JERUSALEM, Israel — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his opposition Saturday night to a proposal by U.S. President Joe Biden to restore control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority (PA) once Hamas is removed from power and destroyed.
On Saturday, Biden published an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he supported Israel, though once again joining the Israeli cause to the Ukrainian one, putting Hamas and Russia in the same category as enemies of the United States.
Biden also reiterated his support for a “two-state solution” as the only answer to the conflict, and added: “As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution.”
However, Netanyahu emphatically rejected that idea.
“In Gaza, after the destruction of Hamas, and for a long time thereafter, there will not be a regime that encourages terror, that teaches terror, that funds terror — that also indoctrinates about the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews — this will not be,” Netanyahu vowed at a press conference on Saturday night.
He was alluding to the PA’s record of encouraging terror, including the practice of “pay-to-slay,” in which the PA provides stipends to terrorists in Israeli prisons, and pensions to the families of terrorists killed by Israel.
Despite the loss of U.S. aid under the Taylor Force Act, which President Donald Trump signed in 2018 to prohibit taxpayer dollars from funding the PA as long as it continues “pay-to-slay,” the PA has not changed its policy.
The PA also continues naming public parks and monuments after terrorists, and Palestinian educational materials are frequently filled with anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda.
The PA ran Gaza from 1994 to 2007, when it was ousted by Hamas in a violent coup. Rocket attacks against Israeli civilians began years before it was ousted, and especially from 2001 onwards, despite a unilateral withdrawal of Israeli soldiers and civilians in 2005.
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.