A New Future, A New Path

There are moments in the life of nations when the old political language no longer works, old leadership no longer inspires, and old excuses no longer convince anyone. Palestinians are living through such a moment. So are Israelis. The region stands before a rare opening to turn tragedy into a new political horizon.

The war in Gaza must genuinely end not only with the silence of guns but with the birth of a new political reality. Otherwise, it will become another chapter in the same failed history: destruction, mourning, promises of reconstruction, more occupation, more extremism, more despair, and then the next explosion. That is not a future. That is a trap.

Two political arenas now require immediate work.

The first is the Palestinian arena. The Palestinian people must hold new national elections – presidential and legislative – as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas promised in his letter to French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman one year ago.

According to that promise, elections must take place within one year of the end of the war in Gaza. They should happen before the next Israeli elections. Palestinians must not arrive at Israel’s next political turning point with the same exhausted leadership, the same paralyzed institutions, and the same claim that “there is no Palestinian partner.”

Those elections must include Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. These are not three separate political realities. They are one integral territorial unit – the territory of the future State of Palestine. Any political process that treats Gaza as separate will not create a Palestinian state. It will create another temporary arrangement that collapses under the weight of its own dishonesty.

A new Palestinian election law must be passed before elections are held. The principle must be clear: one authority, one law, one gun. No armed group, militia, organization that maintains weapons outside state authority, or party that supports armed struggle should be allowed to run. Democracy cannot be the license to undo itself. It cannot be built under competing guns.

This is not a demand made for Israel’s benefit. It is a Palestinian national interest. A state that does not control its weapons is not a state. A government that cannot enforce the law equally on all is not a government. A political system in which armed factions compete with elected institutions is not democracy. It is a formula for civil conflict, corruption, foreign manipulation, and permanent weakness.

The Palestinian people deserve better: a democratic, accountable, modern political system that serves citizens rather than factions, protects freedoms, encourages pluralism, and opens a real horizon for independence, prosperity, and peace. Women, young people, civil society, the private sector, professionals, and local leaders must not be decoration in the next Palestinian political system. They must be at its center.

The recent Fatah Central Committee elections proved, once again, Fatah’s irrelevance as a vehicle for the future. The old guard reelected itself. The same faces, habits, political culture, and inability to speak to the younger generation, to Gaza, to the diaspora, to women, to professionals, and to people who want dignity and honest government rather than slogans and patronage.

Fatah was once a national liberation movement. Today it looks like the party of yesterday. It still carries historical legitimacy, but that is not enough to govern the future. A movement that cannot renew itself cannot renew a people. A leadership afraid of democracy cannot build a democratic state. A party whose internal elections reproduce the past cannot lead a national rebirth.

That is why the Palestinian people need new directions, new parties, and a new language of national responsibility. They need movements that speak honestly about freedom, democracy, rule of law, economic development, equality, nonviolence, regional integration, and peace. They need politics that does not confuse militancy with strategy, slogans with achievement, or survival of the leadership with liberation of the people.

That is also why ideas such as “New Path,” founded by a large group of representatives of the younger generations like former Fatah activist Samer Sinijlawi, matter. A new Palestinian political path must be built on the conviction that the Palestinian people deserve a democratic, just, and modern system – one that serves citizens rather than factions; protects freedoms; rejects violence as a political tool; and seeks independence through diplomacy, regional partnership, and accountable governance.

The European Union must use its influence on Abbas and the Palestinian Authority; Arab countries must do the same. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Morocco should speak with one voice: Palestinian national renewal is essential, not just cosmetic political and institutional reforms. Elections must be held. The law must be changed. The old system must open the door to a new generation.

The second arena is regional and international. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Jordan must coordinate a serious political campaign toward US President Donald Trump. Recent events have shown that Trump has influence over Israeli decision-making that no other world leader has. No Israeli prime minister – Benjamin Netanyahu or anyone else – can ignore a determined American president, especially if backed by the Arab region and a clear package of security, normalization, development, and peace.

The next Israeli government will not voluntarily end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, accept a Palestinian state, or dismantle permanent occupation. It will move only if there is a powerful external framework that makes the price of refusal higher than the price of agreement. That framework must come from Washington, but it must be pushed, shaped, and supported by the Arab region.

The Arab states should tell Trump directly: The time has come to turn points 19 and 20 of his own plan into an action plan. A “credible pathway” to Palestinian self-determination and statehood cannot remain a phrase in a document. A “political horizon” cannot remain diplomatic decoration. These words must become a timetable, a mechanism, and a binding political process.

The future Palestinian state must be part of a broader regional architecture: demilitarized, deradicalized, democratic, and developed. It must live alongside Israel within a regional system of security cooperation, economic development, diplomatic relations, and mutual recognition. This is about a new Middle East in which Israeli security and Palestinian freedom are interdependent realities.

Palestine will never be free if Israel does not have security. Israel will never be secure if the Palestinians do not have freedom. That must guide the next phase.

This will not happen by itself, by Israeli generosity, or by more international statements. It will happen only if Palestinians, Arabs, Europeans, Americans, and peace-minded Israelis act together with urgency and clarity.

The sequence is clear. End the war in Gaza for real. Pass a new Palestinian election law based on one authority and one gun. Build new Palestinian political forces. Hold Palestinian elections in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Push Trump to move Israel toward a real two-state agreement. Embed that agreement in a regional security and economic architecture.

Make the promise of Palestinian statehood real – not someday, not after another generation of suffering, but within a defined political process that begins now. Somewhere in that process, Israel will also hold elections and, hopefully, remove the disastrous Netanyahu-Bezalel Smotrich-Itamar Ben-Gvir regime.

The region does not need another slogan. It needs a new path. The Palestinians do not need recycled leadership. They need a new future. Israelis do not need another illusion that the conflict can be managed forever. They need to understand their security depends on Palestinian freedom.

A new future is possible. But it will not be given to us. It must be made. And it must begin now.