Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Friday that the PA is ready to assume “full responsibility” in post-war Gaza, in his first statement since mediators announced a hostage-ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday.
The statement came as the PA reportedly issued a document outlining its plans for the Gaza Strip — without stating a role for Hamas — and sent a high-level delegation to Cairo to hammer out the fate of the enclave’s Rafah Border Crossing, which Israel has sought to keep out of the Palestinian Authority’s hands.
“The Palestinian government, under President Abbas’s directives, has completed all preparations to assume full responsibility in Gaza,” including the return of the displaced, providing basic services, crossings management, and reconstruction of the war-torn territory, according to a statement from the PA president’s office.
The statement “highly commended” Qatar and Egypt for their efforts toward the ceasefire agreement — which the PA is not a party to, and “voiced appreciation” for the efforts of Riyadh, Amman and Washington, which mediated the ceasefire along with Doha and Cairo.
Meanwhile, PA Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa, who met with European counterparts in Brussels Friday, said the PA had a “hundred-day plan” for Gaza that could start when the ceasefire is set to take effect on Sunday.
“The Palestinian ministers have clear instructions on what to do from the moment the ceasefire begins,” said Mustafa, in comments carried by Belgium’s Belga news agency. “It depends on how the Israelis will behave in the coming days, but we are trying to be as ready as possible.”
The West Bank-based PA, dominated by Abbas’s secularist Fatah movement, was ousted from Gaza in 2007 after a war with Hamas, which has controlled the Strip since then. Sources from the Gaza-ruling terror group have told AFP they would be ready to hand over the Strip’s civilian affairs to a Palestinian entity.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vowed to vanquish Hamas, has thus far ruled out any role for the PA in Gaza, but failed to advance any alternative amid pressure from his far-right partners who want to establish settlements in the Strip.
Israel has long accused the PA of inciting terrorism in its education system and by offering stipends to families of Palestinians detained in Israel for violent attacks.
Nonetheless, the PA option for Gaza’s post-war governance is favored by former defense minister Yoav Gallant, the White House and a host of Arab nations, though supporters have said the deeply unpopular Palestinian Authority, which was established under the 1993 Oslo Accords, must first reform itself.
PA said joining Cairo talks on control of Rafah crossing
According to report by Israel’s Channel 12 news on Friday, Abbas sent a document to the leaders of the US, Egypt, Qatar and the European Union detailing the PA plan for the temporary administration of Gaza after the war.
The four-page document reportedly details the establishment of two working teams: one headed by the PA planning minister that will be tasked with the Strip’s reconstruction; and another led by the PA social development minister, which will be tasked with providing civil services and humanitarian aid to Palestinians.
The report said the document stresses the PA’s willingness to cooperate with Arab states and other international allies to stabilize Gaza, while not specifying the division of labor between them.
The document, drafted at the beginning of January, also doesn’t specify who will oversee security — including police and border in Gaza, including the Strip’s police and border patrol, the network added.
The plan reportedly stresses that the PA will be the Gaza Strip’s primary authority, and avoids offering any role to Hamas.
Channel 12 also reported that the PA dispatched a team of senior officials to Cairo on Friday to join Egyptian-led negotiations regarding control of the Rafah Border Crossing, which separates Gaza from Egypt.
Israel has said it must retain control of the crossing to thwart Hamas’s arms smuggling from the Sinai Peninsula, though the hostage deal states that Israeli forces “will redeploy around the Rafah [Border] Crossing.”
The IDF seized the Gaza side of the crossing in May, leading Egypt to close the gate until the PA could be the one controlling the other side. Israel has to date refused Abbas’s demand that the PA take control of the crossing’s Gaza side.
Netanyahu has said Hamas must be completely defeated before plans can be put in place for Gaza’s post-war governance — bucking calls from top security officials and the international community to plan for the so-called day after.
The premier’s critics have warned that failure to plan for the so-called day after will ensure Israel remains in a state of perpetual war. No force has been able to fill vacuums that the IDF has temporarily created through its military operations, allowing Hamas forces to repeatedly return to places that the IDF had previously cleared.
With the ceasefire slated to enter place on Sunday, analysts fear Hamas will once again be able to reestablish its authority in Gaza, even if its military structure has been destroyed. Israel’s government was still deliberating the ceasefire agreement as of early Saturday morning.
If implemented in full, the agreement would end nearly 16 months of war that have devastated Gaza, and see the gradual release of the remaining hostages in the Strip.
The war was sparked on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
You’re a dedicated reader
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel – to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you,
David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
Join Our Community
Join Our Community
Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘272776440645465’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);