Vice President Kamala Harris spoke of a post-conflict Gaza built around a revitalized Palestinian Authority (PA) with its own security forces “strengthened” as she entered a round of diplomatic talks with Arab leaders on Saturday.
Speaking at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, she also cautioned Israel to do more to protect Palestinian civilians from the “devastating” bombardment.
AP reports the vice president said she saw a new future for the West Bank and it will be up to the region’s key nations, as well as other nations and organizations, to “dedicate significant resources” to rebuilding hospitals and housing. Electricity and clean water must be available, while bakeries must be able to reopen, she said.
The push to help revive the PA in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists comes a month after President Joe Biden put her in charge of a new “national strategy on Islamophobia,” as Breitbart News reported.
Harris said PA security forces “must be strengthened to eventually assume security responsibilities in Gaza” while stressing that terrorists cannot be allowed to continue to threaten Israel as a condition for security.
Lastly, Harris said the PA in control of the West Bank should also govern in Gaza to achieve a lasting peace, echoing similar sentiments to those of U.S. President Joe Biden.
“The Palestinian Authority must be revitalized, driven by the will of the Palestinian people,” the vice president said, adding that it would “allow them to benefit from the rule of law and a transparent responsive government.”
Harris made a hastily planned trip to the United Arab Emirates as the top American representative at the U.N. climate conference but the Israel-Hamas war was a main objective of her visit, the AP report sets out.
She met with leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan and spoke by phone with Qatar’s emir.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already said he opposed a proposal by Biden to restore control of Gaza to the PA once Hamas is removed from power and destroyed, as Breitbart News reported.
Netanyahu sees the PA as a source of violence and antagonism towards the Jewish state all while encouraging terror.
“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 recent press conference.
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.
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