A Palestinian Revival | Foreign Affairs 12/24/23, 7:01 PM

A Palestinian Revival
How to Build a New Political Order After Israel’s
Assault on Gaza
BY KHALED ELGINDY December 18, 2023
KHALED ELGINDY is Senior Fellow and Director of the Program on Palestine and Palestinian-
Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute. He is the author of Blind Spot: America and the
Palestinians, From Balfour to Trump.

After ten weeks of waging a brutal war in Gaza, Israeli leaders continue to
insist that their military campaign will press ahead until Hamas has been
eliminated. !ey have yet to articulate what that would mean in practice or
who or what they expect to "ll the governance void such an outcome would
leave. Given the absence of a clear endgame, there has been no shortage of
speculation about what will happen after the bombs stop falling. Mooted
“day after” scenarios run the gamut from fanciful notions of an Arab-run
trusteeship over Gaza to downright disturbing calls, mostly from Israelis,
for the transfer of most or all of Gaza’s population to Egypt. !e Biden
administration has laid out its own “day after” parameters, which, among
other things, rule out the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza or

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the territory’s reoccupation by Israel. In addition, the administration has

said it wants to see a return of a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority (PA)—
the Palestinian body nominally in control of parts of the West Bank—to
Gaza and, in contrast with the last three years, now says it is serious about a
political process that culminates in the two-state solution, with a sovereign
Palestinian state alongside Israel.

!e administration’s hopeful vision, however, is likely to run up against

some hard realities. For one, no one knows when or how this war will end
or how much of Gaza and how many Gazans will be left when the "ghting
stops. Moreover, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel
will not allow the PA to return to Gaza, promising to keep Israeli forces in
Gaza inde"nitely, including laying out plans for a permanent “bu#er zone”
inside Gaza that would further constrict the land available to Palestinians.
He has assured his partners in his governing coalition that he is the only
leader who can prevent the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.

Events on the ground are already moving in dangerous directions. !e

sheer magnitude of death and destruction in Gaza is di$cult to fathom.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, the Israeli assault has so far killed at
least 18,800 people, mostly civilians (including 8,200 children). !e
operation has uprooted more than 80 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million
inhabitants and rendered much of northern Gaza uninhabitable. Israel’s
severe restrictions on supplies of food, water, and fuel to Gaza’s population
have led to widespread outbreaks of disease and hunger and what the
United Nations has described as an “epic humanitarian catastrophe” and

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have even prompted warnings from UN o$cials and other observers of the
possibility of genocide. Moreover, the weaponization of mass starvation and
disease, combined with the near-total collapse of Gaza’s health care system
and the incessant bombardment of a population crammed into ever-
shrinking spaces, make it more likely by the day that some or all of Gaza’s
vulnerable residents will be forced over the border into Egypt. Such an
outcome aligns with Netanyahu’s desire to see a “thinning out” of Gaza’s
population.

Alongside Israeli-imposed realities on the ground, the future of Gaza will

also depend on developments within internal Palestinian politics. U.S.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Palestinians need to be “at
the center” of conversations about Gaza’s future. But for this to happen,
Palestinians will need to revive not just institutions of governance and
security but also, more fundamentally, of politics: the lack of e#ective
political leadership owing to the decay of Palestinian political institutions,
notably the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO), the umbrella organization that ostensibly represents
the various factions involved in the Palestinian national movement.

As is now clear, the division and stagnation that have plagued Palestinian
political institutions for the last 16 years have been disastrous not only for
Palestinians but for Israelis and the region as well. Indeed, as many analysts
(including myself ) have long warned, the debilitating split between Hamas
and Fatah—the two biggest Palestinian political factions, which warred
over Gaza in 2007—had become a perpetual source of violence and

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instability. Although much of this Palestinian political dysfunction was self-

in%icted, Israel has actively worked to promote weakness and division
among Palestinians to maintain its inde"nite rule over the occupied
territories. !is divide-and-rule approach to the Palestinians was
epitomized by Netanyahu’s cynical hope that propping up Hamas in Gaza
would prevent an eventual two-state solution. !e events of October 7
brought that policy to an end.

Any discussion of the “day after” should therefore be predicated on

encouraging the emergence of a unitary and cohesive Palestinian political
leadership. Palestinian leaders will have to set aside their factional
commitments, and Israel and the United States will have to relinquish the
wholly unrealistic idea that Hamas can be permanently excluded from
Palestinian politics. Convincing either Palestinians or Israel and its U.S.
allies to do so will not be easy. But if they fail to make these
accommodations, humanitarian and security conditions in Gaza are
unlikely to improve and a diplomatic settlement will remain far out of
reach.

ANOTHER CATACLYSM
!e events unfolding in Gaza since October 7 are of a historic nature, on
par with other cataclysmic moments in Palestinian history, such as the 1948
nakba or “calamity,” during which some 800,000 Palestinians, around two-
thirds of the British Mandatory Palestine’s Arab population, were forced
out of their homes or %ed and barred from returning, and the Six-Day War
of 1967, when Israel captured the remaining parts of historic Palestine, the
West Bank and Gaza Strip, and another 300,000 Palestinians were expelled
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from their homes or %ed. Like 1948 and 1967, the current Gaza war is
likely to alter the trajectory of Palestinian politics in ways that are
impossible to predict.

