Senators: Take Gaza Away From Hamas

Over the summer, the Obama administration supported a draft cease-fire plan that would have strengthened the Hamas position in Gaza. Now 88 senators are urging the Obama administration to take a very different approach to the group: gradual regime change. Over time, they want to hand Gaza over to the more moderate Palestinian Authority, which oversees the West Bank today.

In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry obtained by The Daily Beast, the 88 senators write, “we must support efforts to enable the Palestinian Authority to exercise real power in Gaza. Hamas has demonstrated conclusively both that it has no interest in peace with Israel and that it has no concern for the well-being of Gaza residents.”

Support for a gradual regime change in Gaza is very different than the State Department’s position this summer during the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas. The first draft of the ceasefire plan from Kerry would have delivered reconstruction assistance to Hamas before the group began disarmament, a key Israeli precondition for rebuilding Gaza after its war. That war killed at least 2,000 Gazans, at least 495 of whom were children. By contrast 66 Israeli soldiers and five Israeli civilians were killed in the war.

The letter to Kerry was circulated in the senate by Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican and Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/22/senators-take-gaza-away-from-hamas.html