The masked Qassam Brigades fighter adjusts his AK-47 assault rifle earlier than he slides right into a chair within the Gaza workplace of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.
“Hello, Condoleezza Rice. You have to deal with me now. There is no Abu Mazen [Abbas] any more,” the fighter jokes in an imaginary telephone name to the then-United States secretary of state. Round him, fighters with the armed wing of Hamas snap images of themselves.
The 12 months is 2007, and Hamas has simply fought and overwhelmed a faction of Abbas’s Fatah party for management of Gaza.
Fatah misplaced the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections and was sad with the consequence, attacking the winners, Hamas.
This spelled not solely a political fracturing but in addition a geographical one. The Palestinians cut up into the occupied West Financial institution, partially ruled by the PA, and Gaza below Hamas.
The state of affairs had remained frozen since then – till now when Palestinians’ political future appears extra unsure than ever.
Israel’s said goal for its current bombardment and ground offensive within the Gaza Strip in retaliation for Hamas’s shock assaults on October 7 in southern Israel has been to take out the armed group.
If Israel is profitable, the return of the PA to the beleaguered enclave is being touted as a risk. However will it return? And may it?
Gaza below Hamas
Below Hamas, the Gaza Strip has been besieged, impoverished by Israel and assaulted on 5 events previously 17 years.
On this newest assault, the Palestinian political future appears to be like very precarious.
Israel stated it goals to destroy Hamas fully and that’s the reason it launched an all-out assault on the Gaza Strip on October 7.
Israeli raids, settler violence and settlement expansions in the occupied West Bank are among the many causes Hamas launched its assaults on October 7, Izzat al-Rasheq, a member of Hamas’s Political Bureau, stated.
“We warned the Israelis and the international community that this relentless pressure will result in an explosion, but they did not listen,” al-Rasheq advised Al Jazeera, including that incursions on Al-Aqsa Mosque, hundreds of unjustly detained Palestinians, and the blockade on Gaza all performed a task as properly.
In a situation wherein Israel succeeds in eliminating Hamas by some means, it has been urged by the US that the PA take over the beleaguered enclave.
To this point, Israel doesn’t agree, however what do the Palestinians consider the PA? Can it return to Gaza? And may Hamas be destroyed?
Collusion vs confrontation
The crux of the divide between the 2 most dominant gamers in Palestinian politics is their differing approaches to the Palestinian trigger.
Whereas Fatah and the PA, whose present management is one and the identical, concentrate on cooperation with Israel, Hamas’s technique is to confront Israel militarily, stated Aboud Hamayel, a lecturer at Birzeit College within the West Financial institution.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Hamayel stated, mimicking what he stated is the PA’s defeatist tone.
The PA’s assist base within the West Financial institution relies on a transactional relationship with Israel, the analyst stated. Nonetheless, some Fatah factions do participate within the armed battle within the West Financial institution, the place the motion is extra vocal and numerous than the PA, he added.
Fatah nonetheless exists in Gaza, the place it’s now within the opposition. Its supporters there are cut up between loyalty to Abbas and former Fatah chief Mohammed Dahlan, who has been in exile within the United Arab Emirates for 10 years, Hamayel stated.
The PA has worldwide recognition and receives funding and tax revenues. In flip, it manages safety in its territory, theoretically releasing Israel from coping with day-to-day Palestinian life, Hamayel stated, besides when Israel conducts raids and arrests resisting Palestinians.
The post-war query
Fatah does need to obtain unity with Hamas, based on the group’s spokesperson, regardless that a number of makes an attempt over time to try this have failed.
“Through national dialogue, we will reach a consensus on how to govern ourselves, how to lead our cause and present it to the world,” Jamal Nazzal, a Fatah spokesperson and a member of its parliamentary physique, the Revolutionary Council, advised Al Jazeera.
A unified Palestinian entity is the said US objective, particularly as discussions come up on the destiny of Gaza after the warfare, based on Kenneth Katzman, a senior fellow on the New York-based Soufan Middle.
This entity would management each Gaza and the West Financial institution, settle for Israel’s existence and resume Oslo negotiations with Israel, he stated, referring to agreements between Israel and the umbrella Palestine Liberation Group (PLO) within the Nineteen Nineties.
“I think the intent is to get back to where the talks left off,” Katzman advised Al Jazeera, including that they might be the precursor to Washington mediating a two-state resolution.
Rafe Jabari, a French-Palestinian political science analyst, agreed {that a} two-state resolution ought to be pursued after the warfare’s finish however stated a brand new settlement ought to be drawn as much as substitute the Oslo Accords as a result of Palestinians have been coerced to make too many concessions in that course of.
Israel shall be unwilling to relinquish management of the lands it occupies, he added, and it will be unable to take out Hamas because it says it needs to. “Hamas is a part of Palestinian society. They can’t eliminate Hamas,” he advised Al Jazeera, including that they’re not only a political wing.
