The Palestinian Authority leader just made a bold move during wartime. It’s time for Israel to see him as part of the solution in Gaza. Trump should force the issue
In an unusually forceful address today, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did something very unusual for an Arab leader: He took a risk with bold statements and moral clarity. “Sons of dogs, hand over the hostages,” he said in a televised Wednesday speech, calling out Hamas for prolonging a war that has brought catastrophe to both sides and demanding that Hamas relinquish control of Gaza and surrender its weapons.
This was not some vague diplomatic gesture – and it was the furthest-reaching statement I may have ever heard from a major Arab leader directed at Hamas. Indeed, it is exactly what Israel has been desperately waiting to hear from some Arab leader – in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia or Qatar. And it matters. Because whether one sees Abbas as weak, corrupt, or merely out of time, there is no mistaking the significance of a wartime Palestinian president essentially taking Israel’s side on core issues — hostage release and Hamas disarmament.
From the Israeli government – a train wreck that’s reckless and feckless in equal measure – there was the sound, of course, of crickets. So Donald Trump, who has essentially given Israel carte blanche, might use it as the excuse for a pivot: Israel’s war is going nowhere, and if Trump really wants it over he needs to urgently talk to Netanyahu about Abbas.
To understand how significant this is, it’s worth recalling Abbas’s own previous caution.
Following Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel, Abbas was rightly criticized for responding too slowly and too vaguely. His early statements avoided naming Hamas directly, instead condemning the loss of civilian life on all sides. In that moment, he looked more like a figure of paralysis than leadership.
But now he’s placing the blame squarely on Hamas for the devastation now engulfing Gaza, is a political gamble. Abbas is not popular, and Hamas still commands real popular support, infuriatingly. To so forcefully reject Hamas’s leadership, in public, during war, is a welcome departure from past equivocations.
And it leaves Israel, and especially Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government, with no more excuses. For years, Netanyahu has treated Abbas and the PA – the autonomy government created in the 1990s when Israel’s governments were pragmatic – as irrelevant at best and malicious at worst.
Netanyahu systematically undermined the PA while strengthening Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip from Abbas in 2007. He eased cash transfers to Gaza from Qatar to maintain a split between the strip and the West Bank, and refused serious talks with Ramallah. It blew up in his face, resulting in a catastrophe for Israel, and still he refuses to heed the lessons. The result has been a grotesque Catch-22: Israel is at war with Hamas but has no plan for an alternative, because it stupidly rejects the only plausible alternative.
To be clear, the PA is far from perfect. Its school curriculum contains inflammatory content, its payments to families of terrorists must stop, and its indifference toward former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s generous 2008 peace offer remains a stain. Its governance has been marred by corruption and inertia. But none of that changes the underlying truth: the PA is the only entity with international legitimacy, institutional capacity, and a track record of cooperating with Israel on security. It has kept relative calm in the West Bank under extraordinarily difficult circumstances and remains the only available partner for any future political horizon.
Netanyahu’s refusal to even consider the PA as part of a post-Hamas solution in Gaza has little to do with policy logic. It is entirely about politics. His far-right coalition partners, including Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, would rather see Gaza flattened or re-occupied permanently than handed over to Abbas. Accepting a role for the PA — even conditionally — risks collapsing Netanyahu’s fragile coalition. So instead, he has dragged out the war.
The ceasefire agreement Israel signed in January and then shamefully walked away from included multiple phases meant to end the conflict and secure the release of all hostages. But when the second phase arrived, Netanyahu, under pressure from the far-right, stalled. Without a clearly defined endgame that includes a post-Hamas governing authority, no truce can hold. But Netanyahu cares only that prolonging the war buys him time: time to keep his coalition together, time to avoid the long-delayed Oct. 7 inquiry, and time to engineer ways to weaken Israel’s democratic institutions.
So in a political environment where almost everyone is avoiding clarity, Abbas just offered some. Israel — and the international community — must stop treating the PA like a ghost of peace processes past and start treating it as a building block of the future.
Hamas, of course, will continue to resist disarmament. But if a viable, pragmatic, internationally-backed alternative for Gaza is not presented — backed by serious Arab funding, Israeli and other assistance and international oversight —then Hamas will survive by default, since Israel cannot crush it fully while it holds 59 hostages. But if such an alternative is placed on the table, pressure on Hamas will start to build, and fast.
The Israeli public is yearning for an end to the war, and has mostly figured out that the government is dragging things out. It’s high time for Israel’s allies, particularly in Washington and the Arab capitals, to force an endgame in the form of a real plan: disarm Hamas, empower the PA, rebuild Gaza with Arab and Western support, and offer a political horizon Palestinians can believe in.
It’s the only path forward that offers anything other than perpetual bloodshed. It could put Israel and the Palestinians on the much-needed path to a semi-amicable divorce. Israel’s European allies, at least, are already revving up their engines to push for such an outcome.
