The American website “Axios” said that US President Joe Biden’s team has been pressuring Israel since the beginning of the war to develop a plan for what will happen in Gaza after the end of the conflict.
The source quoted American officials as saying that during the talks, which took place this week with Phil Gordon, National Security Advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris, Israeli officials were “ready to talk about the future” in Gaza.
They added that the United States “wants to avoid a governance and security vacuum in Gaza after the end of the war, which may allow Hamas to rise again.”
The officials admitted that “there are still differences between the way America sees Gaza after the war and how Israel views it,” highlighting that the most prominent disagreement relates to the role that the Palestinian Authority will play.
A senior Israeli official revealed, earlier, that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Biden administration have been discussing “the post-war issue of Gaza” for weeks, indicating that there has been no change in the Israeli approach.
For his part, Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday evening: “In the post-Hamas era, Gaza must be demilitarized.”
He added: “There is only one force that can disarm Gaza, which is the Israeli army… and no international force can do that.”
He continued: “We saw what happened in other places, when they brought in international forces to disarm a force, and I am not ready to close my eyes and accept any other arrangement.”
#officials #Israel #ready #discuss #future #Gaza