!e ongoing assault on Gaza is already the deadliest single event and the
largest forced displacement of Palestinians in history. Just as the horri"c
attack of October 7 by Hamas will be felt by Israelis for many years, the
sheer magnitude of human and physical destruction in%icted on Gaza by
Israel will leave an indelible imprint on Palestinian national consciousness
for generations to come. Like the nakba, the collective trauma of Gaza
today is being experienced well beyond its borders among Palestinians in
the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Israel, and the diaspora, and even more
broadly across the Arab world, and it will shape the political consciousness
of the next generation of Palestinian leaders.

In the meantime, the di$cult but unavoidable reality is that Israel’s stated
goal of eliminating Hamas as a political and military force cannot be
achieved and is, quite frankly, a recipe for endless death and destruction.
!e sooner Israeli and U.S. o$cials come to terms with this fact, the better
o# everyone will be. Two months of ferocious bombing and the destruction
of large portions of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure have failed to dislodge
Hamas from power or signi"cantly degrade its military capabilities,
including its ability to launch rockets, and has done little to disrupt its
systems of command and control. !e hostages-for-prisoners deal, although
short-lived, demonstrated Hamas’s continued relevance; Israel has no
choice but to deal with the group. A recent study by +972 Magazine

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suggests that Israel may be deliberately in%icting mass civilian casualties

and su#ering in the hope of inducing Gazans to turn on Hamas, but there
is little evidence that such a turn is happening. Indeed, it is more likely that
the Israeli bombardment and invasion of Gaza have achieved the opposite
e#ect, driving many Palestinians toward Hamas, as recent polls conducted
by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research have shown.

Hamas is an integral component of Palestinian politics with deep roots in

society and a signi"cant following both inside and outside the occupied
territories. However abhorrent some of its actions or ideas may be, Hamas
will likely remain part of the Palestinian political landscape for the
foreseeable future. Moreover, as long as the conditions of occupation,
blockade, and other forms of Israeli structural violence persist in Gaza,
some form of violent resistance from Hamas, or another group like it, will
continue.

A RETURN TO GAZA?
Because of Hamas’s durability and other reasons, it is unrealistic to expect
that the group’s rivals in the PA can simply swoop into Gaza and take
control of the territory. Despite the preferences of the United States and
other Western powers, the PA is unlikely to return to Gaza anytime soon—
at least not as it is currently constituted. Netanyahu’s ruling coalition has
also expressly rejected that possibility. But even if Israeli leaders could be
convinced to change their minds, the PA sees the possibility of regaining
control over the devastated territory as a poisoned chalice. No Palestinian
leader wants to be seen taking over Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks,
particularly someone as intensely weak and unpopular as PA President
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Mahmoud Abbas. He has said the PA will not return to Gaza unless a clear
pathway to Palestinian statehood has been established.

!at remains highly improbable given Israel’s far-right government, parts

of which favor the outright annexation of the Palestinian territories, and
the Biden administration’s track record in the Middle East, including its
reluctance to put pressure on Israel. Moreover, the PA can barely control
the limited areas under its jurisdiction and is in a state of slow-motion
collapse, and Abbas has no desire to inherit the monumental humanitarian
and security problems resulting from Israel’s destruction of Gaza. !e
feeling is most likely mutual, as Palestinians in Gaza are unlikely to be
enthusiastic about embracing Abbas’s corrupt and feckless bureaucracy. In
the end, given Abbas’s intense unpopularity and Hamas’s intractable
presence on the ground, any return of the PA would still require Hamas’s
consent.

In light of the %agging legitimacy of the current Palestinian leadership,

many both inside and outside Palestine see new elections, which have not
been held since 2006, as a necessary component of the postwar order and
the eventual reconstruction of Gaza. But the chances of holding a vote are
extremely low. !e Israeli onslaught in Gaza has caused massive dislocation,
destruction, and su#ering, conditions likely to persist for some time. !ese
conditions simply would not allow for elections to take place. !en there is
the perennial and unavoidable question of whether Hamas would be
allowed to participate. It is virtually impossible to imagine any circumstance
under which Israel or the United States would allow even a reformed

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Hamas to contest future elections. And yet an electoral process that

expressly excluded Hamas would rob it of legitimacy and could even lead to
another civil war. In short, it is extremely di$cult to see a way forward for
Palestinian politics with Hamas, but equally, there is no way forward
without it.

THE REVIVAL OF THE PLO

!ere are ways to overcome that basic conundrum, but they would require
sober thinking and humility on the part of all parties. First and foremost,
Israeli and U.S. o$cials will need to reconcile themselves to the fact that
Hamas will, in one form or another, remain a force in Palestinian politics.
In addition, they must abandon the idea that they can reengineer
Palestinian politics to suit Israeli (or U.S.) political needs, a conceit that has
helped erode the domestic legitimacy of Palestinian leaders since the Oslo
process began in 1993. No less crucial, Palestinian leaders from across the
political spectrum must set aside their parochial di#erences to address the
truly existential challenges that they now face.

