A senior Hamas official vowed on Thursday that the terrorist organization would continue to govern the Gaza Strip until it comes to an agreement with the Palestinian Authority to manage the territory.
Commenting on ongoing talks with the P.A. to the Associated Press in Cairo, Hamas “political” official Taher al-Nunu said the Islamist group agreed to an Egyptian proposal to relinquish control to a “community support committee,” as well as the possible creation of a “consensus government” that includes both Hamas and the P.A.'s Fatah faction.
Al-Nunu claimed that P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah rejected both proposals.
“Until one of the two options is adopted, there will be no vacuum. The current [Hamas] administration will bear its responsibility toward our people. And this is what is happening right now,” the official told AP.
Al-Nunu said the 12-day-old Hamas-Israel ceasefire meant that while “practically, we can say that the war is over,” the cessation of hostilities still needed to be confirmed during talks on the truce’s second phase.
“The Palestinian people were not defeated. … The enemy did not achieve its goals,” he said of Israel’s stated aims of destroying Hamas’s military and governing powers, returning all hostages taken during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and ensuring Gaza can never again threaten the Jewish state.
Jerusalem has rejected Ramallah’s involvement in managing the Gaza Strip due to its support for terrorism.
In December 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there is no way the P.A. would be allowed to rule in a post-Hamas world, speaking at a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
“Oslo was the mother of all sins. The difference between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is only that Hamas wants to destroy us here and now, and the P.A. wants to do it in stages,” the prime minister said.
Netanyahu said in an interview on May 9, 2024, that his government is seeking to establish a rule “by Gazans who are not committed to our destruction, possibly with the aid of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and other countries that I think want to see stability and peace.”
An opinion poll published late last month showed that nearly two-thirds of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as in Judea and Samaria, prefer Hamas terrorists be part of, or even lead, a Palestinian governing body that would control the Strip after the current war with Israel concludes.
