahu said that Israel would assume “overall security” over Gaza “for an indefinite period” after the war.