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UAE in Talks With US, Israel About Provisional Government for Post-War Gaza

A general view shows destroyed buildings in northern Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, near the Israel-Gaza border, Nov. 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

The United Arab Emirates has discussed with Israel and the United States participating in a provisional administration of postwar Gaza until a reformed Palestinian Authority is able to take charge, according to people familiar with the talks.

The behind-the-scenes discussions, reported by Reuters for the first time, included the possibility of the UAE and the United States, along with other nations, temporarily overseeing the governance, security, and reconstruction of Gaza after the Israeli military withdraws and until a Palestinian administration is able to take over, a dozen foreign diplomats and Western officials told Reuters.

The UAE is a close security partner of the US and, unlike most Arab governments, has diplomatic ties with Israel. The diplomats and officials said this provides the Gulf state with some leverage over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

After more than a year of war, Israel remains reluctant to outline its own vision for Gaza and the international community has struggled to formulate a viable plan, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because the conversations were private.

The diplomats and officials stressed the ideas that had emerged from the UAE talks lacked detail and had not been distilled into a formal, written plan nor adopted by any government.

In the behind-the-scenes talks, Abu Dhabi is advocating for a reformed Palestinian Authority (PA) to govern Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem under an independent Palestinian state, the sources said — something that Israel has publicly opposed.

“The UAE will not participate in any plan that fails to include significant reform of the Palestinian Authority, its empowerment, and the establishment of a credible roadmap toward a Palestinian state,” a UAE official told Reuters, in response to questions about the discussions.

“These elements — which are currently lacking — are essential for the success of any postGaza plan.”

The PA was established three decades ago under the 1993-1995 Oslo Accords, signed by Israel and Palestinians, and given limited authority over the West Bank and Gaza. It still exercises limited self-governance in the West Bank but was run out of Gaza in 2007 by Hamas after a brief civil war.

A US State Department spokesperson told Reuters there had been talks with several partners, including the UAE, on options for governance, security, and reconstruction, and that various draft proposals, plans and ideas had been put forward by partners.

“These have been deliberative discussions that continue, as we seek the best way forward,” the spokesperson said, declining to comment further on “private diplomatic conversations.”

The Israeli prime minister’s office declined comment for this story. The Palestinian Authority did not respond to Reuters’ questions.

In addition to reforming the PA, four of the diplomats and Western officials said that Emirati officials had suggested the use of private military contractors as part of a postwar peacekeeping force in Gaza. The other sources confirmed they were briefed on what they described as Emirati postwar proposals, which included the possible use of such forces.

The diplomats and Western officials said any deployment of such contractors would spark concerns among Western nations. Private military contractors, hired by the United States and other governments, have faced accusations of torture, human rights abuses, and use of excessive force, among other allegations, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The UAE official did not respond to questions about the use of military contractors.

RECONSTRUCTION WILL TAKE YEARS

Rebuilding Gaza, including its political institutions, is expected to take years and cost tens of billions of dollars, requiring substantial international support, following 15 months of the Israel-Hamas war.

While the UAE has criticized the conduct of Israel‘s military and Netanyahu himself, Israel still wants the oil-rich nation involved in postwar Gaza, according to two former Israeli officials, who declined to be identified.

Like Israel, the Gulf state opposes Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group that led the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war.

Abu Dhabi views Hamas and other Islamist groups as destabilizing forces. UAE officials have also expressed concern publicly over the war‘s impact on stability in the Middle East and on efforts towards greater regional integration and economic development.

Asked whether Hamas was aware of proposals discussed by the UAE, Basem Naim, one of the organization’s senior officials, told Reuters that after the war, Gaza must be “distinctly Palestinian” and without “foreign interventions.”

Washington is pushing, alongside mediators Egypt and Qatar, for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Israel and Hamas traded blame in late December for delays in reaching a ceasefire — which both sides had said appeared to be close last month. On Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington wanted to see a ceasefire deal concluded in the next two weeks.

When asked about the future of Gaza, Brian Hughes, a spokesman for Donald Trump’s transition team, said the US president-elect — who is due to take office on Jan. 20 — would work in close coordination with Arab and Israeli partners “to ensure that Gaza can one day prosper.”

REFORM OF PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY

The Gulf state has said it would only send troops to a postwar multinational mission at the invitation of the Palestinian Authority and with the involvement of the US.

Netanyahu, however, has said he is against the Palestinian Authority in its current form governing Gaza, citing his long-standing grievances over the PA’s school syllabus, which he says fuels hatred of Israel, and its policy of giving salaries to families of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel for their involvement in terrorist attacks and plots.

