Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Israel plans to end the war in the Gaza Strip by establishing a transitional authority to rule the territory. However, this was opposed by the Prime Minister (PM) of the Palestinian Authority Mohammad Shtayyeh.

Shtayyeh said the Palestinian Authority would not return to governing Gaza after the Israel-Hamas conflict without a comprehensive agreement that includes the West Bank as a Palestinian state.

The prime minister since 2019 has also emphasized that he will not cooperate without returning to a genuine peace process that produced two sovereign countries.

“To ask the Palestinian Authority to go to Gaza and run Gaza’s affairs without a political solution for the West Bank, as if the Palestinian Authority were going to ride in Israeli F-16s or tanks?” said Shtayyeh, as quoted from The GuardianMonday (30/10/2023).

“I don’t accept it. Our president [Mahmoud Abbas] didn’t accept it. Neither of us will accept it.”

“I think what we need is a comprehensive and peaceful vision. The West Bank needs a solution, and then connecting Gaza with the region within the framework of a two-state solution,” he added.

Israel’s own plan is said to have the possibility of involving Arab countries, leading to the restoration of the Palestinian Authority (PA) which was ousted from Gaza in the Hamas coup in 2007.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government previously insisted that it had no intention of returning to direct rule in Gaza, as they did before 2005.

Shtayyeh argues that Israel’s plan to run the region in place of Hamas gives the international community rare leverage to return to the two-state solution that Netanyahu has systematically dismantled during his tenure.

“The question for us – Israelis, Americans, Europeans, everyone – is, how can we use this disaster as an opportunity for peace?” he said.

The PA has called for an emergency Arab meeting, which Shtayyeh hopes will be held on November 10, to restore unity in the creation of a functional Palestinian state.

Arab Countries and Israel

In 2020 Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates signed the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations with Israel, and required political progress for the Palestinians as a precondition.

At the time of the Hamas attacks, the US was trying to push Saudi Arabia to agree to its own normalization agreement, but its leaders insisted that any agreement must bring substantive benefits to the Palestinians.

Shtayyeh predicts that will be the general Arab attitude. He noted that Bahrain’s foreign minister visited the West Bank on Sunday for the first time since the signing of the Abraham accords.

“They talked to us, and we and they wanted to get involved,” he said. “We are talking to the Moroccan side, we are talking to the Bahraini side, and of course we are ready to talk to the Emirati side. We have a very good working relationship with the Saudis and so on with Jordan and Egypt.”

He said there was a growing awareness among neighboring Arab countries that the region could not be peaceful without a political solution for Palestine.

“To be honest, the Arabs are really fed up with us,” Shtayyeh said. “They want to see a solution to the Palestinian problem because we are causing them trouble.”

“We are caught between ‘rock and hammer’,” he concluded.

[Gambas:Video CNBC]

(luc/luc)