Daily Alert Archives

Why The Palestinian Authority Will Not Be Able to Control Gaza

(Gatestone Institute) Khaled Abu Toameh - Qatar and Egypt are now spearheading efforts to bring the Palestinian Authority (PA) back to Gaza and are apparently trying to persuade the U.S. administration to back the idea. If the PA has been unable to rein in dozens of gunmen in the West Bank, how can anyone expect it to take control of Gaza, where thousands of terrorists from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to operate? In the eyes of Hamas and many Palestinians in Gaza, Mahmoud Abbas and the PA are traitors, mainly because they maintain security coordination with Israel in the West Bank. A few weeks ago, the PA launched a major security operation against Iran-backed armed groups in Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. After 40 days, the PA and the gunmen reached an agreement whereby the PA security forces would stop pursuing the gunmen in the camp and release detainees, thereby signaling the failure of the PA's security operation. No Arab country will invest in or get involved in Gaza as long as Iran's Islamist proxies continue to dominate it. Given the recent return of hundreds of convicted terrorists released from Israeli prisons to the streets in exchange for hostages, the possibility of another Oct. 7-style atrocity against Israelis is still all too real. There is only one viable way to address Gaza's problems: discard Qatar as a supposedly honest broker (it is not), designate the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization (it is), disarm all the terrorist groups, and oust Hamas completely from power. The writer, a veteran Israeli journalist, is a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.
2025-02-04 00:00:00
Full Article