The UAE has called for a new prime minister to lead the Palestinian Authority, which Emirati officials frequently criticized as corrupt and inept during the closed-door talks, the diplomats and officials said, without providing specifics.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa, who took office in March, has pledged to implement reforms within the Palestinian Authority whose finances have been in disarray for years as donor states have cut back funding until corruption and waste are tackled.

Emirati officials have mentioned former prime minister Salam Fayyad, a US-educated former World Bank official, as the type of person who would be credible to lead a revamped Palestinian Authority, according to the diplomats and officials.

Fayyad served as prime minister from 2007 until resigning in 2013 after falling out with President Mahmoud Abbas, who remains in office. Reuters was unable to reach Fayyad for comment.

The post UAE in Talks With US, Israel About Provisional Government for Post-War Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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New MIT Accuser Comes Forward With Harrowing Antisemitism Allegations

Illustrative” A pro-Hamas encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 6, 2024. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is being accused by another alleged victim of refusing, as de-facto policy, to quell antisemitic discrimination which violated rights guaranteed by Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act.

The complainant, a male researcher, came forward to join a lawsuit that the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed in June, which required its being amended to include him. According to court documents shared with The Algemeiner, he endured psychological torment, having been swarmed by “masked” pro-Hamas activists clamoring for the destruction of Israel and students who “interrogated” his Jewish identity, pelting him with slurs and threatening to “prevent” his reproducing to bring “more Jewish children” into the world.

While administrators received formal complaints describing in harrowing detail the severity of the bullying being perpetrated against the student, they allegedly took no action. Left to stand alone, the student resorted to concealing his Jewishness on a campus which purports to be one of the most inclusive in the country.

“Antisemitism continues to persist at MIT, ultimately allowing the abuse to escalate until a promising Israeli researcher was forced from his lab. This not only deeply impacts this individual, but an entire campus and the communities this researcher, and other like them, could help through their work over the course of their careers,” Brandeis center founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement. “MIT has had countless opportunities to stop this harassment and protect their Israeli and Jewish students and faculty. Instead, antisemitism has only worsened at MIT — an outcome made possible by the administration’s continued negligence.”

As previously reported, the other plaintiffs, Lior Alon and William Sussman, allege that MIT became inhospitable to Jewish students after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, as pro-Hamas activists there issued calls to “globalize the intifada,” interrupted lessons with “speeches, chants, and screams,” and discharged their bodily fluids on campus properties administered by Jews. Jewish institutions at MIT came under further attack when a pro-Hamas group circulated a “terror-map” on campus which highlighted buildings associated with Jews and Israelis and declared, “resistance is justified when people are colonized.”

The suit added that Alon — who lived through both intifadas, or periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israels, as a citizen of Israel and lost his childhood friend to the Hamas Oct. 7 massacre — has personally been victimized by campus antisemites. During anti-Israel encampment protests in spring term 2024, Alon was prohibited from entering the Kresge Lawn section of campus, through which he needed to pass to access his office. The edict allegedly came down from pro-Hamas activists and was enforced by an MIT police officer, who became an accessory to the group’s usurpation of school property.

Later, Alon was allegedly harassed by Michel DeGraff, a tenured linguistics professor. According to the suit, DeGraff posted videos of Alon on social media, replete with his “personal information, including details of his Israeli military services,” as well as spurious accounts of his life which portrayed him as sinister. The productions inspired misfits to approach him in the streets, as they showed up at “the grocery store and his child’s daycare.”

All the while, MIT’s administration allegedly refused to correct the hostile environment.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, MIT has allegedly ignored dozens of complaints of antisemitic discrimination. Discrimination there has been described in harrowing testimony provided by students at hearings called by the US Congress, in social media posts, and in comments to this publication. Only last year, MIT student Talia Khan told members of Congress that attending the institution “traumatized” her, charging that it has “become overrun by terrorist supporters that directly threaten the lives of Jews on our campus.”

Khan went on to recount MIT’s efforts to suppress expressions of solidarity with Israel after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, which included ordering Jewish students to remove Israeli flags from public display while allowing Palestinian flags to fly across campus. She described the double standard as a “scandal” alienating Jewish students, staff, and faculty, many of whom resigned from an allegedly farcical committee on antisemitism. Staff were ignored, Khan said, after expressing fear that their lives were at risk, following an incident in which a mob of anti-Zionists amassed in front of the MIT Israel Internship office and attempted to infiltrate it, banging on its doors while “screaming” that Jews are committing genocide.

