A de facto partition of Gaza between an area controlled by Israel and another ruled by Hamas is increasingly likely, multiple sources said, with efforts to advance U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war beyond a cease-fire faltering.
Six European officials with direct knowledge of the efforts to implement the next phase of the plan told Reuters it was effectively stalled and that reconstruction now appeared likely to be limited to the Israel-controlled area.
That could lead to years of separation, they warned.
The next stage of the plan foresees Israel withdrawing further from the so-called Yellow Line agreed under Trump’s plan, alongside the establishment of a transitional authority to govern Gaza, the deployment of a multinational security force meant to take over from the Israeli military, the disarmament of Hamas and the start of reconstruction.
But the plan provides no timelines or mechanisms for implementation. Meanwhile, Hamas refuses to disarm, Israel rejects any involvement by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, and uncertainty persists over the multinational force.
“We’re still working out ideas,” Jordanian foreign minister Ayman Safadi said at a Manama security conference this month. “Everybody wants this conflict over, all of us want the same endgame here. Question is, how do we make it work?” Without a major push by the United States to break the impasse, the yellow line looks set to become the de facto border indefinitely dividing Gaza, according to 18 sources, among them the six European officials and a former U.S. official familiar with the talks. The United States has drafted a U.N. Security Council resolution that would grant the multinational force and a transitional governing body a two-year mandate. But ten diplomats said governments remain hesitant to commit troops. European and Arab nations, in particular, were unlikely to participate if responsibilities extended beyond peacekeeping, and meant direct confrontation with Hamas or other Palestinian groups, they said.
Any de facto territorial break up of Gaza would further set back Palestinian aspirations for an independent nation including the West Bank and worsen the humanitarian catastrophe for a people without adequate shelter and almost entirely dependent on aid for sustenance.
“We cannot have a fragmentation of Gaza,” Jordan’s Safadi said. “Gaza is one, and Gaza is part of the occupied Palestinian territory.”
Palestinian Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian Shahin also rejected territorial division of Gaza, and said the Palestinian Authority was ready to assume “full national responsibility.”
“There can be no genuine reconstruction or lasting stability without full Palestinian sovereignty over the territory,” she said in a statement in response to Reuters’ questions.