Many Palestinians already recognize what must be done to revive their

politics: the disentangling of the PA from the Palestine Liberation
Organization. Whereas the PLO is supposed to be the o$cial address of
the Palestinian national movement that represents Palestinians everywhere,
the PA was originally set up by the Oslo accords as a temporary governing
body overseeing the a#airs of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and
Gaza. In the process, the PLO was gutted and its institutional and human
resources were e#ectively folded into the PA in anticipation of an eventual
Palestinian state. !at state never came to fruition; moreover, as the PA
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became the de facto locus for Palestinian politics, the PLO was sidelined
and allowed to atrophy. !e goal, then, should be to reverse this process by
downgrading the PA and upgrading the PLO while more clearly
delineating the lines between them. !is delineation can be achieved
through the creation of a technocratic government that is agreed to by all
factions, including Hamas, but does not include members of any of them.
Such a government should be transitional until the creation of an actual
Palestinian state or at least until conditions allow for elections to be held.
Because this government would not include Hamas, it could receive
international donor aid and function as a service provider rather than a
political body.

Unlike most other political systems, where the functions of governance and
political leadership are generally held by the same people, the realities of
Israeli occupation and the arrangements produced by the Oslo accords have
meant that those who govern Palestinians are not necessarily the same as
those who lead them. In that distinction lies an opportunity. At the same
time as a technocratic Palestinian administration stabilizes and rebuilds
Gaza, the PLO must evolve so that it can provide credible Palestinian
political leadership and enjoy the legitimacy and support of the Palestinian
people. It must expand to include Hamas and other factions currently
outside the PLO umbrella as well as representatives of Palestinian civil
society both inside the occupied territories and in the diaspora. !is basic
formula has been outlined in successive Palestinian reconciliation
agreements since 2011, but thanks both to Abbas’s reluctance to share
power as well as to U.S. and Israeli inability to accept a political role for

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Hamas, it has never been implemented.

!e idea of normalizing Hamas’s presence within the PLO will no doubt

spark outrage in Israel, the U.S. Congress, and elsewhere. !is is
understandable, but it is not reasonable. It was precisely Hamas’s exclusion
from Palestinian politics that allowed the group to serve as a free agent and
spoiler, that enabled years of violence and instability culminating in
October 7. Conversely, the inclusion of Hamas in the PLO’s governing
bodies such as the Executive Committee and its long-dormant parliament,
the Palestine National Council, would help to moderate the group and
limit its ability to act on its own. Decisions of war and peace, including the
disposition of Hamas’s weapons, would not be in the hands of any one
party but matters of collective Palestinian decision-making and consensus.
Although this will make a diplomatic settlement between Israel and the
PLO more di$cult to achieve, such an agreement is far more likely to stick.
In any case, the question of who may or may not participate in Palestinian
politics should not be subject to Israeli veto any more than Palestinians
should be allowed to choose which parties may run in Knesset elections.
Indeed, an e#ective Palestinian leadership must be able to act in accordance
with Palestinian national needs and priorities independently of Israel and
the United States, whose coercive in%uence over the past three decades has
helped erode the legitimacy of Palestinian leaders in the eyes of their
people.

As Palestinians know all too well from their painful history, it is precisely in
those moments when they do not have a credible political leadership that

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bad things tend to happen to them. !is is certainly one of those moments
—as the current Israeli leadership no doubt understands. But even though a
pliable and ine#ective Palestinian leadership may serve Israel’s short-term
interests, it has been highly destabilizing to the region and detrimental to
prospects for a diplomatic settlement. !e challenges ahead for Palestinians
require strong leadership of the sort that Abbas has not o#ered and cannot
provide. Although Abbas is unlikely to embrace such reforms on his own,
key Arab states that have a stake in regional stability and the ful"llment of
Palestinian political aspirations, such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia,
can help bring him along until such time as more credible leadership can
emerge.

It is impossible to imagine a process of rebuilding or stabilizing Gaza

without a credible, legitimate, and united Palestinian leadership, which in
turn requires a revival of Palestinian institutional politics and, more
speci"cally, the PLO. For this to happen, the United States and especially
Israel will need to abandon the dangerous notions that they can control or
engineer Palestinian politics to suit their own political or ideological needs
or that they can make peace with one set of Palestinians while
simultaneously waging war on another. It is hard to take seriously U.S.
rhetorical support for an independent Palestinian state if the United States
is not even willing to allow Palestinians to control their own domestic
politics. Normalizing Hamas within the context of revivi"ed Palestinian
politics will be a bitter pill to swallow, but the alternatives—such as
continuing to insist on Hamas’s destruction, attempting to drag an
illegitimate and ine#ective PA to Gaza, or forcing elections in a volatile and

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crisis-ridden environment—will likely back"re as they have in the past.

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