“These incidents demonstrate what happens when antisemitism is allowed to flourish in the absence of leadership and accountability,” Jonathan Polkes, global co-chair of legal practice White & Case, the law firm partnering with the Brandeis Center to litigate the suit, said on Wednesday. “Through its inaction, MIT allowed a tenured professor to use his position of power to persecute Jews without consequence — breaking both federal and university laws in the process. Our clients are taking a courageous stand against injustice, and we are proud to represent them.”

Commenting on the lawsuit, MIT has previously said, “MIT will defend itself in court regarding the allegations raised in the lawsuit. To be clear, MIT rejects antisemitism. As President Kornbluth has said, ‘Antisemitism is real, and it is rising in the world. We cannot let it poison our community.’”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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Charlie Kirk’s Producer Debunks Anti-Israel Conspiracy Theories Pushed by Lawmaker, Podcasters, Pro-Iran Propagandist

US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) talks with reporters after a meeting of the House Republican Conference at the Capitol Hill Club, Washington, DC, Sept. 9, 2025. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA) via Reuters Connect

Last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has animated a wave of anti-Israel conspiracy theories, inspiring voices on both the far right and far left to join together in promoting an assortment of unsubstantiated claims inflected with conventional antisemitic tropes.

On Monday, Kirk’s producer and a billionaire supporter of Israel both rejected the allegations fueled by Max Blumenthal, a fiercely anti-Israel journalist promoted by Iranian state media who carries a long record of smearing the Jewish state.

Blumenthal, editor of the Grayzone website, published claims from anonymous sources that Kirk had been pressured at a Hamptons gathering hosted by billionaire Bill Ackman weeks before his death. Kirk was reportedly “hammered” over his views on Israel by Ackman and other pro-Israel advocates, leaving him to feel blackmailed.

The report named Natasha Hausdorff of UK Lawyers for Israel as among those who berated Kirk. Hausdorff confirmed to the New York Post that she attended the meeting but called the accusation “categorically untrue” and added that whoever said it “is absolutely lying.” Ackman also denied the charge, calling the claim “totally false.”

Blumenthal has long written articles sympathetic to Hezbollah, the former Assad regime in Syria, and Hamas. In 2013, he notably published Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, which Eric Alterman, media columnist for the leftist flagship magazine The Nation, described as “a propaganda tract” that could “have been published by the Hamas Book-of-the-Month Club (if it existed).”

The Grayzone report has since influenced Candace Owens, the podcaster who has been widely accused of antisemitism, and US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), among others, demonstrating a convergence between far-left and far-right figures in promoting antisemitic narratives and anti-Israel conspiracies.

Owens — who previously worked with Kirk before her shift to open, unapologetic opposition to Israel and promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories, which resulted in her termination from her job as podcaster at The Daily Wire in March 2024 — claimed during a Monday monologue that pro-Israel forces staged an “intervention” with Kirk involving Ackman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She alleged Kirk, an outspoken supporter of Israel who often called out the dangers of antisemitism, was changing his views and offered “a ton of money” to remain pro-Israel, comparing the meeting to a “re-education camp.” Owens said Kirk refused the offers, warning her followers to be “very wary and suspicious of the people who are already telling us to stop asking questions about the Charlie Kirk assassination.”

The podcaster later clarified that she was not directly accusing Israel of orchestrating the murder but argued Kirk had faced “extreme pressure” over his views. Owens also shared social media posts criticizing Netanyahu, captioning one with “All will be revealed.”

Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, responded on X, saying Owens had “slandered” him by accusing him of staging an intervention and suggesting that he blackmailed Kirk. He denied ever offering Kirk or Turning Point USA, the political advocacy organization he started, any money, pressuring him on Israel, or threatening him. “In short, this was not an ‘intervention’ to ‘blackmail’ Charlie Kirk into adopting certain views on Israel,” Ackman wrote in his statement. He described his interactions with Kirk as cordial and said he admired him.

Ackman said he and Kirk first connected on Zoom in June, then worked together to organize a conference of conservative influencers in Bridgehampton in August. He said about 35 influencers attended, collectively reaching more than 100 million followers, and that discussions included a range of issues such as economics, dating, immigration, and Israel. He added that participants expressed varied views on Israel and US support for the country.

Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” corroborated Ackman’s account. In a statement, Kolvet said he had spoken with three Turning Point staffers who were present at the gathering in question and that “Bill never yelled at Charlie, never pressed him on Bibi [Netanyahu], never gave him a list of Charlie’s offenses against Israel.” Kolvet added that Kirk himself had told him he had a “cordial relationship” with Ackman and that the event was “productive.”

