Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to attempt to assassinate Hamas negotiators in Qatar, on 9 September, violating a previous protocol of respecting Qatari sovereignty and paying at least lip-service to the negotiation process Qatar has mediated, appears to have been unsuccessful.
Hamas has claimed its senior leaders survived. The attack has moved the Islamist paramilitary party no closer to the total surrender, unconditional release of hostages, and promise to disarm that Netanyahu claims increased military pressure can eventually secure.
The attack did, however, reaffirm the Israeli war party’s sense that it can operate with impunity. The operation provoked a few sharp words from Donald Trump, but no material consequences. With many senior figures in the Israeli military and security establishments openly declaring that the ongoing operation in Gaza City has no strategic justification, the aims of the war are now clearly political: to obliterate as much of Gaza as possible, and expel or destroy its population, in order to clear the way for re-settlement.
The war in Gaza is part of a wider colonial effort by the Israeli government, to establish direct rule over as much of the territory between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea as possible. Whilst few Israeli governments have made meaningful efforts to rein in the settler movement, most pre-Netanyahu administrations paid lip-service to the parameters put in place by the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, which granted limited Palestinian autonomy over certain areas.
The current government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, has dispensed with even lip-service, and openly declares that its aim is to definitively “bury” or “erase” all prospects for Palestinian self-determination, in any form.
Israeli troops now have control over large areas nominally under Palestinian Authority rule. Ibrahim Abu al-Rab, the mayor of Jalboun in the West Bank, quoted in the Financial Times, said: “An Israeli officer came into my office and said, ‘There is no Area A, no Area B, no Area C […] Forget Oslo — Israel controls everything.”
Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has regularly withheld tax revenue Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, another aspect of a strategy aimed at collapsing the PA entirely. Smotrich has described his aims for the West Bank as being “maximum land with minimum Arabs.”
The Palestinian Authority is a deeply flawed institution, politically controlled by a political party, Fatah, based on a section of the Palestinian elite widely considered to be corrupt and self-serving. But its destruction at the hands of a racist and genocidal government would be a historic defeat.
International pressure could make some difference here. Recognition of the state of Palestine, a diplomatic entity effectively under PA control, could open up channels for more direct aid, which could help make the PA less vulnerable to financial isolation by Israel. On Wednesday 17 September, press reports indicated that the UK would formally recognise Palestine soon, following the end of US President Donald Trump’s state visit.