US President Joe Biden said Saturday that after the war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian Authority should eventually govern the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Biden, in an op-ed in the Washington Post, offered an opinion on the post-war situation:
As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution.
He attempted to provide a clear answer to the question of what the United States wants from Gaza after the end of the conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disagreed with Biden’s plan, making the following statement at a news conference in Tel Aviv:
I think that the PA in its current form is not capable of accepting the responsibility for Gaza after we’ve fought and done all this, to pass it to them.
The Palestinian Authority governed the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but was expelled from the latter in 2007 after a brief civil war with Hamas.
Biden said the U.S. is ready to impose a visa ban on “extremists,” saying that he has been “emphatic with Israel’s leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on Biden to pressure Israel to stop violence against Palestinians:
I also call on you to urgently intervene to stop the attacks by Israeli forces and the continuous terrorism by settlers against our people in the West Bank and Jerusalem, which foreshadow an imminent explosion.
The 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank, among them more than half a million Jewish settlers, has been simmering for more than 18 months, raising growing international concern as the violence has worsened since October 7.
