By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The top U.S. general said on Thursday Israel still has not shared much of its “day after” planning for Gaza once the war with Hamas ends.
The remarks by Air Force General C.Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, followed a speech to Congress on Wednesday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that sketched only a vague outline for a “deradicalized” post-war Gaza.
“There’s not a lot of detail that I’ve been able to see from a plan from them,” Brown told a Pentagon press conference. “This is something that we’ll continue to work with them on.”
For months, Washington has repeatedly urged Israel to craft a realistic post-war plan for Gaza and warned that the absence of it could trigger lawlessness and chaos as well as a comeback by Hamas in the Palestinian territory.
“As far as the day after, we have talked to the Israelis about this, how to make a transition. We’ve talked to them a number of times,” Brown said.
Later on Thursday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Israel had not put forward a great amount of detail about a plan for the day after, but conversations continued.
“We have been having conversations with them about this and they are in a different place than they were several months ago when they hadn’t really thought about a day after at all,” Miller added.
“We are at the point where we’re talking with them and they’re putting forward some ideas,” he added.
Palestinians have previously said only an end to Israeli occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state will bring peace.
But in his speech to Congress, Netanyahu made no mention of creating a pathway to Palestinian statehood following the war in Gaza. That is something he and his far-right coalition partners have staunchly opposed even as the Biden administration has pushed Israel to give ground on the issue.
Netanyahu stopped short of ruling out a role for the West Bank-led Palestinian Authority, whose place in a future two-state solution is favored by the Biden administration but opposed by Netanyahu’s coalition partners.
Hamas came to power in Gaza in 2006 after Israeli soldiers and settlers withdrew in 2005. Israel controls access to Gaza.
Israel’s war has devastated the Palestinian enclave and killed more than 39,000 of its residents, according to Gaza health officials. Hamas fighters triggered the war on Oct. 7 by storming into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 captives, according to Israeli tallies.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Additional reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Alistair Bell and Chizu Nomiyama)
