On the first question, Netanyahu continues to deflect. But he has finally spoken on the second with the one-page proposal, which he presented to his security cabinet late Thursday and released publicly early Friday. His office said the outline is intended to be a starting point for discussions.
The plan’s debut came as a surprise to many in the government, according to an Israeli official close to the discussions. It followed a meeting Thursday with White House envoy Brett McGurk as momentum appeared to be building in Paris-based talks toward a cease-fire and hostage-release deal with Hamas.
“This was synchronized with the Americans,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about internal discussions.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that he would “reserve judgment” on Netanyahu’s plan until “we actually see the details.”
“There are certain basic principles that we set out many months ago that we feel are very important when it comes to Gaza’s future, including that it cannot be a platform for terrorism, there should be no Israeli reoccupation in Gaza, the size of the Gaza Strip should not be reduced,” he told reporters in Buenos Aires. “So we want to make sure that any plan that emerges is consistent with those principles.”
Also Friday, Blinken said Israeli settlements in the West Bank are “inconsistent with international law,” a reversal of Trump administration policy.
“Our administration maintains firm opposition to settlement expansion,” he said. “In our judgment, this only weakens — it doesn’t strengthen — Israel’s security.” Netanyahu’s government is reportedly planning further settlement expansion.
In Netanyahu’s plan, said Gideon Rahat, chairman of Hebrew University’s political science department, the prime minister’s “number one goal is buying time.”
“He bought as much time as he could on this in the face of pressure from Joe Biden,” he said.
Netanyahu’s proposal largely reflects comments he has made in public. Among its key points:
Israel’s military will stay in Gaza as long as it takes to demilitarize the enclave, eliminate Hamas and keep it from regrouping.
Israel will assume greater control of Gaza’s southern border, in cooperation with Egypt “as much as possible,” and will carve out border buffer zones to prevent smuggling and further attacks. (Egypt has rejected any Israeli role on its border with Gaza.)
The United Nations’ primary aid agency in Gaza and the West Bank would be disbanded and replaced. Israel accuses the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, of complicity with Hamas and fostering hatred of Jews.
The proposal rejects any permanent agreement with “the Palestinians” that is not achieved through direct negotiations with Israel, as well as any “unilateral” Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Authority, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said the proposal was a nonstarter.
“The plans proposed by Netanyahu are aimed at continuing Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state,” said Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesman for authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “Israel will not succeed in its attempts to change the geographical and demographic reality in the Gaza Strip.”
Critics in Israel also dismissed the outline as a compendium of ideas that have already been rejected by the international community and Israel’s most important backers.
The points will be welcomed by Netanyahu’s conservative base but do little to advance strategic considerations about postwar Gaza, said Chuck Freilich, a former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council and a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
“This is just a presentation of Israel’s maximalist positions,” Freilich said. “The pressure was building on him to come up with something, so he came out with this document and slapped ‘day after’ on the top.”
Still, analysts said the proposal was notable for breaking the official silence on the topic. And it did not call for the reestablishment of Israeli settlements inside Gaza, as some of Netanyahu’s coalition partners have demanded.
Nor, as many Israeli political observers noted, did it slam the door on Palestinian Authority officials playing a role in Gaza, as Netanyahu has done repeatedly in the past.
Instead, the outline describes a civil service staffed by “local entities with managerial experience,” without defining who that might be. Anyone with ties to terrorist groups, or countries “supporting terrorism” — a possible reference to Qatar and Iran — would be barred.
Senior Israelis have previously pushed the idea of unaffiliated clan leaders taking charge of many government functions. Critics say the approach would rely on unworkable alliances with inexperienced locals who would be seen as Israeli proxies.
By not explicitly rejecting (or even mentioning) the Palestinian Authority, which governs in the West Bank, the document at least avoids another public break with Washington. The Biden administration has pushed the idea of a “revitalized” authority as the best place to look for stable, long-term administrators for Gaza.
“It’s vague enough to enable him to control his coalition on the one hand and to give a hint to Biden and others that there might be some type of Palestinian Authority role when it doesn’t come to security issues,” Rahat said.
But Palestinians saw the document’s silence as an insult.
“The Palestinian Authority is simply ignored, rendering it as if it doesn’t exist,” political analyst Mustafa Ibrahim told The Washington Post from Rafah, in southern Gaza, where he is sheltering with his family. “What Netanyahu’s plan presents is a vision solely centered around Israel and its interests, with no regard for the humanity or rights of Palestinians.”
Hudson reported from Buenos Aires. Hazem Balousha in Amman, Jordan, and Itay Stern in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.