At this point, the scale of human and material destruction in Gaza has rendered the place nearly uninhabitable. All indications, moreover, suggest Israel’s destructive campaign will continue on for some time longer. Be that as it may, members of the international community are still devoting much of their energies into planning for “the day after”. In these regards, the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, a territory that has been out of its control since 2007, is not infrequently put forward as a viable option. For a number of reasons, this strikes as dubious.
Brought into existence by the Gaza-Jericho agreement (also known as Oslo I), the Palestinian Authority (PA) was established in May 1994 to serve as an interim governing body for Palestinian lands occupied by Israel since 1967. Its tenure was designated at five years, a period during which Palestinian and Israeli negotiators were notionally meant to resolve final status issues kicked down the road in Oslo: principally, the status of Jerusalem, delimitation of borders, right of return for refugees, sharing of natural resources, and the sovereign rights of a Palestinian state. Alas, when the five years in question elapsed without agreements having been reached, inertia saw to it that the PA endured as a semi-autonomous government of sorts, its powers over matters as fundamental as land, water, airspace, and security subordinated to those of Israel. This year, the Authority rang in its thirtieth birthday, as far from sovereignty as it was in 1994. The rule of its President, Mahmoud Abbas, nears twenty years since last subjected to a plebiscite.
What authority are we talking about?
Due to the failures of the process begun in Oslo, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories had been living through a succession of political crises well before October 7th introduced a rather seismic rupture: 2007’s partitioning of the occupied territories and consolidation of dueling government authorities. Elections forever delayed or canceled. Authoritarian upsurges in the West Bank and Gaza. Intensified colonization. The blockade of Gaza. And, as commemorated in the Abraham Accords, regional marginalization.
In many ways, the structure and design of the PA propelled this course of events. The truth is that the so-called “Oslo Accords” never envisaged the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. Rather, they institutionalized an arrangement whereby the PA was enlisted as subcontractors for the Israeli military administration—and whereby Palestine’s economic dependence on Israel was quietly deepened. Premised upon security cooperation from the very start, the PA was allowed to hire tens of thousands of policemen and civil servants and to exercise a degree of control over the inhabitants of the Occupied Territories. It was obstructed, however, from opposing Israel’s pursuit of colonial ambitions in any meaningful way.
In terms of governance and advancing the Palestinian national project, the PA’s record can only be called woeful. It has consolidated a highly securitized fiefdom, its police and intelligence agents eating up one third of annual budgets and numbering 85,000 as of the late 2010s (one for every 48 Palestinians, a ratio nearly nine times larger than that of the United States). Fed by counterparts in Israel, these actors maintain a system of surveillance and control designed to prevent the mobilization of a political opposition. As they do, Israel’s construction of settlements continues apace and prospects of salvaging a two-state solution wither on the vine.
Towards a surge of protest
Excluding the 2006-07 crisis and the events which have transpired since October 7th—the former leading to the partitioning of the occupied territories between a Hamas-dominated government in the Gaza Strip and a Fatah-led government in Ramallah—2021 was the most tenuous time for the PA. At long last, legislative and presidential elections had been scheduled to take place, the first of each in almost twenty years.[1] However, Mahmoud Abbas announced their postponement in May 2021, his preferred euphemism for cancellation, prompting a wave of protest throughout the West Bank and Gaza. The PA responded to the protests with harsh repression. Many political opponents were arrested and some, like Nizar Banat, died while in the Authority’s custody. As this was happening, the Israeli government compounded the PA’s troubles by commencing a major offensive on Jerusalem. Over the course of months, state and sub-state actors in Israel attempted to evict the inhabitants of several Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem (Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah) while stepping up provocations and attacks on al-Aqsa Mosque.
In this context, Abbas’ actions prompted a radical reaction in the West Bank. Armed activism surged for the first time since the second intifada, initially in the north (Nablus, Jenin) and then throughout most of the lands presided over by the PA. As it did and as Israel’s campaigns in Jerusalem gathered speed, Hamas then launched Operation Jerusalem Sword (sayf al-quds). With its rocket attacks, Hamas could present itself as the sole legitimate protector of the Palestinian national project. Its actions drew an extremely stark contrast with the PA, which looked more interested in preserving its interests than in defending Palestinian rights.
The non-viability of PA rule in Gaza
2021’s developments—the reemergence of civil and armed protests against the PA especially—showed a popular desire to bring the fight against occupation and colonization back to the heart of Palestinian politics. And it is in view of these developments that the feasibility of deploying the Palestinian Authority into whatever remains of Gaza in the months and years ahead must be assessed.
Throughout one of the most critical junctures in the history of modern Palestine, neither Mahmoud Abbas nor the PA has been anywhere to be seen. Having not even visited Gaza since 2006, Abbas’ absence on national and international stages post-October 7th shows that the Strip has become a foreign territory for him, while the PA’s disengagement reveals just how irrelevant it has become as an institution. Yes, the President has made a few tokenist efforts meant to reassert national leadership, such as his government reshuffle in March 2024. Nonetheless, while the new coalition gave privileged place to Gazan personalities, it continued to exclude those political currents standing in opposition to Fatah. It was also stitched together without anything resembling a democratic mandate. Perhaps most saliently, the current government, like the one before it, has demonstrated no capacity to influence the course of events in Gaza: If Mohammed Moustafa and his cabinet set themselves the task of delivering a ceasefire, they have no influence over such an outcome, never mind over how the place might one day be reconstructed. Making matters worse, Moustafa’s government has also shown itself powerless in combatting the intensifying violence of settlers and the Israeli army in the West Bank. Surely, some of the ministers serving in the government have good intentions in taking up their posts. At the end of the day, though, they are viewed as participants in a Fatah plot for taking revenge on Hamas via a potential (Israel-arranged) PA return to Gaza.
Challenges for a Palestinian solution
On July 18, 2024, the Israeli parliament voted by an overwhelming majority (68 to 9) to oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state. More than reflecting the breadth of the anti-Palestine consensus in Israel, the vote clearly bodes ill for the Palestinian Authority’s prospects in Gaza.
Where once shrouded in ambiguity, Israel’s determination to dispel any hope of a two-state solution is now clear as day. When it comes to Gaza, the Knesset vote, coupled with the recolonization campaign being advanced by certain ministers and settler movements, makes plain an intention to forcibly displace Palestinian populations and annex new territories. In and of themselves, Israel’s schemes for reestablishing a permanent presence in Gaza will greatly complicate the logistics of a PA return.
Even more problematic, however, is Israel’s de jure and de facto treatment of Gaza as a space of exception. Since the unilateral withdrawal of its settlements in 2005 (though with greater confidence from 2007 onward, after Hamas took sole control of the Strip), Israel has engaged Gaza from a purely security-oriented vision. October 7th may have confirmed the illogic of this approach, but it has done nothing to shift Israel’s strategy. Following the terms of the Generals’ Plan, presently, Israel looks ready to divide the Gaza Strip by establishing a military zone in the north covering approximately a third of Gaza’s territory. For the remaining two-thirds of Gaza’s land mass, Israel’s leadership has regularly signaled an intention to turn over security responsibilities to external parties. The name Mohammed Dahlan frequently comes up in discussions of that southern two-thirds. A former director of Preventive Security in Gaza—where he once led the PA’s relentless fight against Hamas—Dahlan was expelled from Fatah and forced into exile in 2011 following accusations of corruption. Now advisor to Mohammed bin Zayed, President of the United Arab Emirates, Dahlan maintains good relations with the security establishments of Israel, Egypt, and the United States, and as such, has been floated as an ideal new strongman for keeping Gaza quiet. His ascension in southern Gaza would betray a political naiveté, though, as it would only further aggravate intra-Palestinian divisions and engender instability as a result. Simply put, there is no fix based on security considerations alone. Should the PA or anyone go along with Israel’s plans, they will face a swift reckoning.
Then there is the question of financing Gaza’s reconstruction. UN estimates project a bill in the area of $100 billion. Clearly, the PA has no chance of raising these kinds of funds on its own and would therefore need to rely on external donors, the Gulf monarchies in particular. And yet, Saudi Arabia is demonstrating less willingness for handing out cash to neighbors and also claiming its engagement in Gaza will be contingent on a political process aimed at establishing an independent Palestinian state, something Israel expressly rejects. As such, it is unclear these monarchies are going to be willing to play ball. Their refusal would likewise leave a PA Gaza venture dead in the water.
Finally, there is the general legitimacy crisis that the PA or any other Palestinian political aspirant must resolve. As alluded to, the PA’s governance failures are legion and persistent, its non-democratic character imminently observable. In addition, despite recent negotiations in Beijing and Moscow, the PA and the PLO still face pronounced deficits of representativeness, with major political tendencies finding no seat at their tables (including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad). To administer an environment as unstable and volatile as Gaza in these conditions is to invite disaster. More generally, lest the PA and PLO can find a way of restoring legitimacy, initiatives like that of Azmi Bichara, who is attempting to construct a new alternative outside the umbrella of the PLO for bringing together Palestinian figures from the Occupied Territories and the diaspora, should be expected to gather speed.
Conclusions
Mahmoud Abbas, the world’s second oldest head of state (insofar as he can be called that), will soon turn 89. The succession struggle that awaits, be they for leadership of Fatah, the PLO, or the PA, renders plans for the “day after” in Gaza built upon the Palestinian Authority only more fraught.
Appointments Abbas has made in recent years—Hussein al-Sheikh as PLO Secretary General, Mahmoud al-Aloul as Fatah Vice-President—suggest he does not want his powers inherited by a single heir. If reasonable as a goal, the competition that could arise because of the uncertainty baked into Abbas’ preferred post-mortem could nevertheless weaken the Authority’s cohesiveness. And that is without other factions of Fatah, such as those organized around Marwan al-Barghouthi and Mohammed Dahlan, becoming involved in the battle for the throne.
Also hanging over the future is the thorny question of resistance. Through its actions on October 7th and before, Hamas made itself non-excludable from any discussion of the Palestinian national project going forward. Naturally, this extends to discussions of Gaza’s future. If it is difficult at the moment to imagine Hamas participating in the governing of Gaza, it is impossible to think that the party-movement can be marginalized from the process altogether. Doing so will risk civil war, at a time when the Palestinian people have already suffered so much.
The road ahead for the PA in Gaza looks threatening, to say the least. Without a major shift in Israeli policy, reestablishing a footprint in the Strip will most certainly be a drink from a poisoned chalice. Without the PA reinvigorating itself through seeking a democratic mandate, its hold on the West Bank may soon give way, too, along with the last remnants of its claim to national leadership.
[1] Since the national elections held in 2005 and 2006, Palestinians of the Occupied Territories had only been allowed vote in the municipal elections of 2012, 2017, 2019, and 2021. Each of these polls had been compromised by low turnout, fraud, and staged presentation of the results, the latter two interventions undertaken to make Fatah’s loss of popularity in the West Bank invisible.