2023-12-04 13:03:08
– How to “revitalize” the Palestinian Authority to manage Gaza in the future?
The post-war period is already under debate even though the strikes have resumed with a vengeance and the end of military operations is not yet on the horizon.
Published today at 2:03 p.m.
On the separation wall in Bethlehem, a fresco in honor of the very popular Marwan Barghouti, imprisoned in Israel since 2002 for murders of which he claims to be innocent. His name is regularly mentioned to succeed President Mahmoud Abbas.
HAZEM BADER/AFP
Who will govern the Gaza Strip if and when Hamas is eventually decimated? The question seems premature. After all, the fighting resumed with a vengeance following the few days of truce which allowed the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners. Now, “a difficult war awaits us,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Saturday evening. However, it is clear that the post-war issue is already the subject of intense diplomatic discussions.
“Joe Biden talks regarding a Palestinian Authority that has the credibility, legitimacy, (necessary) authority and support of all Palestinians.”
John Kirby, White House spokesperson
It is the United States that is leading the way. Saturday, November 18 in the Washington Post, President Joe Biden signed a column calling on Israel to first get rid of Hamas and then entrust the Gaza Strip to “a revitalized Palestinian Authority,” with a view to creating a state. Palestinian “unified” grouping together both this coastal strip and the West Bank.
This option, already put forward by the head of diplomacy Antony Blinken, was then clarified by John Kirby, spokesperson for the National Security Council at the White House. Joe Biden wants to put back in the saddle “a Palestinian Authority that enjoys the credibility, legitimacy, (necessary) authority and support of all Palestinians.” Implied: everything that President Mahmoud Abbas lacks. This one will appreciate it.
On the tightrope
Amazing initiative? Not that much. One year before the presidential elections in the United States, Joe Biden is on a tightrope: he seeks to support Israel in its war once morest Hamas while attenuating critical voices within his own Democratic Party, revolted by the number of victims Palestinian civilians. He cannot afford to lose voters while Donald Trump leads in the polls.
“Netanyahu’s messianic, annexationist coalition partners don’t want to hear regarding it.”
Nimrod Novik, Israel Policy Forum
Biden’s bet promises to be difficult. The head of the Israeli government is opposed to it. “Netanyahu’s messianic, annexationist coalition partners don’t want to hear regarding it,” says Nimrod Novik, a researcher at the Israel Policy Forum, an American Jewish organization campaigning for a two-state solution. However, the Israeli Prime Minister does not want to part with these allies who protect him from a legal conviction. “Unlike these far-right coalition partners, those who would replace them would not offer him a way out” to prevent him from reaching a verdict in his corruption trial.
Mahmoud Abbas on the sidelines
However, if Israel does not want to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, there is no real alternative to the Palestinian Authority. The problem is that she is extremely unpopular. Established following the Oslo Accords of 1993, it was to lead to the creation of a Palestinian state at the end of a long negotiation with Israel. An aborted process.
The head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken received by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah in early November.
JONATHAN ERNST/POOL/AFP
It administers 39% of the West Bank but only has control over 18% of the territory. As for the Gaza Strip, it escaped in 2007 when Hamas took power there by force following its electoral victory in 2006. The administration of President Mahmoud Abbas is seen as corrupt and repressive, managing municipalities for that the Hebrew State is expanding colonization.
Mahmoud Abbas himself, in office since 2005, has no longer faced the polls and has lost all legitimacy. Elections scheduled for 2021 have been postponed indefinitely, to avoid a new victory for Hamas, which poses as champion of Palestinian independence once morest an Authority which has failed in its mission. Hence the urgency to “revitalize” this leadership, in particular by giving it a new face. But who to choose?
Barghouti et Dahlan
Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti escorted by Israeli police to be questioned by judges in Jerusalem in 2012. He was imprisoned for life in 2002.
AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP
Marwan Barghouti, one of the leaders of Fatah (Mahmoud Abbas’s organization), has been imprisoned in Israel since 2002 for five murders of which he says he is innocent. He speaks Hebrew and understands how Israeli society works. Above all, he is very popular among Palestinians. According to a poll carried out in September by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey research, Marwan Barghouti would win 60% of the votes once morest 37% for Ismaël Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas. The proportion would be reversed if the same Haniyeh challenged President Abbas: 58% once morest 37%.
Former Palestinian official in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Dahlan lives in exile in Abu Dhabi, where he advises the authorities of the United Arab Emirates.
AFP
The other name circulating is that of Mohammed Dahlan. A native of Khan Younes, he was the head of the security services of the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip when Hamas took power in 2007. Expelled, he finally went into exile in Abu Dhabi, where he advises the government of the United Arab Emirates, one of the states to have signed the Abraham Accords in 2020 normalizing relations with Israel. In recent days, he has multiplied interviews while swearing that he is not trying to take power. He is hated by Mahmoud Abbas, who accuses him of having poisoned the historic leader Yasser Arafat and who had him prosecuted for corruption.
Arab distrust
That said, it is not enough to find a successor to Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinian Authority would refuse to be entrusted by the Israeli army with control over a Gaza Strip destroyed and traumatized by months of war. Washington is therefore considering a transitional administration entrusted to technocrats who would be supported by Arab and UN forces.
Here once more, this seems compromised. “There will be no Arab troops in Gaza. There won’t be any. We will not be considered the enemy,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi recently said. “How can we talk regarding the future of Gaza when we don’t know what kind of Gaza there will be left once the aggression ends?”
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