MANAMA, Nov 18 (Reuters) – Jordan’s foreign minister expressed doubts on Saturday whether Israel would be able to achieve its goal of wiping out Hamas with heavy shelling and an invasion of the Gaza Strip, long controlled by the Palestinian Islamist movement. .
“Israel says it wants to wipe out Hamas. We have a lot of military personnel here, but how can we achieve this objective,” Ayman Safadi said at the annual security conference IISS Manama Dialogue in Bahrain. I don’t understand it at all,” he said.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas since it crossed the border into nearby Israeli communities on October 7. Israel has taken control of the northern part of the enclave and has bombed much of Gaza City, reducing it to rubble as it ramps up attacks on Hamas in the south. The majority of the dead were civilians, both in the Hamas attacks, which killed 1,200 Israelis, and in Gaza, more than 12,000.
Regional power Saudi Arabia called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas at the conference. “Every day we see civilians dying, and we must end it today, not tomorrow,” said Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan.
Israel ruled out a ceasefire until 240 hostages held by Hamas were released on October 7. Hamas has vowed a long and sustained fight against Israel.
Brett McGuirk, US President Joe Biden’s top adviser for Middle East affairs, told the Manama conference that the release of hostages held by Hamas would lead to a surge in the provision of humanitarian aid and a significant pause in fighting in Gaza.
Who could run Gaza after the war?
Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal said years of failure to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict led to the current crisis.
“We must consider that the war is also a manifestation of the political and diplomatic failure of the international community. We are all failing to solve this problem,” he said. “And the responsibility is on all of us to find solutions.”
Israel’s air raids on Gaza have raised questions among global and regional powers and the United Nations about who will govern the small, densely populated region if Hamas is defeated in the enclave it has ruled for 16 years. .
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said that the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Western-backed organization that exercises limited autonomy in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, will be the only one to do so after the end of the Israel-Hamas war. He said he could run Gaza.
“Hamas can no longer control Gaza,” Borrell told the Manama Dialogue, an annual conference on foreign and security policy. “So who is going to manage Gaza? I think the only one that can do that is the Palestinian Authority.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said that if there is a complete political solution that includes the West Bank (moves toward establishing a Palestinian state in land occupied by Israel since 1967), the Palestinian Authority will be able to control Gaza. He said it could play a role.
Peace talks between Israel and Palestine have been frozen since 2014. The PA is highly unpopular among Palestinians and is primarily perceived as a corrupt security subcontractor to Israel, which is currently under a hardline religious nationalist government.
Hamas took over Gaza after a brief civil war with Abbas’ Fatah party in 2007 and has become deeply entrenched in Gazan society, with political, social and charity organizations. Years of settlement negotiations between the adversaries have failed to lead to a breakthrough towards resuming PA rule in Gaza.
A senior official from the United Arab Emirates, which reached a US-brokered normalization deal with Israel in 2020, warned that a prolonged conflict in Gaza could lead to radicalization across the Middle East.
“I think we need to be very cautious because the longer the crisis lasts, the greater the risk of it getting out of control,” said Anwar Gargash, a foreign affairs adviser to the UAE president.
The UAE and other conservative Gulf Arab states view Hamas and other Islamists as a threat to stability in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Additional reporting by Enas Alashley in Cairo: Written by Michael George.Editing: Mark Heinrich
Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.