There’ll Only Be a Palestinian State if the PLO Disengages From Hamas

Josep Borrell, the European foreign policy chief, had a burst of enlightenment when he stated how the war in Gaza should end, and how the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians will be solved.

Talking at Spain’s Valladolid University, where he received an honorary doctorate, the EU foreign policy chief said, “We only believe a two-state solution imposed from the outside would bring peace. That’s despite, and I insist on this, that Israel is again opposing this solution, and to prevent it, they went as far as establishing Hamas itself. Hamas was financed by the Israeli government to weaken the Palestinian Authority of Fatah,” referring to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ party.

In fact, Israel didn’t establish Hamas and the Palestinian Authority isn’t “of Fatah,” but Borrell doesn’t need to be confused with marginal details. He has an orderly plan that he presented to a meeting of the EU council of foreign ministers on Monday in Brussels, which was also attended by foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan as well as a representative of the Arab League and Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz.

The plan focuses on paving the way for the convening of an international conference that would consider how to achieve a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Borrell had harsh comments about Israel. “What other solutions do they have?” he asked. “Making all the Palestinians leave? Killing all of them? The manner in which they’re destroying Hamas isn’t the way to do that. They are instilling hate for generations.” A call to action from a foreign policy chief who hasn’t so far chalked up major achievements in the EU’s foreign relations.

The idea of convening an international conference to resolve the conflict isn’t something that Borrell invented. Mahmoud Abbas suggested it more than two months ago in talks with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Such a gathering, Abbas said, under international and particularly American auspices could serve as proof that the U.S. is serious in its intention to advance a two-state solution. It would also enable the process to fulfil the basic conditions that the Palestinian Authority has demanded to take over responsibility for running the Gaza Strip after the war.

The United States still hasn’t signaled its readiness to promote such an international conference, which by virtue of it being convened could place it on an explosive collision course with Israel.

Washington, which coined the term “revitalized Palestinian Authority,” also hasn’t presented a plan for such a revitalization – what Abbas needs to do to gain the White House’s seal of approval, and more importantly, whether the United States can and wishes to force Israel to let the PA control Gaza, and under what conditions.

Palestinian Authority officials and journalists are reporting that American envoys who have met with Abbas raised various points to him, about the need to appoint a deputy with broad authority; ridding the PA of corruption; and recruiting new forces into the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization. They also have stressed that however the Palestinian Authority is constituted, Hamas cannot be a partner to it.

On this last point, senior Hamas officials have had informal contacts with senior PLO officials in a bid to come to understandings about how Hamas could join the PLO. However, so far, Hamas leadership has rejected the two fundamental conditions that Abbas has presented for such a step: adopting a non-violent approach to resisting the Israeli occupation instead of an armed struggle; and recognition of international resolutions, especially the Oslo Accords, which recognizes Israel’s right to exist.

These conditions were rejected back in July when the heads of the Palestinian factions met in Egypt to advance reconciliation. There is no knowledge of a change of any kind in Hamas’s stance. Despite that, the official Palestinian position has been and still is that during and after the war, Hamas is an inseparable part of the Palestinian people and that as a movement, it has to be represented in the PLO’s institutions.

This stance relies on a fundamental contradiction: the PLO’s leadership has no solution to the ideological differences regarding a permanent solution to the conflict. While the PLO recognizes the State of Israel and seeks to bring a two-state solution to fruition, Hamas is at a different place entirely.

More than three months into the war, Hamas has released an 18-page document entitled “This is our narrative – Why the Al-Aqsa Flood?” a reference to its October 7 attack on Israel, in which at least 1,200 were killed in Israeli Gaza border communities and well over 200 people taken hostage.

In the document, Hamas explains the reasons and circumstances that it says caused the organization to plan and carry out the attack. This is a political document that is actually not directed to a Palestinian audience but to Arab and global public opinion.

There’s no point dealing here with the distorted factual descriptions included in it or the effort to portray its horrific atrocities as a “mistake” and even as a failure in controlling its forces. It would have been expected that such a document would include a diplomatic vision for the political role that Hamas foresees for itself down the road.

In the document’s last section, Hamas presents eight demands, all of which deal with the necessity to continue its armed struggle. They call on the Arab world and the international community to boycott Israel, to bring about a cease-fire, to punish Israel and most importantly – to halt any plans to shape Gaza’s future based on a model that the Zionist occupier seeks, “because no one has the authority to impose its patronage on the Palestinian people other than the people itself.”

There is no reference in the document to a partnership with the PLO, to the diplomatic solution, or to any readiness to consider a two-state formula. As Palestinian researcher and journalist Hesham Dibsi asked in an article published Wednesday on the Lebanese Al-Janoubia website: “Is Hamas at all capable of reaching a solution outside the legitimate Palestinian framework, or will it continue to conduct separate negotiations with Israel and the United States under Qatari auspices?”

Dibsi, who is highly critical of the document, presents Hamas’ stance as one that prefers “the historic right” over “the political right.” That’s an important distinction that makes the disparity with the PLO’s position very clear.

The PLO is prepared to adopt diplomatic solutions that would require concessions over the “historic right” to control over all of Palestine, including the right of return of all the Palestinian refugees. By contrast, Hamas views that preferring the right to any Palestinian state would be a loss of historic rights.

No convoluted rhetoric can bridge these two ideological positions, which so far have prevented Hamas and the PLO from establishing a practical and applicable common denominator, that could generate the joint administration of a State of Palestine that would be established.

At the same time, as long as the PLO and its leadership, including the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, insist on a political and institutional partnership with Hamas, the call for a two-state solution will remain futile.

In that regard, the American demand that the PA enact administrative reforms to be a partner in running Gaza appeals to a convenient tactical narrative. It ignores, however, the fact that without the PLO’s ideological disengagement from Hamas, particularly by Fatah, the prospects for the diplomatic channel are slim.

This is true as long as Israel, the United States and the international community adopt the principle that Hamas doesn’t and won’t have a place as a partner in running the Palestinian state, and certainly not Gaza.

It’s worth mentioning that all of those countries, that now oppose Hamas as a part of any future Palestinian administration, maintain diplomatic and economic relations with governments such as Lebanon and Iraq in which terrorist organizations are an inseparable part of the legitimate regime.