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PRESERVING INFLUENCE
Israel has been waging war in Gaza since the Iran-backed Hamas launched its Oct 7 attack on southern Israel, seeking to destroy the group in a campaign which has laid waste to much of the Gaza Strip.
Hamas has sought a deal with Fatah on a new technocratic administration for the West Bank and Gaza as part of a wider political deal, Reuters reported this month, underlining the group’s aim of preserving influence once the war ends.
The United States and EU, which shunned Hamas as a terrorist group long before the Oct 7 attack, oppose any role for the group in governing Gaza after the war.
Western states support the idea of post-war Gaza being run by a revamped Palestinian Authority, the administration led by Abbas that has limited self-rule over patches of the West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority also ran Gaza until 2007, when Hamas drove Fatah from the enclave, a year after defeating Fatah in parliamentary elections – the last time Palestinians voted.
Hamas has long rejected Abbas’ approach of seeking to negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital, deeming it a failure and advocating armed struggle.
Hamas’ 1988 founding charter called for Israel’s destruction. In 2017, Hamas said it agreed to a transitional Palestinian state within frontiers pre-dating the 1967 war, though it still opposed recognising Israel’s right to exist. Hamas has restated this position since the eruption of the Gaza war.
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