When the conflict in Gaza stops, the US will want to broker talks between Israeli and Palestinian counterparts which will likely determine the political horizon of Israel and Palestine for the next 20 years. To successfully enter these negotiations, Palestinian leaders must form a national unity government.
The Israeli leadership has claimed for years that it has no Palestinian partner for peace with whom it can negotiate. Successive governments under Benjamin Netanyahu have effectively propped up Hamas by undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. The result is that Israel itself has been no partner for peace for the past two decades, and its narrative has won out and persuaded Western policymakers that ineffective Palestinian leadership is the problem.
It is therefore critical that when the Hamas-Israel war ceases, Palestinian leaders are not only ready to negotiate for a political solution – and there must be a political solution – but they also represent Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza.
This is no mean feat given the shortage of popular national leaders and high levels of disillusionment and distrust among Palestinians towards the Palestinian Authority (PA), Fatah and Hamas. Moreover, the current Palestinian leadership is either distant from its population – both metaphorically and physically (as they are based in Doha) – or underground.
Palestinians have long waited for a leadership change or refresh and the moment to do so is now – at a time when Netanyahu also appears to be on his way out.
Two key leadership issues need to be addressed. First, Palestinian leaders from all parties must immediately suspend their differences and try to bridge – even temporarily – societal divisions driven by Israel’s ‘divide and rule’ tactics, to negotiate from a position of strength. Earlier attempts at forming national unity governments have failed but the urgency and purpose is greater now. Second, there is a growing gulf between Palestinian leadership and civil society and a strong, recent tendency within the PA and Hamas towards authoritarianism that risks extinguishing the vibrancy of the resistance to occupation.
Although Gaza’s future will be at the heart of early negotiations, it is unclear which entity will represent it. But one thing is certain: Hamas will be excluded, even though it remains a representative voice of Palestinians. An Arab Barometer survey of the West Bank and Gaza on the eve of the conflict reported support for Hamas at 27 per cent, and at 30 per cent for the PA. A more recent survey conducted by AWRAD during the conflict reported that support for Hamas stood at 59 per cent, and at 8 per cent for the PA.
Given the PA’s low rating, it is highly doubtful that its president, Mahmoud Abbas, will accept the poisoned chalice of governing Gaza again, unless the US not only commits substantial reconstruction funds, but also gives a cast iron guarantee that it will sponsor a political solution ending in Palestinian statehood. But the US will not make that investment in the peace process – nor in Abbas.
Nevertheless, there is a strong desire among Western and some Arab leaders to stitch together a single leadership to govern the West Bank and Gaza, which has not happened since Hamas seized power from the PA in 2007. Therefore, if Palestinian party leaders fail to present a unified front, the US will likely work with Israel and its trusted ‘old guard’ Palestinian interlocutors to impose a solution on Gaza.
Part of the old guard – and trusted by both the US and Israel – are the secretary-general of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hussein al-Sheikh, and the head of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service, General Majed Faraj. Both are unpopular in the West Bank and considered to be corrupt, weak, and too close to Israel. Nevertheless, the US will likely persuade Abbas to anoint al-Sheikh or Faraj as his successor and authorize a slow transfer of power. In doing so, Washington will encourage the president-in-waiting to share responsibility for Gaza with Israel. Such a governance model would neither serve Gazan nor Israeli long-term security interests.
If the current crop of Palestinian leaders cannot unite to avoid an imposed solution, Palestinian civil society will need press for a more inclusive leadership to negotiate for Palestine’s future.
While Palestinian political culture and civil society has always been dynamic, unrelenting Israeli and PA repression since the late 2000s – and their shared interest in maintaining the status quo – has suppressed successive generations of young political leaders and activists. The political and social space once enjoyed by civil society has closed, and young leaders are restricted to the enervating patronage system. As a result, there is a lack of prominent young leaders in the running and the only candidates with any hope of securing support are voices from the past, who can leverage history, familial connections, and legacy relationships with external actors to their benefit.
Such candidates include Fatah secretary-general, Jibril Rajoub; former head of the Palestinian Preventive Security Force in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan; vice chairman of Fatah, Mahmoud Al-Aloul; Palestinian prime minister, Muhammad Ishtayeh; former Palestinian foreign minister, Nassar Kidwa; and former secretary-general of Fatah, Marwan Barghouti.