Qatar’s prime minister hopes the Palestinian Authority will return to Gaza when the war ends. gaza news
Sheikh Mohammed says Palestinians in Gaza – and not any other country – should dictate how the enclave is ruled.
Qatar’s prime minister has said he hopes the Palestinian Authority (PA) will return to playing the role of ruler in Gaza once Israel’s war ends.
Israel began the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing at least 1,139 people, mostly civilians, according to an Al Jazeera tally based on Israeli data.
Israel’s brutal 15-month offensive on Gaza has killed more than 47,000 people, according to Palestinian health officials, and destroyed much of the territory’s civilian infrastructure. Israel has severely restricted aid supplies to the region, leading to warnings of a humanitarian crisis.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani was speaking at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, two days after a ceasefire was implemented in Gaza, which was facilitated by Qatar.
The prime minister cautioned that Palestinians in Gaza – and not any other country – should decide how the enclave will be governed.
“We hope to see the PA back in Gaza. We hope to see a government that will actually address the issues of the people there. And there is still a long way to go with Gaza and the destruction,” he said.
‘Time wasted’
Sheikh Mohammed, who is also Qatar’s foreign minister, said his country regretted the time wasted in talks between Israel and Hamas.
“When we look and consider what we have achieved over the past few days, we feel really sorry for all the time that was wasted in these negotiations,” he said.
“We have seen that the framework that we agreed upon in December is the same one that has been realized just a few days ago, and… I am talking about December ’23, that means only negotiations on details There is a year to do it,” the Prime Minister said.
He said it involved “some meaningless things compared to the lives of people lost”.
How Gaza would be governed after the war was not directly addressed in the agreement between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian group that ran Gaza until the war.
The cease-fire agreement between the two sides was brokered by Qatar, Egypt, and the United States and includes a ceasefire, the exchange of Israeli detainees for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, and increased humanitarian aid deliveries.
Israel has rejected any governing role for Hamas, but it also opposes the rule of the Palestinian Authority, the body established under the Oslo Interim Peace Accords three decades ago, which controls parts of the occupied West Bank. Has limited governing power.
The PA, dominated by the Fatah faction created by former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, faces opposition from rival faction Hamas, which won elections and then drove the PA out of Gaza in 2007 after a brief war.