Despite those denials, the conspiracy theories gained further traction on the far right. Greene wrote on X that supporters should “believe Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson” over “Bibi Netanyahu (a foreign country’s leader),” before warning: “Do not allow a foreign country, foreign agents, and another religion tell you about Charlie Kirk. And I hope a foreign country and foreign agents and another religion does not take over Christian Patriotic Turning Point USA.” She described Kirk as a “Christian martyr” and suggested Jewish influence threatened his movement.

On July 28, Greene accused Israel of engaging in a genocide in Gaza.

The New York Post reported that Owens’ comments relied in part on Blumenthal’s Grayzone article. In addition, Owens suggested law enforcement had intentionally allowed Kirk’s killer to evade capture, though police have charged 22-year-old Tyler Robinson of Utah with the shooting.

Authorities have not presented any evidence linking Israel or pro-Israel figures to the crime. Rather, the alleged shooter’s animosity toward Kirk’s positions on LGBTQ issues appears to have inspired the attack, according to prosecutors.

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Rising Antisemitism on European Campuses: Italian Professor Assaulted, French Students Excluded From Online Groups

Youths take part in the occupation of a street in front of the building of the Sciences Po University in support of Palestinians in Gaza, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Paris, France, April 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

Violence and intimidation against Jewish and Israeli students as well as faculty are on the rise across European campuses, as an Italian professor was assaulted at the University of Pisa and students in France were excluded from online groups over their Jewish identities.

On Tuesday, pro-Palestinian protesters stormed a classroom at the University of Pisa in Tuscany, Italy, and assaulted an Italian professor who has opposed cutting ties with Israeli universities.

According to local reports, protesters burst into the classroom waving Palestinian flags and shouting antisemitic slurs, targeting the professor over his opposition to the university’s recent decision to sever ties with two Israeli universities.

A student who tried to intervene was attacked by protesters. When the professor stepped in to protect him, he too was assaulted and later hospitalized with injuries to his head and arms.

On the same day, anti-Israel protesters disrupted a lecture by a visiting Israeli speaker at the Polytechnic University of Turin in northern Italy, shouting antisemitic slogans as they stormed the classroom.

Shortly after the incident, the university announced it was cutting ties with the speaker because he had defended the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the confrontation with the protesters.

Since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, anti-Israel activity on campuses has intensified, with Jewish and Israeli students facing frequent targeting and isolation in an increasingly hostile environment.

On Monday, a group of first-year economics students at Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris created a group chat on Instagram that excluded several students, accusing them of being Zionists based on their Jewish-sounding names or surnames, French media reported.

“If there are any other Zionists in this group besides those I’ve already kicked out, leave now — we don’t want you here,” wrote one of the students who created the group, placing a Palestinian flag in the middle.

This latest antisemitic incident follows a similar episode last month, when a student created a poll in a WhatsApp group chat titled, “For or Against Jews?”

Yossef Murciano, president of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF), denounced the rising wave of anti-Jewish incidents, noting that the group had posted notices across multiple campuses to highlight the latest antisemitic episodes.

“We reported the incident to the university, but so far nothing has been done. We were told that measures would be taken, but we don’t know when or how,” Murciano said.

In a press release, the university strongly condemned such “unacceptable behavior,” expressing its full support for those students affected by the recent antisemitic incidents.

The university also announced that it had submitted “all available evidence to the public prosecutor” regarding these two incidents and plans to initiate “disciplinary proceedings” against each of the perpetrators.

“These two acts, whose antisemitic nature seems clear, deserve a punishment commensurate with their severity,” the statement read.

French Minister of Higher Education and Research Philippe Baptiste strongly condemned the latest incidents, demanding a zero-tolerance approach.

“I stand with these young people, victims of antisemitism that must be opposed everywhere, including, sadly, in our universities. There is only one possible response: zero tolerance!” Baptiste wrote in a post on X.

Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), also spoke out against the incident, calling it a disturbing example of rising antisemitism on campuses.

“This is not a pro-Palestinian campaign, it is a campaign of antisemitic intimidation,” Arfi said in a post on X.

The incidents occurred weeks after two international Jewish groups and a German watchdog published a report showing that antisemitism on European university campuses following Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of Israel has fostered a “climate of fear” for Jewish students.

Then earlier this week, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) released their own report which found that the vast majority of Jewish students around the world resort to hiding their Jewishness and support for Israel on campuses to avoid becoming victims of antisemitism.

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