Yoram Cohen, former head of the Shin Bet and number two on Gadi Eisenkot’s party list, voiced support for involving the ‘Palestinian’ Authority in Gaza’s future governing mechanism. Any entity that doesn’t define Israel as an enemy and doesn’t intend to harm it should be allowed to participate in governance, he said. Cohen made the remarks last Friday at a “Shabbat Culture” event hosted by Mashen.
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“I’ve already stated in the past that in my opinion we need to allow any entity that doesn’t call Israel an enemy and doesn’t intend to harm Israel the option to be part of the next government in Gaza,” Cohen said. The ‘Palestinian’ Authority is Israel’s preferred option, he said, even though it suffers from deep failures and functions in a problematic way. Cohen compared it to other actors who might seek to influence the Strip’s future, including Qatar and Turkey.
“Preferable by Orders of Magnitude”
“In my opinion, the ‘Palestinian’ Authority is preferable to, for example, the Qataris, preferable to the Turks,” Cohen said. Despite the failures, poor functioning, and serious problems the Authority faces in Judea and Samaria, it’s still preferable from Israel’s perspective, he said.
Cohen added that the Authority lost its grip on Gaza, and that even in Judea and Samaria it’s dealing with weakness and problematic functioning. Still, he argued these shortcomings don’t cancel out its relative advantage compared to other regional alternatives.
“With all the failure and shortcomings, the dysfunctional and very, very problematic functioning they have in Judea and Samaria, and the fact that they lost their grip in Gaza—despite all of the above, they are preferable to Israel by orders of magnitude from a security and political standpoint,” he said.