Several European Union member states pledged an additional €80 million ($92 million) in financial support for the Palestinian Authority following a donor meeting in Brussels on Thursday.
“Our financial support is linked to the Palestinian Authority reform agenda, which of course, they committed to implement,” Dubravka Šuica, the European commissioner for the Mediterranean, told AFP.
The bloc of 27 aims “to strengthen governance, build a more resilient economy, stabilize finances, improve services for the population and create conditions for future effective governance across all territories,” she said after the French- and Saudi-led Palestine Donor Group met.
The European Union will once again push the P.A. to scrap its payments to terrorists and their families and remove antisemitism from its school textbooks, among other reforms, Šuica told reporters. Brussels will also push Israel to release over $2 billion in tax revenue withheld from the P.A, she said.
The European Union, Ramallah’s top financial supporter, has renewed its attempts to unite Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip under P.A. rule under U.S. President Donald Trump’s deal with Hamas.
The U.N.-endorsed plan includes an International Stabilization Force in Gaza alongside local police officers, as well as a Board of Peace, which Trump will chair and which is to support local transitional authorities.
The Palestinian Authority is slated to take over Gaza once the transitional phase concludes, after “satisfactorily” meeting reform requirements.
The European Union is hoping to train 3,000 Palestinian police officers that it will seek to recruit from a pool of about 7,000 existing P.A. operatives in Gaza, a senior official in Brussels told the Associated Press on Thursday.
Brussels is also pushing for members of the transitional governing committee envisioned by Trump to be largely drawn from P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement, according to the report.
“Palestinians have to be the ones leading and owning the processes that are happening in Palestine,” E.U. foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas stated on Thursday, per AP.
Meanwhile, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she was “committed to working toward a Palestinian state with a reformed, well-functioning Palestinian Authority at its core.
“We will continue to support all efforts to stabilize the region, including West Bank and Gaza transitional governance,” von der Leyen declared.
In December 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that there is no way the Palestinian Authority will be allowed to rule Gaza.
“The difference between Hamas and the P.A. 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.
Asked in September about Ramallah’s inclusion in Trump’s peace plan, the premier casted doubt on the prospects for reform, saying that “if all of that is turned on its head, there’s a tremendous transformation. …
“Good luck,” Netanyahu said. “Some people will believe it happens. I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
