Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to bar the Palestine Authority, which now governs parts of the West Bank, from administering the Gaza Strip after the war on Hamas ends is aimed at sinking a revived “two-state solution” peace plan to end the Middle East’s longest-running conflict.
Formulated back in 1991 and favored by Israel’s chief ally, the United States, the two-state initiative was meant to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at peace with Israel. Though long dormant, the formula is considered the region’s most viable path to peace.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has indicated that the future state ought to be midwifed, if not ruled indefinitely, by the PA. Since the Gaza war began on October 7, Biden has frequently laid out a generalized vision for the solution, though without a roadmap to getting there.
“When this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next, and in our view, it has to be a two-state solution,” Biden recently said.
On November 8, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken not only repeated the administration’s endorsement of the two-state solution but added that Gaza should be “unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”
Netanyahu, however, rejects both outcomes. He has opposed the two-state solution since its inception, though he appears reluctant to state so directly while Biden is supporting his war effort.
Instead, the Israeli leader is trying to preempt it by opposing a key element: a role for the PA, which happens to be the descendant of the Palestine Liberation Front that negotiated the original two-state plan with Israel.
Over the weekend, Netanyahu said the PA is unfit to govern even the West Bank, much less Gaza. “I think so far we haven’t seen any Palestinian force, including the Palestinian Authority, that is able to do it,” he said, attributing his veto to the PA’s unrelenting “hate” of Israel.
He went on to finger PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who negotiated accords designed to make the two-state formula a reality, as a key reason for eliminating the PA.
“After the worst savagery perpetrated on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the Palestinian Authority president has yet – refuses to condemn the savagery. So, we need a different authority,” Netanyahu said. “We need a different administration.”
Netanyahu later expanded his objection. “We need to see the following two things: Gaza has to be demilitarized and Gaza has to be de-radicalized. And I think, so far, we haven’t seen any Palestinian force, including the Palestinian Authority, that is able to do it.”
Israel Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich elaborated on the sentiment, asserting that, “The Palestinian Authority is a body that supports and encourages terrorism and we will never again abandon the security of our citizens to the hands of our enemies.”
The veto raised the question of whether Biden is determined to revive a dormant two-state plan that for 22 years has crashed on the shoals of violence, suspicion and abandonment. He has yet to lay out a concrete path to making negotiations a reality, preferring to speak of a non-specific “horizon” lying somewhere in the distance as Gaza burns.
Biden’s sincerity has come into question. He has made no effort to actually institute a diplomatic formula to bring Israel and the Palestinians together during his 22 months in office. Indeed, the Palestinian issue seemed relegated to a diplomatic back-burner with no flame in sight.
Weeks before Hamas invaded southern Israel and massacred about 1,200 civilians, Biden’s chief security advisor, Jake Sullivan, published a paean to Biden in Foreign Affairs that declared the president’s Middle East policy as both easing tensions and “integrating the region through joint infrastructure projects and new partnerships, including between Israel and its Arab neighbors.”
He mentioned neither chronic Palestinian-Israeli disputes and violence nor the dormant two-state remedy. When war broke out in the Gaza Strip, Sullivan reworked part of his paean, suggesting that Biden’s policies “always included significant proposals for the Palestinians. If agreed, this component would ensure that a path to two states remains viable.”
Despite the apparent policy differences, Biden and Netanyahu share one political instinct: Both defended their pre-war expectations of Hamas’ deadly capabilities.
In an October 15 television interview, Sullivan insisted the US government had in no way ignored possible danger from Hamas. “At no point did the Biden administration take its eye off the ball of the threats to Israel,” he claimed.
Netanyahu, too, is trying to fend off accusations – from Israelis – that he had ignored Hamas’ activities that suggested violence was pending. Instead, he focused on expanding Israeli settlements on West Bank land, turning a blind eye to violence perpetrated by Israeli nationalist settlers and dispatching soldiers to quash armed Palestinian insurgents.
On October 29, Netanyahu argued that he was not responsible for failing to perceive possible threats posed by Hamas. Rather, he blamed the country’s security and intelligence establishments.
“The assessment of the entire security echelon, including the head of military intelligence and the head of Shin Bet, was that Hamas was deterred and was seeking an arrangement,” he wrote on social media.
A torrent of criticism greeted Netanyahu’s self-defense and he quickly retracted the post. “The things I said…should not have been said and I apologize for that,” he wrote in a follow-up mea culpa.
Netanyahu later said holding officialdom to account for its failings, including his own, will take place after the war ends, a time frame nowhere in sight.