Hamas agrees. “They cannot rearrange the Palestinian house to suit themselves. Hamas will remain, and what comes after Hamas will also be Hamas,” stated al-Rasheq, including that Palestinians wouldn’t settle for “the US or Israel or anyone else” telling them who ought to govern them.
“The Palestinian people will never accept an entity that enters Gaza on an Israeli tank,” he stated.
As a result of it’s unimaginable to eradicate Hamas, Jabari stated, the group should be concerned in any post-war negotiations.
“All actors should be involved in the resolution of the conflict,” he stated, citing previous negotiations wherein that occurred even when one social gathering was considered as a “terrorist group”, corresponding to throughout the French-Algeria peace settlement in 1962 or, extra not too long ago, in talks between the US and the Taliban.
A transition interval involving a world peacekeeping pressure in Gaza was talked about by each Katzman and Jabari as a attainable first step earlier than negotiations.
However, Jabari added, these forces have been abject failures in current conflicts.
The PA’s waning reputation
The PA’s authorities within the West Financial institution is seen by many Palestinians as collusion with Israel.
A lot of the frustration is with Abbas, who’s seen as weak for not managing to advance any peace processes in his practically 20 years in energy, Jabari stated. He’s additionally seen as not having advocated sufficient in opposition to Israel’s practices from settlement expansions to harassment of Palestinians, he added.
PA security practices within the occupied West Financial institution have additionally been criticised as heavy-handed however, Nazzal stated, the PA must “restore order and protect the law”.
“Movements of the Palestinian security forces or officials or normal individuals sometimes require security coordination with the occupying power,” he stated, including that the whole lot the PA administers within the occupied West Financial institution “has to be coordinated with Israel”.
Nazzal distanced Fatah from the PA, nevertheless, saying it’s “a liberation movement that doesn’t have any sort of contact with Israel”.
Regardless of frustration with the PA, Katzman stated Palestinians who’re bearing the brunt of the Israeli aggression could also be extra disgruntled with Hamas’s actions.
“Much of the Gaza population now realises that Hamas is going to keep dragging them into a war with Israel, and they don’t want that,” he stated. “So I think they’re willing to overlook the Palestinian Authority’s faults. I think that’s true for Palestinians in the West Bank as well. They don’t want … forever war with Israel.”
Nonetheless, al-Reshaq stated: “Palestinians everywhere support Hamas more. They see Hamas is working to resist the occupation,” he stated, including that world assist for Palestinians has surged previously few weeks.
‘The beginning of the end’?
With combined assist for the PA amongst Palestinians, what’s the probability of it returning to control Gaza?
Nazzal identified that, regardless of Hamas rule, the PA already runs sure parts of life in Gaza, such because the well being and schooling ministries and the banking system.
In the meantime, the Fatah motion, he added, is against a future wherein Hamas is taken out.“We do not agree on the Israeli military objectives in Gaza, nor can we predict what will be the outcome of this terrible assault that Israel has launched against our people,” Nazzal stated.
What Fatah is aware of, nevertheless, is that Palestinians ought to resolve who governs them by legislative elections that safe a path for the two-state resolution, he added.
“The only thing that nobody has tried is for the Palestinians to live freely in an independent state of their own,” Nazzal stated. “Until that happens, we will keep going from one cycle of violence to the next.”
The US remains to be ramping up its push for the return of the PA in Gaza, although, and the explanations President Joe Biden’s administration has for this technique is multifold, Hamayel stated.
First is to purchase time for Israel to complete its navy operations by distracting the worldwide neighborhood, he stated.
It needs to permit its ally to retaliate for Hamas’s October 7 assaults whereas coaxing it to consider what’s subsequent, the analyst stated.
The White Home additionally needs to maintain its regional allies on facet, particularly as Arab states battle with their residents not feeling that they’re doing sufficient to finish the Israeli assault, based on Hamayel.
Nonetheless, he concluded, the PA takeover would occur provided that Hamas loses, an end result nonetheless too early to foretell.
Hamas, in the meantime, sees weak spot in Israel’s seemingly directionless assault on civilians.
“The size of the defeat [on October 7] made [Israel] lose its mind and strike out in any direction with no thought,” al-Reshaq stated. “It has failed. It failed on the battlefield on October 7 when faced with the Qassam Brigades, and it is failing now because it is unable to achieve any real goals in Gaza.”
Within the occasion that Israel can’t take Hamas out, the fissure between the 2 Palestinian political teams will deepen, Hamayel predicted.
Hamas would stay standing, a valiant hero for Palestinians for combating Israel, and the PA would seem weak, shamed for cooperating with Israel over time, he stated.
That will kick off a vicious cycle of a seemingly weak PA inspiring extra settler exercise within the West Financial institution, which might erode the group’s management of the territory increasingly, he stated.
“This could be the beginning of the end of the PA,” Hamayel stated.
