Don’t Give Gaza to the Palestinian Authority

The Biden administration wants Israel to bring in Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party to rule Gaza when the war is over. Fatah controls the Palestinian Authority, which governs much of the West Bank. Uniting Gaza and the West Bank under a common government is a necessary step in the Biden administration’s seemingly unshakable goal of creating a Palestinian state sandwiching Israel.

The idea behind the strategy has a long history. Fatah is a secular, Arab nationalist party that occasionally claims to want peace with Israel, albeit on terms that would make Israel’s existence as a Jewish state untenable. Yet for many diplomats this makes it an attractive alternative to the terrorists who perpetrated the Oct. 7 attacks. But Fatah is a junior-varsity version of Hamas. Both have lethal policies when it comes to Israel. The Palestinian Authority sponsors the “pay to slay” salary program that provides financial rewards to terrorists, who get more lavish payouts for crimes that result in longer imprisonment. As recently as Oct. 2, an official Palestinian Authority TV broadcast showed Mr. Abbas saying: “Our martyrs, prisoners and wounded are the most sanctified that we have. . . . Our martyrs have a right to this money.”