Any governance structure that does not take into account the Palestinian national aspirations is doomed to failure.
Last week, just as Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip intensified, United States presidential envoy Steven Witkoff announced on social media that the “ceasefire” is entering its second stage. In the following days, the administration of US President Donald Trump unveiled the makeup of a foreign executive committee and a peace board that will oversee the provisional administration of Gaza composed of Palestinian technocrats.
This setup reflects the wishes of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that neither Hamas nor the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) would be involved in Gaza’s future. Although the latter is mentioned in Trump’s “peace plan”, it supposedly first has to carry out a set of unnamed reforms to have any role in Gaza.
What this means in reality is that Fatah, too, can easily be blocked from returning to govern the Gaza Strip with the excuse that these vague reforms have not been carried out.
The problem with the present setup and Israel’s insistence on “no Hamas, no Fatah” is that they reflect a profound ignorance of the fabric of Palestinian society, its politics and history. The idea that a Palestinian political entity can be created by outside forces and fully integrated into the occupation to manage Palestinian affairs is unrealistic.
Over the past 77 years, various Palestinian national movements and revolutions have emerged, united by a single common denominator: the rejection of Israeli colonial presence. No Palestinian collective, regardless of its form, has ever publicly agreed to integration into the Israeli colonial project.
Within the framework of resistance, the collective Palestinian consciousness was forged, political parties were born, and the trajectory of public opinion was defined.
While the tools and methods adopted by different segments of Palestinian society and political factions may vary, they all share a common commitment to the Palestinian cause and to Palestinian rights.
Fatah and Hamas remain the two most prominent political components of Palestinian society. Fatah emerged as the dominant national liberation movement before its political trajectory shifted following the Oslo Accords, while Hamas has maintained its commitment to resistance since its inception. Between these two currents and other smaller factions, the Palestinian social fabric naturally rejects any leadership or entity that operates outside the framework of national independence or accepts foreign guardianship.
Israel has decided to ignore this deeply rooted reality, attempting to bypass it by imposing artificial facts on the ground. Consequently, it has continuously sought “local alternatives” for governance in Gaza.
Throughout the war, Israel attempted to empower and arm certain individuals and groups, hoping they could have a role in the postwar era. Many of them were people who were socially marginalised before the war, and some have extensive criminal records. One example is Yasser Abu Shabab, a member of the Tarabin tribe, who was imprisoned for many years on drug-related charges and who during the war received substantial Israeli backing to create his own militia.
He looted humanitarian aid and collaborated with the occupation in a variety of ways in Rafah, including securing passage for Israeli troops. After he was killed on December 4, there were celebrations in Gaza; his own tribe issued a statement denouncing him. Israeli attempts to engage with other clans and empower them have also ended badly.
Prominent families and clans have repeatedly condemned in public statements the actions of individual members who have decided to collaborate with Israel. They have withdrawn protection and ostracised the collaborators, while affirming that Palestinian clans remain firmly committed to the Palestinian national struggle.
This rejection reflects the failure of Israeli policy to create any local extension aligned with its project. It also confirms Israel’s inability to erase Palestinian national memory or break the collective will, despite genocide, starvation, and displacement.
The situation is similar in the West Bank. There, for three decades, the Fatah-dominated PA has collaborated on security with the occupation. As a result, its legitimacy today is extremely low. According to a recent poll, the PA has an approval rating of just 23 percent in the West Bank, while its president, Mahmoud Abbas, has 16 percent.
It is important to note here that despite the PA’s close security ties to the occupation, it has failed to stem out Palestinian resistance in the West Bank. In the years preceding the war of genocide, the West Bank witnessed the rise of armed formations that were independent of the traditional factions Fatah and Hamas, such as Areen al-Usud (Lions’ Den) in Nablus and the Jenin Brigades.
These groups were organised by youth and enjoyed broad popular support. Their resistance campaigns reflected the continuity of the armed struggle approach outside traditional structures and the support it enjoys among the Palestinian people.
What Israel and its Western allies who are trying to create a new governance mechanism for Gaza fail to understand is that in the Palestinian context, legitimacy matters. It is something that cannot be created by foreign councils or Israeli-funded militias. That is because legitimacy in Palestine is derived from resistance, which ties national history and identity together.
Any attempt to bypass this reality is doomed to failure, as it would only turn Gaza into a zone of permanent chaos, internal conflicts, and comprehensive security collapse. It would also shatter Trump’s legacy as a dealmaker and expose the present arrangement as nothing more than a political spectacle to cover up the fallout of an Israeli-executed genocide.
The only solution that can guarantee stability is full Palestinian administrative independence, based exclusively on the will of the Palestinian people in all their diversity and affiliations, with a clear path toward the establishment of a fully sovereign Palestinian state.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect media’s editorial stance.
