If Trump wants to preserve the ceasefire he must persuade Netanyahu to drop his objections to the PA – else the war will likely soon resume, at devastating cost
The riveting scenes this week of tens of thousands of Gazans trudging north to their bombed-out homes (see video) underscore the urgent need to create a viable governance plan for the seaside strip — and to ensure that the ceasefire framework now in place is seen through to the end. There has been too much pain and suffering on all sides for the war to resume.
But unless Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu begins to take seriously the possibility of returning the Palestinian Authority to power there, that is almost certainly what will happen. And the only person with the influence to make him consider that shift, incredible as it may be on so many levels, is US President Donald Trump.
Right now, the open-ended truce is effectively set up to leave Hamas in power in Gaza, an outcome that Netanyahu’s far-right government is unlikely to survive, due to its dependence on far-right factions that would far rather keep on fighting (and settling Gaza with Jews), even if it means sacrificing the remaining hostages and countless others too. They will be resigning around the same time as the remnants of the Hamas leadership parade around Gaza, looking like it has been hit by a nuclear bomb, declaring that by their very survival Israel has been defeated. Legions across the Arab world will buy this, jidahists everywhere will be emboldened, and terrorism will be served.
If there’s one thing Netanyahu has made clear, it’s that political survival is his number one priority. If it takes restarting the war to ensure it, he will. He’ll do pretty close to anything, basically. Unless Trump, who has unique political capital with Netanyahu, persuades him otherwise.
This is a tough one. The West Bank-based PA, which is in theory committed to peace with Israel and is the sole Palestinian political alternative to Hamas, has a bad reputation for good reasons. It is corrupt and unpopular. Its leader Mahmoud Abbas no longer has a popular mandate, having been elected 20 years ago. It pays stipends to families of terrorists in a pandering bid for popularity, and uses textbooks that promote not peace with but rather resistance to Israel.
But governance by the PA, which Hamas expelled from Gaza by force in 2007, is clearly a less-bad option than governance by Hamas. (It was only when Hamas — which is fanatically dedicated to Israel’s destruction — took over Gaza that Israel, and Egypt, clamped a blockade on the strip, both to prevent arms smuggling and in hopes of compelling Hamas to step down.)
A sticky wicket, this less-bad option — say, a broken leg versus a stroke. Humans are not wired to embrace a broken leg. We prefer to insist on options that can legitimately be considered “good.” But in the Middle East, least-bad is often the best that you can get.
If Netanyahu can be somehow overruled, both the Arab world and Western nations, recognizing the stakes, may be willing to invest significant resources in the PA’s rehabilitation. The building blocks would include:
- International oversight: A coalition of Arab states, Western powers, and international organizations would need to oversee transitioning Gaza to the PA’s hands to ensure transparency and accountability.
- Security guarantees: Israel cannot sign off on a return of Gaza to the PA without assurances that the strip will not become a launching pad for future attacks. These assurances could involve the installment of an international peacekeeping force, or robust security arrangements with neighboring countries. Gulf states may be willing to provide troops.
- Economic investment: Gaza’s economy must be rebuilt to provide jobs, infrastructure, and basic services. This will require significant investment from both regional and global actors.
- Reforms within the PA: The PA must commit to addressing its own shortcomings to gain the trust of Palestinians. This includes tackling corruption, reforming its education system, ending policies that incentivize violence, and political renewal. It will also require a plan — long overdue — to replace Abbas.
All of this would be transformational for the Palestinians, and would open up all kinds of new possibilities, compelling a shift in Israeli politics as well. It would also bring Trump a few steps closer to his coveted (and, again, mind-bendingly absurd) Nobel Peace Prize.
Why is Netanyahu so mulishly obstinate? Well, he has long seen value in having the Palestinian leadership stay divided. By splitting Palestinians between two governing bodies at odds with each other, he believed, Israel would better be able to push back on demands for a genuine process leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state. That’s why, however insane this seems, Netanyahu has acted to keep Hamas as the sole power in Gaza. Whenever called out for this, he would argue that Hamas is “deterred” and that fears of an explosion, which the military had expressed, are “exaggerated”; that’s exactly what he said days before the Oct. 7 invasion.
This idee fixe, this misguided and self-defeating strategy, is why Netanyahu has long refused to partake in any serious discussion of the day-after plan for Gaza. He knows that the discussion can realistically only be about the PA. That’s why government officials fill the airwaves even now with gaslighting claims that the PA is just as bad as Hamas. For extra points with Netanyahu, some of these professional genuflectors even argue that the PA is worse.
This, even though the PA has been fighting Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants in the town of Jenin for much of December, on behalf of Israel, drawing angry charges from Hamas of “betrayal.”
I assess that Netanyahu has few morals or principles, and is almost certainly not a real patriot. But he is power-mad, and he is logical and intelligent in his way; he is capable to azimuth corrections or a cutting of the losses. While he is notoriously difficult to convince, doing so is not impossible. Indeed, it is widely understood that even the current stage of the ceasefire is only happening due to Trump’s insistence, delivered before he even took office.
If Trump were determined, he’d have leverage, as Israel cannot resume the war without US backing — diplomatically at the United Nations, with arms shipments, in the global legal arena and beyond. Moreover, Trump has a huge amount of credit with Israelis, including the right-wing base of Netanyahu, from his first-term, when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Of course, even Netanyahu’s acceptance of a plan for the PA to take over Gaza would not necessarily persuade Hamas to go along. But for Hamas itself, ruling Gaza in its current state is not necessarily such a prize; the place has been largely destroyed, and many (and probably most) of those who have survived the war in Gaza understand that living under Hamas has been a nightmare, with repression, poverty, and constant fear of Israeli retaliation.
The most recent poll by the respected Palestinian Center for Policy and Research (from September) showed support for the Hamas Oct. 7 attack falling steadily. By then, civilians in Gaza opposed Hamas’ decision to attack Israel by 57%-39% (support for the attack is far higher in the West Bank, which did not suffer the consequences.) Only about a third of Palestinians said they’d vote for Hamas, and even those results are skewed by the absence of a strong PA candidate; the overwhelming majority of Palestinians are fed up with Abbas. Make no mistake: Despite claims to the contrary, they’re also fed up with Hamas. They have a weakness for fanatics, but also want hope.
The Arab world — especially engaged partners in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and even Qatar — can be expected to respond with enthusiasm if Israel were to drop its obstinacy and agree to a constructive process to replace Hamas. The region has levers to deploy in persuading Hamas to let go of its control — including, mainly, a total cutoff of funding. The entire package — every dollar and dinar of the tens of billions needed to rebuild Gaza — should be made conditional on Hamas stepping aside. This would have a real effect.
There would be promising new political horizons in Israel as well. Especially if the day-after plan for Gaza came together with the bonus of a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, the moderate Israeli opposition would likely agree to prop up the Netanyahu government for a while longer, allowing him to ditch the far-right parties that are causing so much damage. If Netanyahu wants to run again (elections are due by late 2026, and of course he does), he’d have the option of doing so on a legacy that was at least in some way positive. As things stand that’s not an option: History will judge Netanyahu as the most catastrophic leader the Jews have ever known (and there have been a few).
For this to happen, the Trump administration must step in right now, and start to engineer it. The clock is ticking.
