Published: 20 November 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Palestinian analysts say Hamas will need to be involved in any postwar negotiations.
The US and European Union envision a key role for the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas in running Gaza after Israel’s military campaign to destroy Hamas’s rule in the coastal strip winds down.
US President Joe Biden reiterated this goal emphatically over the weekend: “Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalised Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution,” he wrote in The Washington Post.
If this aim is to be realised, it would be the West Bank-based PA’s first return to the extremely battered area since it was ousted by Hamas in a brief civil war in 2007.
Some observers question whether the PA, deeply unpopular and subjected to increasingly eroded self-rule enclaves in the West Bank, is up to the job. But setting these doubts aside, the PA has its own conditions to take on the mission impossible of creating governance from the rubble, anger and despair of Israel’s bombardments.
Judging from pronouncements to date, it will only do so as part of a framework leading to an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is dead against.
So, unless Israel’s government changes or proves amenable to pressure, a PA return to Gaza could remain a fantasy.
The palestinian Authority is wary of being perceived as being a beneficiary of Israel’s military campaign.
