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CMI Insight: Lessons learned on Palestinian unity in the midst of the Gaza war (June 2024)

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The long-standing Palestinian division hampers prospects for a democratic Palestinian state and a two-state solution. The war in Gaza and the worsening situation in the West Bank provide an impetus do things differently in order to bridge the divide. There is an urgent need to invest in reconciliation that involves the whole of Palestinian society.

Read and download the report here.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • The wider Palestinian society has been excluded from attempts to achieve Palestinian unity, and reconciliation efforts have focused nearly exclusively on relationship between Fatah and Hamas.
  • Many intertwined factors – the willingness of the parties to maintain the current situation, Israeli policies and international priorities – fuel the status quo.
  • The Gaza war has further entrenched political divisions between Gaza and the West Bank, exacerbated by unresolved past grievances.

Since 2010, CMI and its local partner, the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies (Masarat), have been supporting efforts towards unity and reconciliation in Palestine. This has included developing recommendations for national unity, rebuilding the institutions of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), reforming the Palestinian security sector, involving women and youth in political processes, and unifying Palestinian federations, trade unions and professional syndicates.

In this paper, CMI takes stock of and examines previous efforts to end the division. The analysis is based on over a decade of CMI’s efforts to promote unity, and builds on a Masarat study “Towards and Effective Approach to End the Palestinian Divide”, authored by Emad Abu Rahma (2023). It also incorporates lessons learned from more recent consultations to address the evolving context since the Gaza war, which began after the events of 7 October 2023.

Since June 2007, the Palestinian political arena has been deeply divided, with two competing political entities governing the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Fatah and Hamas respectively. Each has developed its own patronage networks, narrowing the space for broader political participation. Both factions and key figures in their leadership have shown little political will to end the division. At the same time, Israel also has an interest in maintaining a fragmented Palestinian polity, as it hampers any efforts to achieve a two-state solution. According to CMI’s recent consultations, in addition to the pre-existing political divide, the Gaza war has led to increased divisions at the community level between Gaza and the West Bank.

Western actors have continued to support the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and have tolerated Fatah’s unwillingness to hold elections for fear that Hamas would gain an even broader electoral mandate than in 2006. Many critics think the Middle East Peace Quartet’s conditions on the participation in Palestinian elections have been designed to keep Hamas out of the electoral process. The PA is also associated with the failings of the Oslo peace process in the 1990s. Many Palestinians see the PA as breathing through the lungs of international and regional support, contributing to the dominance of Fatah and President Mahmoud Abbas more specifically, who prefer to maintain the status quo.

Hamas, on the other hand, has adopted a strategy of trying to change the “rules of the game” altogether, disrupting the status of Palestinian political elites and any externally imposed conditionality. While some see Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip as a power grab, others see it as an attempt to level the political playing field. As the division deepened over the years, the West Bank leadership became increasingly associated with the Israeli occupation, while Gaza entered a long period of blockade and isolation, contributing to the dynamic that led to the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. These exclusionary dynamics have also led to the absence of any inclusive national institutions and the diminished role of key forces in building a national movement such as civil society, the private sector, independent political actors, women and young people. Dialogues in reconciliation have increasingly exclusively focused on power-sharing arrangements between Hamas and Fatah. Within their ranks, too, many consider the status quo as the safest option.

Many strategies have been employed to address the division, the most obvious being formal unity talks. Steps towards unity have been codified in the various reconciliation agreements. However, both parties have been unwilling to implement the agreements and have cherry-picked their various elements. It is important to examine why these efforts have failed and what should be done differently in the future.

Since the 2011 Cairo Agreement, some Fatah cadres have been willing to compromise with Hamas by agreeing to hold legislative and presidential elections, including the introduction of joint lists and a consensus candidate for the presidency. Fatah agreed to these decisions regardless of whether Hamas would be willing to relinquish its control of the Gaza Strip, a key red line for the faction’s leadership. Other red lines for Fatah include opposition to measures that could legitimise Hamas and threaten Fatah’s dominance in the PA and the PLO. For example, for Fatah, the precondition for any compromise has been that Hamas adhere to previous PA and PLO commitments and other building blocks of its international legitimacy.

