It seems unlikely there will be any answer to the conundrum
of who rules Gaza or speaks for the Palestinians for at least several years.
The prospect is indeed real that Israel will maintain total security control
for an indefinite period, just as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already
declared.
According to David Ottaway of Wilson Center, there is
uncertainty surrounding the resumption of peace talks, with elections in
Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the United States potentially impacting
the situation. The question of who rules Gaza and who speaks for the
Palestinians may remain unanswered for several years.
Seldom
has the Middle East produced such an unforeseen event as was witnessed on
October 7 when Hamas launched its bloody incursion into southern Israel. It had
reportedly picked the date quite deliberately in memory of another similar
happening fifty years ago — Egypt’s initially successful offensive against
occupying Israeli troops in the Sinai Desert that marked the start of the last
general Arab-Israeli clash, the Yom Kippur War.
President Biden and his foreign policy team have been
pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce his vision. The
Israeli leader has so far sidestepped the issue other than to make clear his
still-blurry ideas are quite different from those of Biden.
President Biden put forth in a Washington Post opinion piece on
November 18 what he called his basic principles for any future
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks based on a two-state solution, which, Biden
proclaimed is the only way to ensure the long-term security of both the Israeli
and Palestinian people.
He also rejected Israeli reoccupation of Gaza or
expulsion of Palestinians from there. He called for a revitalized Palestinian
Authority (PA) to rule over both Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu,
on the other hand, has declared Israel will remain in control of Gaza for an
indefinite period and said any role for the PA is not possible. He has
never supported a two-state solution, and pushed instead for the expansion of
Israeli settlements on the West Bank.
Neither leader has put forth a plan for how peace talks
might be relaunched. There’s a good reason. There are far too many unknowns,
both known and unknown, in the famous geopolitical lexicon of former US
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Most
analysts feel safe in predicting Israel will eventually prevail over Hamas
militarily if outside pressure does not force it to halt its invasion
beforehand.
One major unknown is whether military defeat for Hamas will
translate into a political one, as both Israeli and the Biden administration
dearly hope. Both have labeled Hamas a terrorist organization, in the US case,
as far back as 1997.
However,
Hamas’ standing on the Arab street, if not with Arab governments is certain to
reach new heights as a result of the first even partial Arab victory over the
Israeli military since 1973.
Israeli and the US efforts to exclude Hamas from the
political landscape of Gaza and the West Bank thus risk keeping Palestinians as
sharply divided as ever, a divide that has helped sabotage all past
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations because of Hamas’ dedication to aborting the
peace process and destroying the Israeli state.
Three
critical elections
The fate of Netanyahu is as much a known unknown as
that of Hamas. He and his right-wing government are being widely blamed at home
for the massive security failure that allowed Hamas to penetrate southern
Israel unopposed, massacre 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers, and take 240
hostages back to Gaza.
Israeli parties have agreed to postpone the debate over who
was responsible until after the war. But another round of Israeli elections
seems to be in the offing, making it the sixth since 2019 in a closely divided
electorate between secularist and religiously ultra-conservative parties.
New elections will almost certainly have to be held as well
to revitalize the equally discredited PA leadership that has governed the West
Bank in partnership with Israeli security forces since shortly after the 1993
Oslo Accords. Its president, Mahmoud Abbas, 88, was first elected for a
four-year term in 2005, but he is still in office 18 years later, though widely
unpopular among Palestinians.
Hamas
won a majority of seats, if not votes, in the Palestinian Legislative Council
elections the following year, the results of which neither Israel nor the US
were willing to accept. So Abbas’ Fatah Party has ruled over the West Bank ever
since, although Hamas seized control of Gaza by force in 2007.
Yet another set of elections are certain to be held next
November in the United States. The results are yet another of Rumsfeld’s known
unknowns. Should the likely Republican candidate, former President Donald
Trump, emerge victorious, he is unlikely to press whoever leads Israel to push
for a two-state solution or object to Israeli indefinite control of Gaza. He
was the first US president to recognize hotly contested Jerusalem as Israel’s
capital.
Thus, there are three elections whose outcomes must be known
before a political solution to Gaza’s fate, or that of the Palestinians, is
likely to be seriously addressed.
How peace negotiations might be revived after fifteen years
in limbo is anyone’s guess. One proposal is to hold a second international
conference similar to the one in 1991 in Madrid, Spain that opened the way for
the Oslo Accords that led to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. It
was co-sponsored by the US and the Soviet Union, which is obviously unlikely
this time after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Could the US host yet another Camp David summit on its own?
The Biden administration, which has backed Israel’s war to crush Hamas to the
hilt, will likely be viewed as too biased to serve as a host by the
international community. In addition, Biden will have his hands full with an
uphill re-election campaign.
This leaves the United Nations as one possibility. Another
is a neutral Scandinavian country such as Norway, which hosted secret
Israeli-Palestinian talks that produced the Oslo Accords.
The
question of Hamas’ participation looms as a major stumbling block, if indeed;
it shows any interest in joining a revived peace process. At the 1991 Madrid
conference before the PA existed, the thorny question of Palestinian
representation was resolved by including officials from the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) in the Jordanian delegation.
It is doubtful that either Israel or the US would agree to a
similar formula to allow Hamas even an indirect presence at the peace table, at
least not until it recognized the existence of Israel and renounced terrorism.
This is what PLO Chairman Yaser Arafat was obliged to do before US and Israeli
leaders would allow him into the peace process.
Biden is proposing that the PA replace Hamas in Gaza and
thus become the voice for all Palestinians. But PA President Abbas
bluntly told US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at their meeting
in the West Bank city of Ramallah on November 5 that this would only be
possible within the framework of a comprehensive political solution.
