These are hopeful days for Mahmoud Abbas. Despite his persistent aspirations to be a global statesman, the ailing octogenarian chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA) has long played a marginal role even in the context of Arab politics, let alone world affairs. But now, against the backdrop of Israel’s ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian leader’s political fortunes are experiencing a renaissance.

This state of affairs is somewhat unexpected since Abbas objectively should be on the political back foot. Now in the nineteenth year of his first four-year elected term, the PA chief-turned-autocrat has presided over a protracted devolution of Palestinian society. This “failure to thrive” has entailed everything from declining GDP to rampant corruption to official sanction for political violence against Israel.

The resulting mismanagement has become so pervasive that the PA is now in a full-blown economic crisis, with shrinking salaries for public servants and rumblings of imminent financial collapse. At the same time, Abbas, now eighty-eight and in deteriorating health, has studiously avoided establishing anything resembling a clear line of succession—thereby virtually guaranteeing that, once he leaves the political scene, the West Bank will descend into something akin to a civil war as various local strongmen vie for political power.

It’s no wonder that the Palestinians themselves have pretty much given up on the PA. In a recent poll of public opinion in the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, a respected pollster headquartered in Ramallah, found that nearly two-thirds of those surveyed now want a new government not under the control of Abbas or his Fatah political faction, and even more favor the “dissolution” of the PA altogether. The Palestinian Authority, in other words, should objectively be on borrowed time. But it now isn’t, thanks mostly to Hamas.

Although the radical Islamist group ranks as the PA’s chief political rival (having wrested control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah in June 2007), its October terror rampage against Israel—and the ensuing Israeli military offensive—has been nothing short of a boon for the PA. Israel has made the dismantlement of Hamas a cardinal strategic objective, naturally raising questions about what “the day after” in Gaza might look like if the terror group is dislodged from power. 

Suggestions on that score have abounded, ranging from a U.S.-led stabilization force to a “multinational authority” to administer Gaza, at least in the near term. But the one that seems to have gained the most traction is perhaps the least creative: to simply allow the PA to extend its ambit over the Gaza Strip as well. Thus the Biden administration, which before October 7 had deemed the PA unfit to govern Gaza, has steadily gravitated toward the notion as the conflict has dragged on with no end in sight.

For his part, Abbas is working hard to capitalize on the present moment. His government has announced that it is prepared to provide a “political solution” to the current situation in Gaza, post-ceasefire. And at the recent Gaza Emergency Humanitarian Response Conference in Jordan earlier this month, the PA proposed an ambitious three-stage recovery plan encapsulating its vision for the enclave. 

That plan is extensive—and expensive. The first phase alone, focused on a six-month “emergency response” period, would cost a whopping $1.3 billion. The money, naturally, would come from international donors, and the PA would administer it to create “social protection and housing provision, as well as health, education and infrastructure programs”—things that the West Bank itself needs significant help with, and international oversight over. 

In other words, the Palestinian Authority is asking the international community to empower one failed state to rebuild another.

Nevertheless, Abbas’ pitch might just end up working. The international community is increasingly desperate to secure a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians by any means necessary. As international desperation has grown, what would ordinarily be something of a non-starter, given the PA’s abysmal governance record, has become more palatable to policymakers in Washington and beyond. 

That is a shame, because the Palestinian Authority has proven itself thoroughly unfit to govern. “Under different circumstances—if the PA were a more effective, clean government, better trusted by its people—one might imagine it returning to Gaza when this war ends and leading the process of reconstruction and recovery,” Washington Institute scholar Ghaith al-Omari has observed. “But Palestinians have no confidence that the PA has their interests at heart; the international community does not trust it to administer funds on the scale of those that will be needed for reconstruction; and the PA anyway lacks the institutional infrastructure to do the job.”

Under these conditions, entrusting the PA with administering the “day after” in Gaza isn’t a workable solution, no matter how appealing Abbas’ current pitch might be at the moment. It is, rather, simply a surefire way to throw good money after bad. 

Sadly, Washington and its allies seem more and more inclined to do just that. 

About the Author and Expertise

Ilan Berman is Senior Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.

Images are Creative Commons.