While, in the context of the Gaza war since October 2023, some actors within Fatah have also publicly expressed their willingness to consider some form of a unity government, President Mahmoud Abbas has vehemently rejected any such positions. While some in Fatah see no possibility of a political partnership with Hamas, others believe in a gradual return of the PA to Gaza through the control of crossings, borders and reconstruction, a rhetoric that has been reinforced in the context of the ongoing Gaza war, which some see as an opportunity to consolidate power in Gaza after a long absence.

On Hamas’s side, core objectives include PLO membership and gaining international legitimacy while retaining control over Gaza. More recently, in 2024, key figures in Hamas’s political leadership have expressed a willingness to transform the organization into a legitimate political party in exchange for a long-term political pathway based on a two-state solution and the 1967 borders. Hamas is well aware that it will be unable to govern – even if it wins a future election – if it remains internationally listed as a terrorist organisation.

A second proposed remedy to end the division is the holding of long-overdue elections – local, legislative and presidential – as these are seen as the most effective means of restoring legitimacy, increasing the representativeness of Palestinian national institutions, ensuring a peaceful transition of power and making decision-making on the future of Palestine more inclusive and effective. Approaches to elections vary, and there is no single possible scenario for the way forward. International reluctance to risk a Hamas victory and Israel’s “veto” on elections are key impediments to their success as a strategy to end the division.

A third set of proposals revolves around a transitional arrangement or interim leadership structure that would prepare elections while acting as a temporary constituent assembly to adopt a new national charter and political platform. In the context of the ongoing Gaza war, interim and transitional arrangements have also been frequently proposed by thinkers from the region and beyond. In the past, Fatah has been skeptical of such arrangements as they could legitimise Hamas’s authority. More recently, however, key Fatah figures have seen a transitional governing structure as an opportunity to regain control of Gaza. Civil society actors have also suggested the formation of a technocratic emergency interim government as a way out of the political impasse.

Another suggestion has been to simply accept the divide, and focus more on moving from reconciliation to a coordination approach between the two factions. Some have likened this to a federation-like arrangement.

While there have been attempts to address the division through the approaches outlined above, there is a need to resolve the issue more inclusively, in a broader societal context. Therefore, civil society actors and independents have emphasised the need to promote unity beyond the usual suspects and to build a national movement led by popular, grassroots, civil society and trade union actors. The aim of this movement would be to rebuild PLO institutions, formulate a national agenda, pave the way towards elections, and establish revitalized international partnerships.

As long as Fatah and Hamas cherry-pick past agreements and block decisions that could challenge the status quo, reconciliation efforts – and thus progress on broader questions related to the Middle East Peace Process – will remain stalled. Recently, international recognition of a Palestinian state has gained momentum, but even proponents of such recognition point to the PA’s lack of democratic legitimacy and capacity to govern, including in Gaza. Many potential donors also see PA and PLO reform as a prerequisite for the reconstruction of Gaza.

Palestinian statehood is deeply intertwined with the question of Palestinian unity, and despite the intense suffering, the current war in Gaza and worsening situation in the West Bank provide a momentum for international actors to do things differently. External actors can either perpetuate or bridge the divide, and they should urgently invest in initiatives to create inclusive reconciliation processes that place the political rift into a broader societal perspective. While it is in the interests of many external players to fuel the divide, it is time for courageous efforts to address the issue from the bottom up.

RECOMMENDATIONS

  • The role of Palestinian civil society must be revitalized in efforts to end the division and rebuild the national project. Only this will strengthen Palestinian resilience.
  • International efforts should promote Palestinian unity and democracy in an approach that goes beyond reaching an agreement between Fatah and Hamas. The focus should be on supporting civil society, independent political forces, women and young people.
  • As the international community seeks solutions to the governance of Gaza and Palestine more broadly, it is crucial to rethink the structure and functions of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) through a national dialogue.

Cecilia Pellosniemi, Project Manager, Middle East Peace Process and Palestine, CMI