US President Joe Biden, for the first time, urged the international community to help manage the security of the Gaza Strip for an interim period after the war, and threatened to slap entry bans on violent Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians in the West Bank, in a Washington Post op-ed published Saturday.
“The international community must commit resources to support the people of Gaza in the immediate aftermath of this crisis, including interim security measures,” Biden wrote in the article, which sought to rally support for his administration’s policy on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
Biden said the international community should “establish a reconstruction mechanism to sustainably meet Gaza’s long-term needs,” and said it was “imperative that no terrorist threats ever again emanate from Gaza or the West Bank.”
The US president also reaffirmed his commitment to the two-state solution as “the only way to ensure the long-term security of both the Israeli and Palestinian people” an said that “though right now it may seem like that future has never been further away, this crisis has made it more imperative than ever.”
In his op-ed, Biden pointed to the United States as the “essential nation” in rallying countries against both Hamas and Russia, which he cast as a threat to democracy and global security.
“Both Putin and Hamas are fighting to wipe a neighboring democracy off the map. And both Putin and Hamas hope to collapse broader regional stability and integration and take advantage of the ensuing disorder. America cannot, and will not, let that happen. For our own national security interests — and for the good of the entire world,” he wrote.
While Biden envisions a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority eventually returning to govern Gaza and uniting with the West Bank, Washington recognizes the PA is not currently in a state to do so and has been seeking to rally Arab allies to help manage the Strip’s security in the interim.
But the idea has been rebuffed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said that Israel will maintain overall security responsibility for Gaza and will not hand it over to “international forces.”
Netanyahu has also all but rejected the PA’s return to Gaza due to what he alleged is its ongoing support of terror and refusal to condemn the Hamas terrorist group’s October 7 massacres. But he has yet to offer alternatives.
Biden’s proposal was rejected Saturday by Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi who told the Manama Security Forum on Saturday that “no Arab troops” would be deployed in Gaza after the war, as Amman’s ties with Jerusalem deteriorate further.
In the op-ed, Biden also threatened to issue visa bans against the perpetrators of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, which has spiked since the beginning of the war.
As many as seven Palestinians have been killed by extremist settlers, although the circumstances of some of those incidents are not clear and an exact determination as to whether these individuals were killed by gunfire from settlers or Israeli security forces has not been possible.
According to the left-wing Yesh Din rights group, there have been more than 185 settler attacks against Palestinians in over 84 towns and villages around the territory since October 7.
While much of Biden’s article rehashed stances that the US has been voicing for weeks, the threat regarding visa bans appears to be new.
“I have been emphatic with Israel’s leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable,” Biden wrote.
“The United States is prepared to take our own steps, including issuing visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank,” he said.
Later on Saturday, PA President Mahmoud Abbas called on Biden to use his international influence to halt Israel’s offensive, calling it a “genocide.”
“History will not absolve anyone of these crimes. I call on you to provide relief to our besieged people in Gaza. This war must stop immediately. How can this genocide be self-defense? In reality, this genocide is a war crime that warrants punishment,” he said.
“I also call on you to urgently intervene to stop the attacks by Israeli forces and the continuous terrorism by settlers against our people in the West Bank and Jerusalem, which foreshadow an imminent explosion,” he said.
War erupted last month following Hamas’s shock October 7 invasion of southern Israeli communities under cover of thousands of rockets, when thousands of terrorists killed about 1,200 people, a majority of them civilians of all ages in their homes and people at an outdoors music festival near Kibbutz Re’im. Terrorists also kidnapped some 240 people and took them to Gaza.
Israel launched an air and ground offensive with the goal of eliminating the terror group.
In Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry claims that 12,000 people have been killed since the start of the war, including at least 4,700 children and 3,000 women. The figures cannot be independently verified and do not distinguish between civilians and terrorists, and also do not differentiate between those killed by Israeli airstrikes or by failed Palestinian rocket launches.