The Urgency of Establishing Alternative Legitimate Palestinian Governance in Gaza

August 12, 2025

The war in Gaza must end. It should have ended many months ago. The impending Israeli escalation of the war must be prevented. There must be a negotiated end to the war with Hamas or else the remaining 20 living Israeli hostages will never come home alive and the other 30 Israeli hostages who are not alive will never be brought home to burial in Israel. The war must end because too much suffering, death and destruction has already taken place in Gaza. Israel must not be allowed to continue to kill and destroy in Gaza or to implement the plans of the Israeli government for ethnic cleansing and building new Israeli settlements in Gaza. This must be prevented and if the international community does not stop it, it is complicit in carrying out the war crimes done by Israel.

There is one major missing link to enable the war to end, or I should say to compel President Trump to force the end of the war on Netanyahu. And let’s face it, only Trump has the ability to force Netanyahu to end the war and to withdraw from Gaza. Even though Hamas is decimated in Gaza and can no longer effectively control and govern Gaza. Even though Hamas has lost its ability to wage real warfare against Israel, they continue to exist with fighters who are more than willing to fight, to kill and to die. As long as there are Israeli soldiers in Gaza, the Hamas armed fighters have targets to kill and they will continue to try to kill them as long as there is no agreement to end the war. But to end the war there must be an alternative legitimate Palestinian government in place now – not on the day after Israel leaves Gaza. If Israel were to leave Gaza today, the only organized group with weapons and power remains Hamas. Even though Hamas has said repeatedly that they are willing to transfer the governance of Gaza, with all authorities, to a Palestinian civilian technocratic government. As long as that government does not exist, there is no alternative to Hamas. This has to be a flashing red light to all concerned Palestinians.

My understanding is that the Biden Administration believed that Palestinian President Abbas has to appoint the temporary Gaza government, or at least its head. They believed that the Gaza government had to be separated from the Palestinian Authority but it would receive its legitimacy from the Palestinian Authority. The Trump Administration, to my understanding doesn’t care about the Palestinian Authority’s need to provide legitimacy to a new non-Hamas Palestinian government. But the Trump Administration will not force Israel to leave Gaza unless there is a non-Hamas Palestinian government in Gaza which is committed to making peace with Israel, not destroying Israel. This is definitely a high bar to jump over. The high bar is now standing between Israel leaving Gaza or staying in Gaza and escalating the war.

The challenge before the Palestinian people is not only getting Hamas and Israel to negotiate a deal on ending the war and releasing hostages and Palestinian prisoners, it is also the extremely urgent task of putting a new legitimate, non-corrupt temporary Palestinian government in Gaza that will be accepted by the people of Gaza and by the Arab states. It seems highly unlikely that Israel will withdraw from Gaza without the new Palestinian government in Gaza. So as long as Hamas is technically still the government of Gaza, Israel will not withdraw, the war will not end, the hostages will not come home, Gazans will continued to be killed in the hundreds and thousands and no reconstruction of Gaza will begin.