The UAE, US and Israel met in Abu Dhabi on Thursday to discuss post-war plans for the Gaza Strip, a day after a senior Emirati diplomat suggested the UAE was ready to send peacekeeping forces to the besieged strip.
The meeting was hosted by Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and was attended by White House top Middle East official Brett McGurk, State Department adviser Tom Sullivan and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, according to Axios.
The meeting came shortly after an opinion piece was published in the Financial Times in support of sending a temporary international force to Gaza to provide “law and order.”
Lana Nusseibeh, a former UAE ambassador to the UN and now the UAE’s undersecretary for political affairs, said international troops could be sent to Gaza at the invitation of the Palestinian Authority as part of efforts towards a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It was not immediately clear why the UAE decided to lay out its vision for the Gaza Strip on the eve of previously unpublicized meetings with US and Israeli officials.
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But at least some of Nusseibeh’s conditions for sending peacekeepers to Gaza appear to contradict the stated position of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
Nusseibeh, who comes from a prominent Jerusalem family, said an international force would not bring stability to Gaza unless Israel lifted its blockade of the Strip and ended settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.
Her call for an international force to be a stepping stone to a two-state solution also represents a direct challenge to the Israeli Knesset, which overwhelmingly rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state last week.
Gulf countries discuss Gaza forces
Analysts are skeptical that the U.S. can mobilize Gulf states to help secure and rebuild Gaza, especially with Israel continuing its attacks on the Strip and ceasefire talks stalled, but U.S. and Arab officials who spoke privately to MEE suggested tentative progress is being made.
Bahrain willing to join Arab multinational force in Gaza, U.S. official says
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The White House and Department of Defense did not respond to MEE’s requests for comment at the time of writing.
The US is working on a post-war security plan for Gaza that would see a US-backed mission led from Cairo, Egypt. Last month, Middle East Eye reported that the US was considering plans to move Palestinian Authority security forces to the Central Command area of responsibility, which Israel would put in place in 2021.
A senior US official previously told MEE that Bahrain had told the US it was ready to send peacekeepers to the Gaza Strip. Manama’s police and security forces are heavily composed of Pakistani and Jordanian Palestinians.
The FT opinion piece suggests that the UAE no longer considers discussing joining an ad hoc international force a private matter.
This marks a major shift from May, when the UAE issued a statement refuting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Israel had made progress with Gulf states in joining the post-war governance of the Gaza Strip.