Gaza’s Broken Politics | The New Yorker
The fragile political system that existed in Gaza collapsed, as did the institutions that once structured public life. Hamas, weakened militarily and decapitated by the assassinations of its leaders, faces isolation abroad and a reduced mandate at home. The Palestinian Authority, long discredited in the West Bank, is absent in Gaza. Left factions survive as symbols rather than as real organizations. Independent political figures are dispersed or silenced. After two years of war, Gaza has no functioning political body with the authority or legitimacy to shape what comes next.
President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza is being touted as the answer. Announced by Trump at the White House in late September, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side, the twenty-point framework promises to end the war, restart aid and establish a transitional authority to rule Gaza. It creates a “Temporary International Stabilization Force,” an apolitical technocratic Palestinian committee under the aegis of a new international “Peace Council” chaired by Trump himself. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would help oversee the transition. The body will aim to manage the redevelopment of Gaza through modern and “effective” governance, in order to attract foreign investment. Clauses of the plan include an exchange of hostages for prisoners and detainees, an amnesty for Hamas members who disarm, safe passage for members who choose to leave, an increase in humanitarian deliveries, and a phased withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces linked to “security criteria” – including Hamas’s demilitarization and border control provisions, all verified by observers independent. The document also notes that civilians will be allowed to leave but that “no one will be forced to leave Gaza,” a change from Netanyahu’s earlier comments on “voluntary” emigration and Trump’s “Riviera” proposal “to rebuild and revitalize Gaza.”
Remove the frame and the design is clear. Gaza must be managed from the outside, without a locally elected government. The Palestinian Authority is being asked to undertake reforms – anti-corruption and budget transparency measures, increased judicial independence, a path to elections – before it can even be considered for a role in Gaza governance. Hamas is excluded from political life by decree. The central questions – borders, sovereignty, refugees – are postponed. In this architecture, Gaza becomes a security-oriented regime, where aid, reconstruction and “transition” are subordinate to Israeli security measures, under the supervision of the United States and its partners. The Palestinians are offered an administration without authority. The profession is dressed in managerial language. The danger is that this “temporary” system becomes permanent, supported by donors, observers and memoranda.
As of this writing, the first phase of the deal has progressed. Hamas released the remaining hostages and Israel released some two thousand Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Humanitarian convoys are increasing and Israel has declared that it has partially withdrawn its troops from certain parts of Gaza. What remains unclear are the enforcement mechanisms and deadlines. Who commands the proposed “stabilization force” and under what rules of engagement will it operate? Where will IDF units be positioned during the transition? What binding guarantees – if any – protect Palestinians against unlimited military return? Negotiators say these issues are still being debated, paragraph by paragraph. A parallel diplomatic channel is also opening. On Monday, Trump co-chaired the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, a meeting in Egypt focused on post-war governance, with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, was present. Benjamin Netanyahu was not. The meeting aimed to rally broader support for the plan and finalize its operational details.
Hamas had little room for maneuver during the last round of negotiations. Many Arab governments approved Trump’s Gaza plan before the organization even received an official copy, locking the group into a defensive posture. Netanyahu, meanwhile, used the opportunity to reaffirm his rejection of a Palestinian state.
However, to end the war, Hamas still had to accept an agreement – perhaps ugly, certainly imperfect, but which would put an end to the massacres. During the war, there were times when an agreement could have opened the way to tough negotiations that could have brought real gains to Gazans. Instead, Gaza’s leaders have sunk into denial and delay, without any coherent strategy. Each rejection narrowed the horizon until Gazans now faced a comprehensive package imposed from the outside. This is the price of political failure. Leaders treated the negotiations as a stage for factional gain rather than a matter of national survival. Today, the choices are brutally narrow: a partial occupation under conditions that the population can still contest, or a broader occupation which is accompanied by more extensive displacements. Palestinian negotiators owed the people some kind of plan. It was necessary to deliver aid and save lives. Anyone who played with this blood for a symbolic triumph would have had to pay the price.
The plan now opens a narrow window of opportunity – if the Palestinians can turn its vague text into leverage. On paper, he promises a withdrawal from the IDF and outlines a “credible path” towards self-determination and, ultimately, towards the creation of a state. Much of the mechanism is still unspecified, but that uncertainty may translate into demands: a public U.S. commitment to statehood, a dated and enforceable timetable for full withdrawal, a U.N. Security Council resolution that toughens safeguards with sanctions for violations, and third-party monitoring. Whatever form the final agreement takes, it will serve as a hinge towards a new political order in Gaza. Now that the bombings have stopped, they have left a political vacuum in the territory. The question is: what will rush to fill it?
There has never been any real internal consideration of Palestinian political failures. The Oslo Accords – negotiated by the United States and signed in the mid-1990s, after secret negotiations – were presented as the last great compromise. In practice, they created the Palestinian Authority as the interim administrator of Palestine and postponed major issues of the conflict until a later date that has not yet arrived. Palestinians moved from leading a liberation project to managing enclaves, while Israel retained control of their land, their movement, and the map itself. Before Oslo, the first Intifada had generated momentum in favor of international recognition of the Palestinian state. Oslo broke this momentum. It was supposed to be a bridge to peace, but it became the final blow. It has provided no means of implementing UN Resolution 194 on the right of return for exiled or displaced Palestinians, and has produced no method of guaranteeing equality for some two million Palestinians inside Israel, whose struggle has been seen as an internal matter. Every square inch of Palestinian land remains under Israeli military control in one form or another. The labels have changed, but not the structure.
Hamas won elections in Gaza in 2006. What followed were boycotts and sanctions from the international community; a power struggle with Fatah, the party that controls the Palestinian Authority, which degenerated into a street war in 2007; and, ultimately, a geographical divorce. Hamas remained in power in Gaza and the PA was confined to the West Bank. Israel then strengthened the land, sea and air blockade of the territory, making normal governance impossible and transforming every budget line into a permit request. Hamas never authorized new elections. Over successive wars and years of siege, Hamas’ authority has hardened into a sort of bunker state: a politburo exiled abroad, a Gaza command increasingly dominated by the organization’s military wing, and a population living in conditions of limited movement, rationed goods and a permanent state of emergency.
