Palestinian Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian Shaheen on Friday called for empowering the Palestinian Authority to govern the Gaza Strip, saying the government is prepared to take over responsibilities and warning that continued marginalization would undermine any postwar arrangements.
Speaking during a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference, Shaheen said the Palestinian leadership has long been planning for the "day after” in Gaza and is not starting from scratch.
"Yes, we’re ready,” she said in response to a question about timelines for taking over Gaza’s governance. "We’ve been thinking about the day after in Gaza for some time. We’ve had plans that were endorsed by the Arab League, the Muslim world and the international community at large.”
Shaheen said the key requirement is for the Palestinian government to be empowered to carry out its responsibilities, arguing that the current sidelining of the Palestinian Authority is "unsustainable.”
"Today, the Palestinian government is marginalized, and you cannot continue marginalizing a government,” she said, adding that developments in Gaza are inseparable from those in the West Bank.
She pointed to practical governance issues, including population records and passport issuance, which are administered through the West Bank, saying this underscores the need to involve the Palestinian Authority from the outset.
"If you talk about the population registry, you need to go to the West Bank. If you talk about issuing passports, you need to go to the West Bank,” she said. "So you might as well bring in the Palestinian Authority early on, rather than in the middle of the process or at the end.”
Her remarks come as senior Palestinian officials stress that Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem constitute a single political and geographic unit and reject alternative governance arrangements that bypass the established Palestinian leadership.
Last week, Bassem al-Salhi, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said that there is "no political communication” between the PLO and the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG).
"The PLO, as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, sees that its political and legal jurisdiction over the West Bank and Gaza has not changed, even under Trump’s Gaza plan or the establishment of the ‘Board of Peace’”, he told Anadolu.
"Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem form one political and geographic unit that cannot be divided,” he added.
The NCAG is a nonpolitical body tasked with overseeing daily civil services in the enclave.
It comprises 11 Palestinian figures and is led by Ali Shaath. The committee began operating from the Egyptian capital, Cairo, in mid-January but has yet to start work inside Gaza, where about 2.4 million Palestinians face severe humanitarian conditions.
The committee is one of four bodies proposed to manage a transitional phase in Gaza, alongside a Board of Peace, a Gaza Executive Council and an International Stabilization Force, under a plan put forward by US President Donald Trump.
It was part of Trump’s plan to end Israel’s two-year war on Gaza, which has killed more than 72,000 people, mostly women and children, injured over 171,000 others, and destroyed about 90% of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.