Palestinians won't rule Gaza, says Netanyahu. But then, who will?

As Israel continues to pulverise Palestinians with indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asserted that his country will not allow the resistance group Hamas to control the besieged enclave again.

Netanyahu has consistently criticised Mahmoud Abbas, President of the elected Palestinian Authority (PA), and also questioned the Oslo Accords, the US-brokered peace deal signed 30 years ago to settle the Palestine issue.

The PA has expressed its readiness to govern Gaza as part of a comprehensive political strategy, aiming for unity among the occupied West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem in pursuit of a political solution that paves the way for the creation of a Palestinian state.

But in response to the PA's claim that it was the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) which killed civilians at the Nova music festival and not Hamas, Netanyahu also dismissed Abbas. "We will not allow him to rule Gaza (as well)".

Paradoxically, he supports the same PA operating in the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu's stand is in complete contrast with Israel's all-weather friend, the US. President Joe Biden had earlier suggested that the PA should govern Gaza and the West Bank after the Israel-Hamas war.

The stance of Netanyahu – who heads the most orthodox and ultranationalist government in the history of the zionist state – would potentially avoid a political settlement to the Palestine issue by leveraging international silence and tacit US support.

This logic always involved maintaining the PA's existence to govern Palestinians in the occupied West Bank while deliberately keeping it powerless, analysts say.

“On the Israeli side, the country’s leadership is coming under criticism for what some analysts consider a willful policy of strengthening Hamas and weakening the Palestinian Authority (PA) to avoid pressure to advance toward negotiations and kill the prospects of the two-state solution,” Former diplomat and Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, Hesham Youssef wrote.

“The PA has now (after the October 7 attack) clearly been further weakened.”

The possibility of a multinational peacekeeping force, too, looks bleak, as no country would willingly deploy its military in an ongoing conflict zone.

"Who would want to administer Gaza--one of the most densely populated territories on earth--where most infrastructure has been destroyed, where Hamas members will still be present, where 60 percent of the population was below the poverty line and food insecure before October 7?" James Gelvin, Modern Middle East history professor at UCLA, tells TRT World.

No Arab nation will also go against the sentiments of its people, which overwhelmingly supports the Palestinian cause, Gelvin further says.

Once the focus shifts to a post-conflict scenario in Gaza, addressing challenging questions about governance, reconstruction, and its potential integration into an independent Palestinian state, the involved parties will be faced with a range of undesirable choices.

Israel's stance on PA and Hamas deeply complicates the question of who will administer the highly-populated enclave after the latest round of conflict.

Hamas or PA?

The primary difference between the two major players in Palestinian politics, the PA and Hamas, lies in their divergent approaches to the Palestinian cause.

The PA prioritises cooperation with Israel, while Hamas adopts a strategy of confronting Israel militarily.

The PA's support in the West Bank is built on a transactional relationship with Israel, though some of its factions engage in an armed struggle in the more vocal and diverse West Bank.

And while the PA nominally leads the Palestinians in the West Bank, it is widely perceived as weak and ineffective.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested the possibility of a "revitalised" PA returning to Gaza over time.

However, Gelvin finds this notion unrealistic at the moment.

"If the Israelis and their American backers couldn't figure this out ahead of time, perhaps the only answer is that either the Israelis will defy the US and remain to pick up the pieces in Gaza or will abandon Gaza completely, having cleared northern Gaza of its population by ethnic cleansing," he says.

"In that way, the Israelis can both avoid a Lebanon scenario (occupation of a hostile nation for 20 years) and dump the Gaza problem on the international community."

Two-state solution?

There is a belief among the ultra-nationalists and radicals around Netanyahu that the ongoing conflict in Gaza provides a unique opportunity to eliminate not only Hamas but also Palestinians.

Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, despite lacking authority over the intelligence services, wrote an article in the Jerusalem Post discussing the potential "exodus" of Palestinians from Gaza.

A November survey by the Mitvim Institute for Regional Foreign Policies revealed diverse opinions within the Israeli public on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Twenty-seven percent of respondents support the two-state solution, advocating for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Twenty-five percent also believe in unilateral disengagement from the occupied West Bank, suggesting Israel should withdraw without a mutual agreement with the Palestinians.

Only five percent endorse the continuation of "conflict management", reflecting the strategy associated with Prime Minister Netanyahu and 28 percent support some form of annexation, indicating a desire to extend Israeli sovereignty over certain territories.

A majority, 52 percent, believe that Israel should disengage from the Palestinians. This disengagement can take various forms, either through a negotiated agreement or unilaterally, similar to the approach in Gaza in 2005.

Experts say this is the only viable solution.

"There is no military solution to this conflict, and eventually, for a political solution to happen, Israel must eventually leave Gaza under Palestinian control," says Storer H. Rowley, a Middle East expert and a national editor for the Tribune.

"Both Hamas and the Netanyahu government must be succeeded by elements of the Israeli and Palestinian political leadership committed to a two-state solution," Rowley tells TRT World.