A senior Israeli official said Thursday that Israel hopes to enlist the help of Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in “de-radicalizing” Gaza in the wake of the war, overhauling education so that future conflict is not inevitable.
“What we need is to achieve three goals in the Gaza Strip,” the official said. “One is to demilitarize Gaza. The second is to de-radicalize Gaza. And the third is to build a civil mechanism to take care of the 2.2 million people there, to make sure that they have a life.”
The official said that these responsibilities could not be entrusted to the Palestinian Authority, which currently governs Palestinian areas of the West Bank and used to govern Gaza until a violent Hamas coup in 2007.
“We cannot envision a situation [in Gaza] with the Palestinian Authority the way it is now,” the official said. He noted that the Palestinian Authority refused to confront terrorists in the West Bank, and that the task fell to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
“Our kids have to go in and take responsibility. So we can’t take people who are not doing it in Jenin [in the West Bank] and expect them to do it in Gaza.”
The official said that Israel was having discussions about approaching Arab states that had confronted radical Islam in their own societies.
“The forces that have done it in their countries — the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and other places — with the help of the United Nations, Europe, the United States, all of these forces might come together and make sure” that radical, violent ideology was removed from public life.
The official added that there were discussions about an alternative to Israeli occupation or Palestinian Authority rule in providing civil services: “We would like someone else to go into this vacuum and make sure that the civil lives of the people are handled.”
National Public Radio (NPR) reported Thursday that Hamas was becoming increasingly popular among Palestinians as a result of the war, especially since many Palestinians refused to believe reports of Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians.
Hamas is a radical Islamic terrorist organization that envisions an Islamic state and is committed to killing Jews, in Israel and worldwide.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
