During his testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken emphasized that Israel and the Palestinians "cannot" return to the previous status quo with Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip.
The top US diplomat expressed concerns that if Hamas were to maintain its power in Gaza, it might carry out another attack on Israelis, similar to the October 7 ambush. However, Blinken also made it clear that Tel Aviv does not intend to govern the Gaza Strip.
Blinken stated that a "revitalized" Palestinian Authority should retake control of Gaza in line with the 1993 Oslo Accords. The document officially titled "Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements" was signed on September 13, 1993, by then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and then-Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Negotiator Mahmoud Abbas. The agreement stipulated the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its governing responsibilities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, Washington policymakers are considering what they see as potential solutions for the Gaza Strip, according to the US mainstream press.
· The first option sees granting "temporary oversight" over Gaza to regional players reinforced by troops from the US, UK, Germany and France. Representation from Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates are seen as "ideal" by US planners.
· The second option is a peacekeeping force modeled on the Multinational Force and Observers group overseeing the terms of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel with respect to the Sinai Peninsula.
· The third option envisages "temporary governance" of Gaza under the control of the United Nations. The international body's participation would give the initiative the necessary legitimacy, US policymakers maintain.
However, international observers doubt that the aforementioned scenarios would pan out.
"The US statement about a revived Palestinian administration literally proves that Washington does not want to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem," Mehmet Rakipoglu, a researcher on international affairs at Dimensions for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank based told Sputnik. "Because the Palestinian Authority was given a chance at stages such as the 1979 Camp David and the 1993 Oslo process, but no success was achieved. As a matter of fact, there is no state called Palestine, yet that is fully recognized by the international community and Israel has not withdrawn to the 1967 borders."
Rakipoglu insisted that any solution needs to be carried out within the framework of a legitimate democratic process and cannot be "imposed" by Washington on the Palestinian people.
While the Palestinian Authority (PA) is "a well-known national entity that supports the two-state solution and provides a political alternative to Hamas" and "enjoys broad international recognition," it is still unclear whether Gaza Palestinians would unequivocally embrace the PA, according to Yoram Meital, professor of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
"There is no doubt that a significant part of the Palestinian public does not support Hamas," Meital told Sputnik. "However, the current leadership of the Palestinian Authority does not receive broad public support either. The problematic political reality in Palestinian society is a mirror image of the severe divide and crisis in Israeli society as well," the professor noted.
When it comes to the aforementioned three scenarios, it's hard to pick any of them as long as the fierce fighting is still raging, as per Sputnik's interlocutors. It all depends on the outcome of the war between Israel and Hamas, they believe.
That being said, Rakipoglu does not believe that any multinational force under UN auspices may succeed in bringing a long-term peace solution to the Palestinians in Gaza. Likewise, the US media says that some Israeli officials are currently infuriated at UN Secretary General António Guterres over his notion that the October 7 Hamas attacks "did not happen in a vacuum."
"Participating in a political solution is unattainable as long as the conflict persists," stressed Meital. "Nevertheless, it is evident to all that once the fighting ceases, the parties must present a viable political vision for the future. Regardless, this will be an intricate and protracted undertaking, given that a significant portion of both Israelis and Palestinians are currently embroiled in a highly adversarial and toxic discourse, which offers scant space for political agreements and the acknowledgment of the national rights of the opposing side," he emphasized.
Per Rakipoglu, the most likely scenario is that both Israelis and Palestinians would sustain serious losses. After that a ceasefire is likely to be declared and a prisoner exchange will be implemented with the intervention of Turkiye, Qatar and Egypt. "Therefore, I do not expect a radical change on the scale of either Gaza or Israel," the Middle Eastern expert said, foreseeing that the confrontation will drag on for quite a while.