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Hamas to surrender control of Gaza to Palestinian Authority – report

Israeli government has repeatedly rejected the idea, considering the Palestinian Authority a terror supporting entity.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Hamas has agreed that the Palestinian Authority (PA) can control the Gaza Strip, including the crossings into Israel and Egypt, on the ‘day after’ the war with Israel ends, Saudi news channel Al-Hadath reported Thursday.

The channel cited an unnamed Hamas official as its source.

Eleven days ago, Osama Hamdan, a member of Hamas’ policy-setting Political Bureau, told AFP that the terror organization wants “joint Palestinian rule” in Gaza.

Referring to a Chinese effort in July to make peace between the PA’s main backer, the nationalist Fatah movement, and the Islamist Hamas, along with 12 other smaller factions, Hamdan added, “We went to Beijing…and we agreed to form a national unity government that will run Palestinian affairs in Gaza.”

The highlight of the so-called Beijing Declaration was a plan to form an interim reconciliation government to run both Gaza and the PA that would lead eventually to the establishment of a Palestinian state “with Jerusalem as its capital.” It also declared that the Palestinians had a right to “resist Israeli occupation.”

On Wednesday, PA Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa said that a meeting to sign an agreement would take place in Egypt next week, and that “everyone” will participate in managing the coastal enclave.

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Meanwhile, a “senior PA official” told Ynet Thursday that the PA already controls much of civilian life in Gaza, even without a reconciliation deal.

“The PA manages civil affairs in the Gaza Strip anyway – education, health, the water and energy authority,” the official said. “For Hamas, this is a headache, so it will hand it over to the PA in order to continue to control security and military [matters].

“Hamas understands that Israel will not give up control of the crossings from a security point of view, so it will let the PA face Israel,” he added. “We will wait and see what happens at the meeting in Cairo, but there are not too many expectations for an agreement.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly declared that the PA can play no role in Gaza after the war is over, as its constant anti-Israel rhetoric, lawfare tactics and glorification of terrorists, whether from Fatah or any other Palestinian group, make it no better than Hamas.

Despite the government’s agreement with Netanyahu, the Biden administration has consistently pushed the idea of the PA stepping in to rule Gaza on the day after.

In August, Channel 12 reported that the PA had presented a plan to the U.S. outlining how it could do so.

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The report said, however, that the proposal did not include any explanation of how Hamas would be prevented from rebuilding its military strength, or how the PA could block any group from launching rockets again at Israel.

It also did not propose solutions for how to prevent smuggling operations under the Egyptian-Gaza border area, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, which Israel has called “Hamas’ lifeline” for weaponry that Jerusalem insists it can never allow the Palestinians to control again.