OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: The United States and Israel have discussed the possibility of Washington leading a temporary post-war administration of Gaza, according to five people familiar with the matter.
The “high-level” consultations have centered around a transitional government headed by a US official that would oversee Gaza until it had been demilitarized and stabilized, and a viable Palestinian administration had emerged, the sources said.
According to the discussions, which remain preliminary, there would be no fixed timeline for how long such a US-led administration would last, which would depend on the situation on the ground, the five sources said.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the talks publicly, compared the proposal to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq that Washington established in 2003, shortly after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. The authority was perceived by many Iraqis as an occupying force and it transferred power to an interim Iraqi government in 2004 after failing to contain a growing insurgency.
Other countries would be invited to take part in the US-led authority in Gaza, the sources said, without identifying which ones. They said the administration would draw on Palestinian technocrats but would exclude Islamist group Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which holds limited authority in the occupied West Bank.
Islamist group Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, sparked the current war when its militants stormed into southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capturing another 251. The sources said it remained unclear whether any agreement could be reached. Discussions had not progressed to the point of considering who might take on core roles, they said.
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