TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Wednesday to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas about reforming his government as Blinken sought to rally the region behind postwar plans for Gaza that include concrete steps toward a Palestinian state.
The U.S. is pushing for a reformed Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza once the war is over. Blinken says multiple countries in the region have agreed to help rebuild the territory and that wider Israeli-Arab normalization is still possible, but only if there is “a pathway to a Palestinian state.”
In their meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Blinken told Abbas that the U.S. supports “tangible steps” toward a Palestinian state, according to State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. He said the two discussed administrative reform.
The vision outlined by Blinken faces serious obstacles. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has so far rejected Palestinian Authority control in Gaza and adamantly opposes the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The autocratic, Western-backed Palestinian leadership, whose forces were driven from Gaza when Hamas took over in 2007, lacks legitimacy in the view of many Palestinians.
ON HIS FOURTH visit to the region since the war began three months ago, Blinken has met in recent days with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. He says they are open to contributing to postwar plans in return for progress on creating a Palestinian state.
The Saudi ambassador to the U.K. went even further Tuesday, telling the BBC that the kingdom is still interested in a landmark normalization agreement with Israel, but that it must include “nothing less than an independent state of Palestine.”
Blinken said that in his talks with Abbas, they discussed reforming the Palestinian Authority so “it can effectively take responsibility for Gaza.”
Abbas appeared ready to “engage in all of these efforts,” he said at his next stop, Manama, the capital of the tiny Gulf nation of Bahrain.
Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said they heard “good statements” from the Americans. “But nothing has happened,” he said. “The priority now is to stop the war on Gaza.”
The 88-year-old Abbas has not stood for election since 2005 and lacks support among his own people.
The Palestinian Authority governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank under interim peace deals reached in the 1990s and cooperates with Israel on security matters. But it has been powerless to prevent the expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied territory it wants for a future state, and there have been no serious or substantive peace talks since Netanyahu returned to office in 2009.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has been unable to get Israel to make even relatively minor concessions to the Palestinians, like turning over all the tax revenue it collects on their behalf or allowing the reopening of a U.S. Consulate to serve Palestinians in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
After meeting with Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials Tuesday, Blinken delivered a stark message, saying Israel must stop undercutting the Palestinians’ ability to govern themselves with its expansion of settlements, home demolitions and evictions in the West Bank.
ISRAEL HAS VOWED to keep fighting until it crushes Hamas and returns scores of hostages held by the group after its Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war. Israeli officials say the campaign will continue through the rest of the year. Israel’s own postwar plans call for open-ended military control over the territory, from which it withdrew soldiers and settlers in 2005.
Nearly 85% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been driven from their homes by the fighting, and a quarter of its residents face starvation, with only a trickle of food, water, medicine and other supplies entering through an Israeli siege.
