Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa meets with Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, in Rome, Italy May 25, 2024. Italian Government/Handout via Reuters. (Italian Government)
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa said his government plans to rebuild Gaza with help from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, a process he said would reshape the Middle East and require the removal of Hamas from power and Israel from the ground.
While expressing optimism about early contacts with aides of President Donald Trump, he rejected the U.S. leader’s notion of relocating most of the more than 2 million Gazans to countries like Egypt and Jordan during the postwar reconstruction.
“I have every reason to believe that this administration will actually help us all do the right deal, a balanced deal that could hopefully end the conflict in the region,” Mustafa, 70, told Bloomberg TV in his office in Ramallah, in the West Bank, on Wednesday.
A senior Palestinian official, Hussein al-Sheikh, met Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, in Riyadh on Tuesday.
Asked about moving Gazans out, Mustafa said it shouldn’t happen even for a short period. “They’re determined to continue to live in Gaza,” the prime minister said. “We can fix the place without” moving them out.
As to how he sees the intensely difficult task of rebuilding the territory after 15 months of wartime devastation, he said, “We’ll ensure that Israel and Hamas will be out the way for us to do this.”
Mustafa was speaking during the second week of a fragile 42-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government agreed to free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in that period in return for the phased release of 33 hostages taken during the October 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the war.
The second of the planned swaps began on Thursday, although chaotic scenes where people surrounded the transfer of hostages to the Red Cross prompted Israel to suspend the corresponding prisoner release. The delay will last until Israel can be sure of the safety of those freed by Hamas, the government said.
Netanyahu considers his relationship with Trump to be especially close. They are due to meet in the White House on Tuesday, the U.S. president’s first such meeting with a foreign leader since returning to power. Netanyahu will likely tell him that the current PA cannot be relied upon and a new governing structure is needed for the Palestinians.
Israel also wants security control of Gaza for the foreseeable future.
The PA is internationally recognized and runs parts of the West Bank. Hamas wrested control of Gaza from the PA in 2007, effectively creating two Palestinian governing entities.
Mustafa said he has started a program to reduce corruption and inefficiency in his administration. He said he’s in close touch with the World Bank, United Nations and European Union on getting emergency housing and other vital goods into Gaza.
Ultimately, he said, there needs to be a Palestinian state in both the West Bank and Gaza run by the PA. Hamas can exist as a cultural and political movement, but cannot rule Gaza or continue to be militarized.
“We expect one government, one system, one institution, one police force,” Mustafa said. “And we therefore expect that Hamas as a party will not govern.”
Whether the people of Gaza want the PA to return to govern is unclear. Concerns over corruption helped Hamas come out ahead in legislative elections in Gaza and the West Bank in 2006.
An economist with a doctorate from George Washington University, Mustafa was appointed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas in March of last year and is a longtime member of Abbas’s inner circle. He was previously chairman of the Palestine Investment Fund, and served as deputy prime minister of the PA from 2013 until 2015. He also spent many years at the World Bank.
Who will ultimately run and oversee reconstruction of Gaza when the Israel-Hamas war is formally concluded is one of the questions being debated during the ceasefire process — with the PA part of that conversation. Israel has vowed to make it impossible for Hamas to rule again, though scenes of militants from the Iran-backed group quickly returning to the streets have cast doubt over that aim.
Netanyahu’s government opposes PA involvement in governing postwar Gaza, arguing that it is hostile to Israel and little different from Hamas. Mustafa said that attitude could change both inside Israel and outside.
“I assume there will be enough political wisdom in Israel but also a necessary pressure from the international community to remind Israel that peace in the region is best way forward for everyone,” he said. A Palestinian state, he added, is a prerequisite of a stable Middle East.
He argued that the rebuilding of Gaza will offer the framework for a new regional order because it would include normalization of diplomatic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia — a long-held goal of the US, including Trump — and ease out Hamas and other Iran-backed militias.
“This, hopefully, will put things in the right context and give them enough incentive to move forward,” he said, referring to the Israelis.
Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., E.U. and many other countries.
Trump Intervention
The discussion on Gaza’s future was cast into further uncertainty at the weekend when Trump said he’d “like Egypt to take people and I’d like Jordan to take people.”
“You’re talking about probably a million-and-a-half people,” Trump said, describing Gaza as a “demolition site.”
“We just clean up that whole thing,” he said.
Both Egypt and Jordan — which border Israel — rejected the plan though both are dependent on Washington for vital financial aid. Trump said Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi is a friend, adding, “I think he would do it, and I think the King of Jordan would do it too.”
On Wednesday, El-Sisi said such a move would be “an injustice in which we cannot participate.”
West Bank Raids
Israel has conducted raids in the West Bank since the Gaza ceasefire began earlier this month, with Netanyahu saying the campaign is aimed at Iran-backed militias in the territory. The PA has executed its own security operation in the territory since December, targeting militant groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The area has seen sporadic flare ups of violence for many years, in part due to clashes between Israeli settlers and Palestinians. Israel’s far right, which has an influential presence in Netanyahu’s coalition government, believe Israelis have a right to live there and favor annexation. Some also advocate rebuilding settlements in Gaza, which Israel pulled out of in 2005.
Many in Israel were angered that after the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023 in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 abducted, the Palestinian Authority didn’t condemn the violence. Asked about that, Mustafa said Israel’s counterattack was so fierce that it drove the original assault into the background for Palestinians. About 47,000 Gazans have died in the war, according to the Hamas-run health authority in Gaza.
“Our leadership clearly said that we don’t approve of what happened on October 7th,” he said. “The problem with October 7th is that October 8th was a much worse day.”
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