The Palestinian Authority Should Be Restored to Power in Gaza

If Trump wants to preserve the ceasefire he must persuade Netanyahu to drop his objections to the PA - else the war will likely soon resume, at devastating cost

The riveting scenes this week of tens of thousands of Gazans trudging north to their bombed-out homes (see video) underscore the urgent need to create a viable governance plan for the seaside strip — and to ensure that the ceasefire framework now in place is seen through to the end. There has been too much pain and suffering on all sides for the war to resume.

But unless Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu begins to take seriously the possibility of returning the Palestinian Authority to power there, that is almost certainly what will happen. And the only person with the influence to make him consider that shift, incredible as it may be on so many levels, is US President Donald Trump.

Right now, the open-ended truce is effectively set up to leave Hamas in power in Gaza, an outcome that Netanyahu's far-right government is unlikely to survive, due to its dependence on far-right factions that would far rather keep on fighting (and settling Gaza with Jews), even if it means sacrificing the remaining hostages and countless others too. They will be resigning around the same time as the remnants of the Hamas leadership parade around Gaza, looking like it has been hit by a nuclear bomb, declaring that by their very survival Israel has been defeated. Legions across the Arab world will buy this, jidahists everywhere will be emboldened, and terrorism will be served.

If there's one thing Netanyahu has made clear, it's that political survival is his number one priority. If it takes restarting the war to ensure it, he will. He’ll do pretty close to anything, basically. Unless Trump, who has unique political capital with Netanyahu, persuades him otherwise.

This is a tough one. The West Bank-based PA, which is in theory committed to peace with Israel and is the sole Palestinian political alternative to Hamas, has a bad reputation for good reasons. It is corrupt and unpopular. Its leader Mahmoud Abbas no longer has a popular mandate, having been elected 20 years ago. It pays stipends to families of terrorists in a pandering bid for popularity, and uses textbooks that promote not peace with but rather resistance to Israel.

But governance by the PA, which Hamas expelled from Gaza by force in 2007, is clearly a less-bad option than governance by Hamas. (It was only when Hamas — which is fanatically dedicated to Israel’s destruction — took over Gaza that Israel, and Egypt, clamped a blockade on the strip, both to prevent arms smuggling and in hopes of compelling Hamas to step down.)

A sticky wicket, this less-bad option — say, a broken leg versus a stroke. Humans are not wired to embrace a broken leg. We prefer to insist on options that can legitimately be considered “good.” But in the Middle East, least-bad is often the best that you can get.

If Netanyahu can be somehow overruled, both the Arab world and Western nations, recognizing the stakes, may be willing to invest significant resources in the PA’s rehabilitation. The building blocks would include: