In recent weeks, U.S. officials have shuffled in and out of the Mukataa, the walled compound of 88-year-old Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas here in the de facto capital of the occupied West Bank. They have pushed for changes, and new faces in key positions, to improve the unpopular authority’s dire standing among Palestinians, with an eye on an expanded role in the Gaza Strip after the war, Palestinian and U.S. officials say.
Palestinian officials initially balked at the idea of returning to power in Gaza, which Hamas has controlled since 2007, in the aftermath of such a brutal war. But they have gradually become more receptive to seizing a rare opportunity to establish unity between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The Biden administration is talking to Palestinians and members of the international community about a “new government and some fresh blood joining [Palestinian Authority] government ranks alongside and under Abbas,” according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
But Palestinian officials have said they want any such efforts to be linked to a clear “political horizon” for Palestinian statehood. They’re skeptical of the United States’ ability to deliver anything while Israel’s current far-right government is in power.
A stall in U.S. efforts to unlock $140 million in Palestinian tax money meant for Gaza, blocked by Israel since Hamas’s surprise attack on Israeli communities on Oct. 7, has not boosted confidence.
“The Americans talk about the day after,” said Palestinian Authority Deputy Prime Minister Nabil Abu Rudeineh. “But even if we agreed, how can we implement it? The policy of Israel is to weaken the authority, not strengthen it.”
Outside the Mukataa, the red-beret-wearing Presidential Guards at the gates have not been paid. Nor have the other Palestinian forces that the United States hopes will form the backbone of a future security force in Gaza, or the authority’s employees in the besieged enclave.
“We cannot even pay the salaries of our soldiers, our employees,” Abu Rudeineh said.
When U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan arrived earlier this month to meet with Abbas, the deputy prime minister said, he seemed optimistic about a first step to secure the salaries.
The United States planned to allow Israel to re-vet individuals to make sure they have no links to Hamas or the assault on Oct. 7, when militants killed 1,200 people inside Israel. But Israel’s far-right finance minister has vowed that “not one shekel” for Palestinian Authority salaries will be transferred to Gaza.
Plans for Palestinians to receive their tax revenue have “collapsed,” said Sabri Saidam, an adviser to Abbas and member of the central committee for Fatah, the party that leads the Palestinian Authority. On Friday, the European Commission said it would step in with a $130 million aid package to help plug the gap instead.
The starting point should be a cease-fire, said Saidam, who has lost more than 44 members of his extended family in the Israeli assault on Gaza. “Time-wasting,” he said, is giving Israel more space to destroy the territory.
Speculation about who might succeed Abbas was rife before Oct. 7. Already deeply unpopular among Palestinians, he has seen his approval ratings drop further since the Hamas attacks, according to recent polling from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.
Some 88 percent of Palestinians want Abbas to resign, the poll indicated, up 10 points from three months ago. The popularity of Hamas in the West Bank, meanwhile, has soared from 12 percent to 44 percent, wile also rising slightly in Gaza.
The White House official said that the United States has not been “prescriptive” in its requests for change.
Still, the U.S. requests have rankled Ramallah. “It’s always this colonizing mentality, whereby, ‘We decide your leadership, we are the ones basically designing your strategy for the day after, we tell you how to live, we tell you how to breathe, and we tell you how to run your land,’” Saidam said.
With Hamas’s popularity on the rise, there’s little international interest in elections, even if they could be held feasibly amid the war.
“We can’t just appoint any leader,” Abu Rudeineh said. “Nobody can say to you who will be the new prime minister.”
Abbas’s rivals see the moment as an opportunity for change.
“We need to find a solution that involves his stepping aside,” said Nasser al-Qudwa, a nephew of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Long touted as a potential successor to Abbas, he now lives in self-imposed exile after criticizing him publicly.
“I think the international players understand that these guys cannot do the job — simple,” he said.
One Western diplomat said leadership changes should come with a clear road map for a two-state solution to the conflict. “Before it doesn’t make sense,” said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
“It’s fragile in the West Bank, and we are playing with fire,” the diplomat said. “By putting pressure on Abbas, who is extremely weak, tired and old, we run the risk of everything collapsing.”
It’s not clear that new faces would bring much of a change to the authority’s tattered legitimacy. The authority, set up in 1994 out of the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, was originally conceived as an interim body on the path to Palestinian statehood.
But while it presents some of the trappings of a government, the authority operates under Israeli occupation. And its security cooperation with the occupying power means that many Palestinians believe it helps enforce Israel’s will.
“The people see the Palestinian Authority as a guardian for the occupiers,” said Saif Aqel, a Fatah youth leader. Frustrated young people are returning to the armed resistance rejected by the authority. Still, he said, any leader imposed from the outside is unacceptable.
The United States, in coordination with its allies, is hoping to train Palestinian Authority forces for security responsibilities in Gaza as quickly as possible, officials said. But no agreement has been reached.
Unless the war stops soon, “there will be nothing for any administrative body to manage,” Aqel said. “They are destroying everything.”
