More than a year after Hamas’ unprecedented attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Gaza remains locked in protracted war and deepening humanitarian catastrophe. Israel has dealt significant blows to Hamas’ leadership and infrastructure. But the Islamist group is far from destroyed. It is now regenerating its ranks while waging a protracted insurgency against Israeli forces. Meanwhile, the West Bank is witnessing a serious increase of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Even before Oct. 7, a Palestinian insurgency was growing in the West Bank amid an upsurge in popular support for armed resistance. This has been fueled by escalating Israeli settler attacks against vulnerable Palestinian communities and ever-more destructive Israeli military action, including the resumption of airstrikes on West Bank towns for the first time since the second intifada in the early 2000s.
Since the attacks of Oct. 7, Hamas has shifted tactics in the West Bank. The Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Islamic Jihad still remain the most dominant armed groups there. But Hamas’ armed wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, which previously kept a low profile, appears to be increasingly active. It is now stepping up militant activities and dispatching West Bank operatives to carry out attacks against civilians in Israel, including a deadly shooting attack in Tel Aviv in October and a failed suicide bombing in August.
Hamas is no doubt trying to exploit growing volatility in the West Bank to expand its confrontation against Israel and consolidate its standing among the Palestinian population. While its support has dipped among Gazans due to the carnage unleashed on the territory by Israel, its popularity remains relatively strong in the West Bank thanks to the growing sense of insecurity and hopelessness felt by many Palestinians after 30 years of failed peace talks. Above all, though, the group has benefited from the weakening of the Palestinian Authority, or PA, under the leadership of a deeply unpopular President Mahmoud Abbas.
Many Palestinians accuse the Fatah-controlled PA and its leadership of corruption and failing to protect Palestinians from expanding Israeli violence. Indeed, over the past week, PA security forces appear to have stepped up their operations against Palestinian militants in towns like Tubas. While this remains localized for now, expanded PA operations against armed groups, as the U.S. has long sought, would risk tipping the West Bank into an internal Palestinian civil war.
The PA’s standing has been further undermined by Israeli actions. It is currently facing an existential financial crisis created in large part by the Israeli government’s confiscation of PA tax clearance revenues, which has prevented it from paying full salaries for public sector workers since 2022. This has affected medical staff, civil servants and teachers, deepening economic hardship and popular discontent in the West Bank. In the process, it has eroded the PA’s remaining value for many Palestinians as a provider of services and public sector employment. Far-right Cabinet ministers in the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are currently pushing for a complete cutoff of Palestinian banks from the global banking system.
The installation of a new technocratic government led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa in March 2024 has so far done little to change the PA’s fortunes. This is mainly because the new government has failed to significantly boost international financial support, especially from Arab states, to restore full salary payments—including arrears—to employees. Another major weakness is that it was unilaterally appointed by Abbas in contravention of understandings reached between Palestinian factions.
With little prospect for national elections, Palestinian reconciliation remains the only other pathway for empowering the PA. But this too remains largely blocked.
During reconciliation talks held in Moscow in February, Abbas’ representatives agreed to appoint a government of national consensus in consultation with Hamas and other groups to lay the groundwork for postwar reconstruction in Gaza under restored PA control there. By reneging on this deal, Abbas angered Hamas and set back prospects for Palestinian reconciliation. This U-turn reflects the antipathy that Abbas and his advisers continue to harbor toward Hamas.
It is likely also the result of pressure from the U.S. and the European Union. Both were instrumental in Mustafa’s selection and continue to oppose any concessions to Hamas. Both have also long spoken of the need to strengthen the PA by reforming its governance, economic stewardship and public services in order to return it to Gaza and replace Hamas. In practice, though, they have focused on totemic issues that have long provoked Israeli anger.
In July, for instance, the EU conditioned its offer of emergency funding worth $436 million on an end to PA payments to the families of Palestinian “martyrs and prisoners”—those killed and detained by Israel—and the removal of alleged incitement against Israel in Palestinian textbooks. While the PA initially agreed to these conditions, it is now backtracking in light of strong public disapproval of the measures, stalling the disbursement of the second tranche of EU emergency funding.
Yet the U.S. and EU continue to ignore the real structural issues undermining the PA’s domestic standing. They have done little to meaningfully challenge Israeli sanctions against the PA and continue to largely ignore the huge challenges associated with Palestinian political divisions and de-democratization, as well as the lack of any real alternative to either Hamas or Fatah. This situation stems largely from Abbas’ monopolization of power, leading to the postponement of national elections since 2006, the elimination of the Palestinian legislature in 2021 and his co-optation of the judiciary. Ultimately this lack of political representation and legitimacy is the second-biggest threat to the PA’s survival after financial collapse.
With little prospect for national elections, Palestinian reconciliation remains the only other pathway for empowering the PA. But this too remains largely blocked. After another inter-Palestinian meeting in Beijing in July, Fatah again agreed to form a technocratic government in consultation with the other factions. In practice this would likely mean replacing Mustafa with a new consensus figure as prime minister. Three months later, however, this agreement remains a dead letter.
Some limited progress has emerged from follow-up talks in Cairo, where Fatah and Hamas have agreed to form an independent committee under the PA’s auspices composed of independent figures to administer Gaza’s border crossings and resume governance functions. This is an important step forward, but it will require a cease-fire and Israeli acceptance of a future role for the PA in Gaza, both of which Netanyahu continues to block.
A unified and representative Palestinian political system could also help stabilize the West Bank. However, breaking the current spiral of Israeli-Palestinian violence and unlocking a sustainable future for Gaza will above all require an end to Israeli attacks and a credible political track to secure Palestinian self-determination that could co-opt Hamas by weakening the appeal of armed violence.
At present, however, opposition to Palestinian statehood extends across Israel’s political spectrum. Reversing the current escalating conflict will therefore require a change of Israeli calculations. This is unlikely to happen without pressure on Israel, to demonstrate that its continued obstruction of Palestinian self-determination in favor of perpetual settlement and occupation will only lead to deepening international isolation.
Hugh Lovatt is a senior policy fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Lovatt focuses on the Israel-Palestine conflict and domestic Palestinian politics.