A Likud parliamentarian has slammed a U.S. proposal to hand over control of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority after Israel’s military operation to destroy Hamas, as well as U.S. calls to provide the Palestinians with fuel.
Amit Halevy said that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has repeatedly voiced support for Israel’s right to self-defense, was both contradicting himself and “slapping Israel in the face” by pressing these positions.
“While Blinken declares his commitment to defeating Hamas, he is compelling us, at the same time, to provide Hamas with essential resources, including food, water and most notably fuel, which serves as the lifeblood for Hamas’s tunnels of destruction,” Halevy wrote on his Facebook page Saturday night. “Fuel is what enables them to maintain the supply of electricity, air, water and the continued production of rockets and other weaponry in the tunnel-based weapons manufacturing facilities.”
Israel has so far resisted in providing the Palestinians with fuel, noting that Hamas is hoarding more than half a million liters (over 132,000 gallons) under Gaza’s central Dar Al-Shifa Hospital.
“And while Blinken vows that he will do everything to prevent a recurrence of the events of Oct. 7, he pushes for giving control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, whose members, exactly like Hamas, advocate for the destruction of Israel and applaud Hamas’s murderous Nazi-like massacre of Jews, seeking to emulate them,” wrote Halevy.
“On both of these points, Blinken is actually demanding that the soldiers of Israel and the Jewish state be sacrificed on the idolatrous altar of the Palestinian Nazi lie,” the lawmaker wrote.
The US envisions the PA as playing a “central role” in any future administration in Gaza.
Earlier this month, an Israeli NGO released a video compilation of senior Palestinian Authority officials expressing their support for Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel.
Blinken arrived in the Jewish state on Friday for his third visit since the start of the war.
The top American diplomat met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the War Cabinet including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and ministers-without-portfolio Benny Gantz and Gadi Eizenkot.
