On Losing and Costly Bets

Within the framework of the traditional concept of imposing a transfer of power engineered by external parties, leading to the replacement of an undesirable party with another desirable party, many parties, Israeli, regional and international, are active in the process of searching for an acceptable alternative to replace the Hamas movement in ruling the Gaza Strip after the war ends, or more accurately, for the war to end. The positions of all these parties intersect, for reasons and goals that are not necessarily identical, in rejecting the return of the ruling system in the Gaza Strip to its previous state, i.e. for the Hamas movement’s control over it and its monopolization of it. Therefore, and in order to launch the “day after” phase of the war, which comes after the implementation of the stages of the temporary ceasefire, these parties are currently busy searching for possible alternatives to rule the Strip. While Netanyahu and his right-wing government insist on dismantling Hamas’s military and authoritarian capabilities, and refuse to replace it with the Palestinian Authority, regional parties find it an objective necessity to involve the Authority in governing the Strip to cover their contribution to the equation of governing and reconstructing the Strip during the transitional period. However, these parties stipulate that in order to move forward in this direction, the Palestinian Authority must rehabilitate itself by introducing deep structural changes to its structure and methods of operation. In the meantime, these parties propose either forming a Palestinian national consensus government or an autonomous committee to manage the Strip. It seems that the Trump administration will not oppose the regional approach if the appropriate conditions are met. So far, the Palestinian Authority does not agree to either proposal: It does not want to move towards a national consensus government, most likely because it may provide an outlet for Hamas to participate in governing, not only in the Gaza Strip, but also in the West Bank. It also does not want to agree to the formation of a committee to manage Gaza, even for a transitional period, because that may lead to the permanent separation of the Strip from the rest of the occupied territory, and end the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state. Moreover, the Authority refuses to comply with the external conditions imposed on it, considering that they are considered blatant interference in its internal affairs, and insists that it is carrying out a process of self-reform.

With the urgency of the matter, and the continued efforts of external parties to agree on the most appropriate equation for governing the Strip during the next phase, an important question arises: What is the Authority counting on if it continues to refuse to deal with external demands? Will it not be excluded, or circumvented, in the upcoming arrangements?

Contrary to all opposing estimates, it seems that the Authority is betting on the impossibility of being bypassed in this matter, and believes that its adherence to its position will ultimately lead to others fulfilling its demand to extend its rule over the Strip. In this regard, it relies on basic assumptions. First, there is an external consensus that the rule in Gaza will not return to what it was before the outbreak of the war. Second, any future arrangement for governing Gaza cannot succeed without the presence of a Palestinian party that is, for various reasons, at the center of the scene. Third, there is no current or future acceptance of Hamas regionally or internationally, which means that, with the results of the war, it will be and remain outside the future political scene. Fourth, the Palestinian Authority is the original legitimate authority to govern the occupied territory according to the agreements signed with Israel, and reinforced by the testimony of regional and international parties. The conclusion based on these assumptions may be what dispels the Authority’s concerns and gives it confidence that there is no alternative to it to be the appropriate Palestinian party to fill the governance vacuum in Gaza. If this conclusion is reinforced by sending a direct message expressing full and open readiness to deal positively with whatever proposal the Trump administration will come up with to resolve the conflict, the Authority will be able to feel comfortable and neglect the need to quickly respond to the external demands pouring in on it, especially from Arab parties, and rely on the fact that its presence in the upcoming political scene in Gaza is a foregone conclusion. Therefore, the Authority has nothing to do but stand firm and be patient, as there is no alternative to it, and the ball will eventually fall into its court.

The Palestinian Authority can rely on this conclusion, as it is the most likely to be drawn from the set of assumptions mentioned above, in order to cling to its position of rejecting the two proposed proposals for the future governance arrangement in Gaza. But can it be asserted that this is the only set of assumptions that can be deduced from the facts surrounding the current Palestinian situation, and that there is no other set of assumptions that could lead to a different conclusion? For the purposes of analysis, another set of assumptions can be cited that should be examined, as they are no less reliable than those included in the first set, and could produce a different result from the one on which the Authority bases its position. First, if the Trump administration adopts the “two-state solution,” it will most likely be in a version consisting of stages, the first stages of which are limited to a promise to establish a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip. Second, Israel’s continued rejection of the extension of the Palestinian Authority’s authority to Gaza could support this Trumpian version of the “two-state solution,” which means the importance of having a different governing authority in the Strip than the one in the West Bank. Third, Israel’s use of massively destructive military force has not been able to end Hamas’s control of Gaza, and conventional wisdom says that excluding the force on the ground is much more difficult than simply expressing a desire for this to happen. It is true that Hamas cannot return to governing Gaza as it was before all the changes brought about by the war, but it is also true that its existence as a force that still controls the situation in the Strip, and its possession of the “disruptive power” of any ruling equation that attempts to exclude it, makes the possibility of excluding it from the arrangements for the future governance of Gaza a nearly impossible task. Fourth, political movements constantly aim to maintain the continuity of their existence, and therefore are always ready to adapt their goals and adjust their situations to the changes that befall them. Being targeted by a devastating war that negatively affected not only its structure and military capabilities, but also its supporting forces in the entire region, Hamas may pick up on the requirements of the next stage and carry out the required transformation towards focusing on the political sphere, which could open the horizon for it to open the doors of Western capitals that have been closed to it until now, and qualify it from the point of view of these capitals, after a transitional period, to participate in the next authority in the Strip, if not to return to take it over. This may seem like an impossibility, but one must not only consider what is currently happening in the region, specifically in Syria, but also what happened in the past in terms of transformation that led to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s recognition of Israel and the signing of the Oslo Accords with it. Often, ambiguous wars impose results, meaning that one party does not win overwhelmingly over the other, a “moment” in which the interests of parties that have fought but have not yet reconciled converge, which opens the door for them to the possibility of making transformations that lead to approaches that end in reaching agreements. In the current state of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, divergent interests may converge on encouraging Hamas to quickly transition to the political track and integrate it in some way into the ruling authority in Gaza, especially if the Strip will be the center of the future Palestinian state. Although it may seem out of the context of the current expectations, the production of a “renewed Hamas” may be faster than the Authority’s ability to present its renewed version, which could limit the process of transferring power in the Strip to changing the nature of Hamas, not replacing it with another. In this case, the Authority’s bet on the inevitability of the conclusion drawn from the first set of assumptions will not only be wrong, but will also lead to losing results.

In this context, it is worth noting that there are no permanent constants or continuous guarantees in politics, because its factors are constantly moving and changing. Today's enemy can easily become tomorrow's friend, and vice versa. Therefore, it is not permissible to build positions and adopt policies based on considering the positions and orientations of others as fixed and unchanging axioms. Rather, attention must be paid, and care must be taken to take into account that political positions and orientations are not beliefs that cannot be changed, but rather they change with the direction of the winds of constantly shifting interests. Therefore, there are no permanent enemies or permanent friends. What can be concluded from the previous review is that relying on a set of "appropriate" assumptions in building a political position may not be useful in the face of the possibility of achieving another set of opposing assumptions. It is also worth noting that if each party to the internal Palestinian conflict goes towards achieving its own interests, it will lead to disastrous results for the Palestinian national cause. The best way to overcome the difficult phase ahead of us is the shortest, and it can be summed up by achieving the minimum level of immunity necessary to support the Palestinian position, by reaching the necessary internal understandings that allow for the formation of a national salvation government whose mission revolves around paralyzing the Palestinian situation from the state of internal fragmentation and external targeting it is facing. This is the minimum required, and if we fail to achieve it, then there is no one to blame but ourselves.