In private call with American Jewish leaders, ambassador insists Palestinian Authority must be involved in the reconstructions of the beleaguered Strip
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has reportedly criticized the nascent ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, saying that any agreement to rehabilitate Gaza that side-stepped the Palestinian Authority would be a “tremendous prize” for the terror group.
“There is no capacity to have peace with the Palestinians unless there’s peace with all the Palestinians, including the million and a half in Gaza,” Friedman said in a telephone briefing Tuesday with members of the American Jewish Congress, the Haaretz daily reported Thursday.
The envoy clarified that this meant that “there should be ideally one (Palestinian) government … If you go around the PA and somehow try to restructure Gaza without them, you’re giving a tremendous prize to Hamas… with all the failings of the PA, if the choice is Hamas we pick the PA,” Haaretz quoted him as saying in the private call.
His comments appear to also be a criticism of Israel, which is indirectly negotiating a truce deal with Hamas. But it also highlighted the confusion in American policy.
While Friedman was calling for the those involved not to sidestep the Palestinian Authority, the PA received a rebuke from US Mideast Envoy Jason Greenblatt for saying much the same thing.
“The Trump Administration strongly supports the efforts of President Al Sisi and the Egyptian government to help facilitate an agreement to restore calm in Gaza and bring about the conditions for the Palestinian Authority to fully assume its responsibilities in Gaza,” Greenblatt said in a statement late Wednesday.
“The Palestinian Authority cannot criticize from the sidelines. The Palestinian Authority should be part of the solution for the Palestinians of Gaza and Palestinians as a whole,” he said. “If not, others will fill that void.”
Leadership is about making hard choices,” Greenblatt said without directly naming Abbas.
“The people of Gaza, and Israelis in the area around Gaza, have suffered for far too long,” Greenblatt said. “It is time for the Palestinian Authority to lead the Palestinian people – all Palestinians – to a better future.”
Indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel have reportedly included discussion on easing the decade-old blockade on Gaza, but by no means a complete lifting of it. Israel says the blockade is in place in order to prevent weapons and other military equipment from entering the Strip.
Recent months have seen repeated rounds of intense violence between Israel and Hamas, along with weekly border protests at the Gaza border that have regularly included rioting, attacks on Israeli troops and attempts to infiltrate and sabotage the border fence. In sporadic surges Hamas has fired dozens of rockets at Israel and Israel has hit Hamas targets in the Strip.
Around 170 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the weekly protests began, a Hamas ministry says. Hamas has acknowledged that dozens of those killed were its members.
One Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper.
Greenblatt’s swipe at Abbas comes after the PA leader reportedly lambasted the potential ceasefire agreement, saying such a deal would only be reached “over my dead body.”
“If the agreement is signed without the PA’s permission, it is illegal and constitutes treason,” Abbas said in private conversations, according to Hissein al-Sheikh, a senior member of Abbas’s Fatah party.
In his conversation, Friedman dealt at length with the ongoing political crisis with the Gaza Strip, saying the chance for obtaining any sort of stable agreement between Israel and the coastal enclave was “very low,” according to other reports about the call.
Gaza is a disease without a cure that, at the moment, Israel can only manage, rather than offer any long-term solution, he was quoted by the Walla news site as saying.
Friedman reportedly added that until there is a reconciliation deal that returns the Palestinian Authority to the Gaza Strip, the most that could be hoped for was a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
He was also quoted as making scathing remarks about the PA’s handling of the Gaza crisis, saying that the Palestinian Authority was speaking with two voices on the issue: leveling sanctions on the Strip on one hand while talking about uniting it on the other. Friedman reportedly said that much of the violence emanating from the Strip was due to Abbas’s policies.
Further highlighting the lack of a clear US policy, Friedman also contradicted Trump and insisted the administration would not demand any special concessions from Israel in peace talks as a quid pro quo for moving the US embassy to Jerusalem in May.
Concerns were raised in Israel after Trump said earlier this month that Israel would pay “a higher price” in any future talks with the Palestinians because of the move. But in a call with US Jewish leaders, Friedman said the comment only meant that Trump might ask the Israelis to “lean in a little bit” at the negotiating table.
“The president feels that if the parties are lucky enough to be sitting in a room and making progress, he might say to the Israelis, ‘Look, can you do a little bit more? Look what we did for you. Is there something more that you could do?’,” said Friedman. “It’s not that he has something specific in mind, but just that under the circumstances that the United States has engaged in really significant good faith efforts to strengthen Israel and strengthen its historical multi-thousand-year connection to Jerusalem, maybe the Israelis could make it clear by leaning in a little bit as well. That’s all it meant,” the envoy said, according to quotes carried by the political news site Jewish Insider.
“I was there when the [embassy relocation] decision was made,” Friedman reportedly added. “I was there watching it and advocating for it in real time. There is not and there never was any demand made of Israel that they do anything in exchange for the embassy move.”
As reported by The Times of Israel