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Since the announcement of a ceasefire in Gaza, much of the world has focused on the immediate impacts of destruction in the strip. The discussion has been focused on which bodies will administer aid, how reconstruction might start, the role of international actors and the terms of the fragile ceasefire.
These are all important issues. But something is missing from this discussion, and from the ceasefire agreement: the Palestinians themselves and their political agency. The following questions also need to be asked. What will happen to the Palestinian national movement in the aftermath of this war? Who will speak for the Palestinians, and negotiate the terms of possible agreements with Israel moving forward? Are the previous frameworks for negotiation even relevant any more?
Palestinians are, of course, relieved that the ceasefire has finally been announced, after 15 months of unimaginable devastation that many experts characterise as genocide. The war surpassed, in scale, the 1948 Nakba, in which approximately 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes.
There are serious concerns about the ceasefire terms. As one scholar notes, the agreement may in fact be a “strangle contract”, designed to pause fighting while changing realities on the ground. The fact that it has coincided with Israel launching Operation Iron Wall, the crackdown on the West Bank, is particularly alarming. And a second Trump administration staffed with the likes of Mike Huckabee, and willing to back full Israeli domination in the West Bank, only confirms Palestinian fears. The agreement does not cover the question of Palestinian governance – former US secretary of state Antony Blinken suggested that the Palestinian Authority, supported by international partners, could oversee the territory, but this is yet to be negotiated.
Nonetheless, many Palestinians view the current moment as, on some level, a victory. The people of Gaza were displaced en masse but were not expelled. Palestinians insisted on, and won, their demand to begin returning to whatever remains of their homes in the north of the strip. Moreover, Palestinian identity and nationalism are alive and well, with the movement in support of Palestinian rights globally expanding in scope and recognition over the past year of war. These are all noteworthy developments.
This takes us to the main crisis plaguing internal Palestinian politics today: a leadership that is seen as absent or illegitimate.
Palestinian leadership currently takes two forms. There is the political bureau of Hamas, which has an acting head negotiating in Qatar, and the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Neither has risen to the occasion; it remains unclear how either intends to pursue Palestinian national claims beyond this moment. Indeed, the fact that there are two actors claiming to represent the people is the clearest sign of the political stagnation Palestinians face.
Since the early 1990s, a Fatah-run Palestinian Authority, backed by the US and in coordination with Israel, has been allowed to function in parts of the West Bank. It has claimed legitimacy on the international stage, all the while refusing to hold elections or be accountable to Palestinians in any meaningful way. Fatah has sidelined alternative leadership candidates and opposition to the sitting president, Mahmoud Abbas. Importantly, the PA has been unable to protect Palestinians from increased settler violence or Israeli army raids. The PA shockingly assisted Israel in security coordination and crackdowns during the Gaza war. But as long as it carried on its security coordination role with Israel, no one in the international community cared that the PA had long lost legitimacy among its own people.
Alternatively, Hamas came to control Gaza after winning the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. It seized control of the Gaza Strip after those election results were rejected by the US and its allies. Since then, no one in the international community has found it urgent to address the fact that the Palestinian territories have been governed separately, or that people in Gaza have had to endure a severe blockade since Hamas took control of the strip. Until 7 October 2023, policymakers assumed that the “violent equilibrium” between Hamas and Israel would hold, and that this status quo of split governance, unaccountable leadership and no political solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would remain sustainable.
The past 15 months shows this state of affairs was never sustainable. We know that the Palestinian people insist that they should govern themselves and run their own affairs, including in the immediate term in Gaza. Perhaps sensing this public feeling, the two main Palestinian factions did, in fact, agree on the development of a technical committee for service provision in the Gaza Strip after the ceasefire – though it remains to be seen whether this body will be incorporated into the agreement.
So, what next? A majority of Palestinians reject the idea of the Palestinian Authority governing Gaza alone. The PA is seen as the institution that has presided over the deterioration of living conditions and the national movement. It is true that PA institutions provide some basic services, but accusing Abbas and the PA of betraying the Palestinian cause is a common theme in Palestinian discourse.
It is important to recognise the fact that, despite international opprobrium and its designation by the US and its allies as a terrorist organisation, Hamas has gained some legitimacy among Palestinians since the war began. Public opinion polls show more support for the organisation today than prior to the 7 October attacks, likely to be a “rally around the flag” effect of the war – 27% of Palestinians polled in September 2023 believed that Hamas is the “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people”, compared to 43% in September 2024. However, a full third of Palestinians in the latest poll do not believe either party deserves to lead. The majority of Palestinians also want both parties to enter into a unity government as their first preference for political change after the war. The idea of returning to split governance, with one organisation running Gaza and the other the West Bank, is outrageous to many who prioritise the unity of Palestine.
Finally, it is important to observe that very few Palestinians approve of outside intervention. This flies in the face of plans floated by the United Arab emirates, for instance, in which Arab forces allied with Israel “secure” Gaza after ceasefire.
There are no easy answers here. But what is clear is that Palestinians are fed up with the current status quo, and any attempt to simply repackage the current leadership and governance structures will lack legitimacy in their eyes.
It is astonishing that more than a year of war has not made clear a simple fact: a resolution to this conflict cannot be found without the Palestinian people. Furthermore, expecting the Palestinians to face existential threats to their lives and identity – through starvation, bombardment, repression, settler attacks and more – without any reaction is to believe in a fantasy. If political and policy solutions do not exist, armed action will inevitably increase. This is indeed what we have seen in the West Bank, and as Blinken claimed earlier this month: “Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost.” It should be deeply disturbing to everyone that the conditions that preceded this war have only worsened.
For any solutions to be sustainable, Palestinian society must be on board. This means allowing Palestinians to choose their leadership, so that whoever negotiates on their behalf actually has legitimacy in their eyes. It also means allowing Palestinians the space to negotiate internally, without reprisals and assassinations, in order to come up with ways to move beyond the Fatah-Hamas binary. And it means the international community should take bold and creative solutions seriously, rather than ignore any manifestations of Palestinian agency.
Nothing less will resolve the immediate crisis of suffering and devastation in Gaza – and nothing less will achieve a long-term peace.
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Dana El Kurd is a researcher of Palestinian and Arab politics and a senior nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington. She is the author of Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine
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