The top US diplomat, Antony Blinken, affirmed this Sunday that the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) should play a central role in the future of the Gaza Strip, according to a US official after visiting the occupied West Bank this Sunday, in the who met with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. It is the third time that the two have met since the outbreak of the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Regarding Washington's position, Abas showed himself open to being part of a political solution to the war with Hamas, in unprecedented statements about the role of the ANP in the leadership of the strip since the beginning of the current war. "We will fully assume our responsibilities within the framework of a comprehensive political solution that includes the entire West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip," the president stated, according to the official Palestinian agency Wafa.
Abbas's Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has seen its popularity decline amid accusations of corruption, incompetence and widely hated security cooperation agreements with Israel. It is unclear who will succeed the elderly and ailing 87-year-old Abbas, a staunch opponent of Hamas.
Furthermore, he emphasized that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a political body that he also heads, "is the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and has authority over all matters related to the Palestinian people."
While Hamas has tightly controlled besieged Gaza since 2007, the West Bank is a complex mosaic of hillside cities, sprawling Israeli settlements and Israeli army checkpoints that divide Palestinian communities. This year violence was already at its highest point in more than 15 years, but has increased further since the war began, with more than 170 attacks against Palestinians involving Jewish settlers recorded by the United Nations. At least more than 120 Palestinians have been killed and 1,680 detained by the Israeli army since October 7.
As for the immediate future, Abbas asked the US Secretary of State for an "immediate" end to the "destructive war" between Israel and Hamas. "We find ourselves once again in extremely difficult circumstances. There are no words to describe the war of genocide and the destruction that our Palestinian people in Gaza are suffering at the hands of the Israeli war machine, without taking into account the norms of international law," Abas said, quoted by Wafa. Neither of them made statements to the media.
The agency indicated that, during the meeting, Abbas asked the head of US diplomacy "to immediately stop the devastating war and to accelerate the provision of humanitarian aid, including medical care, food, water, electricity and fuel, to the Gaza Strip".
Likewise, the Palestinian leader placed all responsibility for what is happening in Gaza on Israel, insisted that military and security solutions will not be able to bring security to Israel and asked that they "stop committing these crimes immediately."
Blinken arrived in Israel on Friday with the intention of achieving a temporary ceasefire in Gaza that would allow the departure of foreigners and the entry of more humanitarian aid to the Palestinian enclave, where there are already more than 9,500 dead from the offensive that Israel began after the Hamas attack that left more than 1,400 dead on Israeli soil. But Netanyahu rejected an eventual temporary ceasefire in Gaza if the release of the 241 hostages taken by the Islamist group Hamas is not guaranteed, cooling the expectations of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to negotiate a humanitarian pause in the fighting.
