US Secretary of State Antony Blinken shakes hands with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Palestinian Muqataa Presidential Compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah on November 5, 2023. © Jonathon Ernst, AFP
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is working hard to involve the Palestinian Authority in a resolution of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Despite having a significant security apparatus, a civil service and other trappings of a state, the weaknesses of the internationally recognized Palestinian leadership mean it may not be well positioned to play a meaningful role in Gaza’s future.
Antony Blinken reiterated Washington's opposition to Israel reoccupying the Gaza Strip once its war with Hamas ends at a G7 meeting in Japan on Wednesday. “Palestinian people must be central to governance in Gaza and the West Bank as well,” the US secretary of state told reporters, adding: "Gaza cannot continue to be run by Hamas.”
But Washington’s stated opposition to an Israeli occupation of Gaza begs a key question: Who can lead a post-Hamas Gaza Strip?
Blinken’s recent trip to see Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas may provide an insight into US thinking.
On November 5, Blinken passed through Israeli checkpoints on his way to Ramallah to meet with Abbas, his second trip to the region since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7 and his first to the Palestinian administrative capital.
Blinken reiterated that the United States would like to see the PA playing a central role in any post-Hamas Gaza.
But according to Palestinian media, Abbas told Blinken that the Gaza Strip is an integral part of the state of Palestine and that the PA could only have a role there if Israel ends its occupation of both Palestinian territories within the framework of a "comprehensive political solution that includes all of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip".
"There are no words to describe the genocidal war and destruction that our Palestinian people in Gaza are enduring at the hands of the Israeli war machinery, with no regard for international law,” Abbas added.
Established in 1994 as a consequence of the Oslo Accords, Yasser Arafat was elected PA president two years later. Today the PA formally exercises authority over only 18% of the West Bank, known as “Area A”. The remaining 82%, separated into Areas “B” and “C”, is controlled either jointly with or entirely by Israel.
Faced with the largest crisis in decades, Arafat’s successor appears more powerless than ever. The PA has been absent from the Gaza Strip since Hamas made gains in the 2006 legislative elections and its subsequent victory in the Battle of Gaza, which saw the Islamist group take complete control of the enclave in 2007.
Among Palestinians, the PA is deeply unpopular, seen as corrupt, repressive and in the service of Israel. But it has a semi-functioning political structure, a civilian administration, and security and intelligence services. It also receives financial support from the United States and the European Union as well as Saudi Arabia and other Arab League states.
There is limited data available about the Palestinian security apparatus in the West Bank but its forces are thought to number in the tens of thousands. These forces are divided among several agencies – including the Palestinian Civil Police, the National Security Forces and the internal Preventive Security Force, which includes the presidential guard – some of which are equipped with light armoured vehicles.
All of these forces loyal to Abbas are restricted to certain areas of the West Bank and have engaged in continuous security cooperation with the Israeli state.
"The cooperation between the Palestinian and Israeli [security] services is extensive and has withstood any challenge. Every time Mahmoud Abbas has wanted to suspend security cooperation, the Americans have opposed it and he has fallen in line,” says Jean-Paul Chagnollaud, director of the Paris-based Institute for Research and Studies on the Mediterranean and Middle East (Institut de recherche et d’études Méditerranée Moyen-Orient).
“It's an almost organic relationship, and for many Palestinians, security cooperation comes with no political return. That's why many accuse the Palestinian Authority of a sort of collaboration."
Chagnollaud says the idea that the PA would return to Gaza – with Israeli armoured vehicles – as part of an occupying army would be unacceptable to most Palestinians and politically untenable for Abbas and his government.
Frédéric Encel, a specialist in Middle Eastern politics at Sciences Po University in Paris, says the Palestinian Authority’s return to Gaza is the only viable solution.
“Israel has no legitimacy and no intention of reoccupying, let alone annexing, the enclave,” he says. “Egypt, which occupied it until 1967, has no interest in taking charge. And no state will send peacekeepers to control the Gaza Strip."
However, for a PA return to be possible, many preconditions need to be met.
"The first condition, which is not easy, is the demilitarisation of Hamas's main forces, meaning its missiles and especially any terrorists who could enter Israel. As long as this condition remains unmet, the Israelis will not stop the war,” says Encel.
“The second condition is massive support from the international community. And the third is that the current Israeli government [of hard-right Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu] collapses in the short term."
Encel has "guarded expectations” that these conditions can be established, particularly given Netanyahu’s plummeting approval ratings in the wake of Hamas’s attack in southern Israel. “This combination of circumstances is certainly difficult, but not impossible. All opinion polls conducted in Israel since the Hamas massacre on October 7 consistently give substantial advantage to a centrist and centre-left cohort who are not at all opposed to the two-state solution and the resumption of negotiations with the Palestinians."
The United States would like to have an “effective and revitalised Palestinian Authority take back governance and ultimately security responsibility in Gaza", as Blinken told a Senate hearing in late October.
But the Biden administration's hope faces clear obstacles, principally Hamas itself.
Osama Hamdan, one of Hamas’s Lebanon-based leaders, said on Monday that his people “will not allow the United States to impose its plans to create an administration that suits it and that suits the [Israeli] occupation, and our people will not accept a new Vichy government" – a reference to the collaborationist government that controlled northern France during World War II.
But the US project also faces opposition on the Israeli side.
Netanyahu once again rejected the possibility of a ceasefire in Gaza on Monday. He promised Israel would take "overall security responsibility" in the enclave after the war, prompting a round of denials from Washington, which made clear it would not support an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza.
But the US diplomatic initiative may have a long road ahead, since it would rely on an agreement between the Palestinian Authority and a future Israeli government – one run not by hawks and their far-right allies, but one willing to partner with the Palestinians to map out Gaza’s future.
This article is translated from the original in French.