When Palestinian elections were first discussed, the spotlight immediately turned to the struggle between Fatah and Hamas and the fear that under cover of the elections, Hamas would infiltrate the West Bank. But it soon became clear that the story was not Fatah against Hamas, but Fatah against Fatah.

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What is at the root of the Fatah problem? Actually, there are two competing Fatahs.

The first consists of the PLO leadership of the "exile," with its old roots in today's Israel, for whom the formative event was the 1948 nakba. What matters to them is the "right of return" to pre-1967 Israel. Most of them moved to the Palestinian territories after Israel's withdrawals in the wake of the 1994 Oslo Accords, where they established the Muqata, Arafat's administrative center in Ramallah. Their primary audiences were the residents of refugee camps in Arab countries, largely in Lebanon.

The second is made up of the Palestinians in the West Bank, who have little or no attachment to the nakba, and what they want is the stabilization of their lives in the West Bank. Until the appearance of the "Tunisian leaders" of the PLO, the nakba issue was hardly mentioned by Palestinian residents in the West Bank. The nakba gained momentum when the PLO entered the territories, and the famous statues of "keys to the homes they abandoned" began to show up everywhere. This is the ethos of the Tunisians and the bureaucrats in Ramallah, where the PLO veterans landed, not the residents of Nablus, Bethlehem and Hebron.

A year ago, I visited Jenin and met with members of the Tanzim grassroots offshoot of Fatah. I was surprised to hear that they wanted one state with Israel, and had stopped believing in the Palestinian state they had fought for all their lives. The reason: They do not believe the "Tunisians" because they are "foreigners," and the people of Jenin prefer to live with Israel rather than "Ramallah."

The desire for one state is an opinion heard in broad circles in the West Bank. Palestinian writer Hamada Jaber reported that "according to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Palestinian support for the two-state solution has declined from 55% in 2011 to 39% in 2020 despite the support it has from all Palestinian parties and movements."

Jaber, who identifies with the Palestinian left, continued, "The depth of the Hamas crisis can be evidenced by its approval of the Fatah movement's project based on the solution of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, at a time when many leaders of the Fatah movement themselves believe that this solution has become impossible and long dead."

In the past, the idea of one democratic state with the Jews was a ploy to erase Israel via a sophisticated formula, but today, as far as I can understand from conversations on the ground, Israel is a role model in the face of the disappointment from the collapsing Arab countries. We see this phenomenon in eastern Jerusalem, and another aspect of it is the sentiment among Israeli Arabs: "We don't want to destroy Israel, but to benefit from it."

A fresh example of the differences between "Tunisians" and locals can be found in an interview given recently by former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to the daily al-Quds. He spoke at length about the needs of the Palestinians in the territories but did not mention a word – or half a word – about the "right of return," the "struggle," etc. – slogans propagated by the Tunisians.

The appearance of Fayyad on the political scene is significant. He announced his candidacy as part of an independent list, not in a Fatah context. In fact, even when he was prime minister, he was not a Fatah member. His attempts to get into Fatah failed because the Tunisians accepted into service only locals who bought into the Fatah agenda. They saw Fayyad as an outsider pressed by the donor countries, who did not want to endorse the PLO agenda. Eventually, the Tunisians dumped him.

The phenomenon of an independent list outside of Fatah has more significance: it is the beginning of the end of the PLO's hegemony in political life in the West Bank. A shocking incident occurred on March 11: Fatah expelled Arafat's nephew, Dr. Nasser al-Qudwa, the head of the Yasser Arafat Foundation in Ramallah, over his attempt to organize an independent list for the Palestinian elections in May. The candidates on his list include prominent figures from among the Palestinian society – but not from the PLO.

While Fayyad has always been an independent individual, an independent list headed by al-Qudwa points to the end of the PLO's supreme stature.

I recently received a Fatah document detailing the criteria for candidates to participate in the elections. What caught my eye was the quota set for "locals" – at least a third, with the remaining two-thirds being "representatives of the history of the national struggle," i.e., Tunisians.

Of course, the leading challengers to PA leader Mahmoud Abbas represent the internal Tanzim – Marwan Barghouti and Mohammed Dahlan. Jibril Rajoub, another example of the local population (who in the meantime has been enlisted in Qatar's interests), recently said that the criterion for the post-Abbas leadership is to have spent time in an Israeli prison. In other words, whoever replaces Abbas can only come from the ranks of the local Tanzim – which means the end of Tunisians' rule.

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Whether there is an election in May or not, the demon is out of the bottle, and the fight will not be between Hamas and Fatah but within Fatah itself.

Pinhas Inbari is a veteran Arab affairs correspondent who formerly reported for Israel Radio and "Al Hamishmar" newspaper. He currently serves as an analyst for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Featured on JNS.org, this article was originally published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

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The Palestinian reconciliation talks in Cairo ended on Feb. 9, with a declaration of success and the confirmation of the May 22 parliamentary elections previously announced by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas Political Bureau head Ismail Haniyeh was quick to thank Abbas for supporting the reconciliation, but talking to people in Ramallah, the PA's seat of power, one gets a different picture.

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Firstly, there is the "elephant in the room" – the International Criminal Court's decision that the court may investigate Israel for war crimes also allows it to investigate Hamas for war crimes. This came as a surprise to Hamas, which has demanded that the PLO somehow remove this part of the ruling, though it is unclear how the PLO would do that.

Then there is the serious and as-yet unsolved problem of the Palestinians' requirement to establish a joint political list that will express the return of the National Union. This demand is acceptable to Fatah and Hamas, but it has not been agreed upon, and there will be further dialogue regarding this issue. A joint list between rivals is acceptable in Palestinian culture and is called tazkiya, or "partnership agreement."

Hamas will wait to see what happens in The Hague. If the tribunal decides to launch an investigation, a violent confrontation in the West Bank between Fatah and Hamas could break out. Fatah would fear that a partnership with Hamas could hurt its legitimacy since Israel would be able to make the claim that due to the formal connection between Fatah and Hamas, the Palestinian state recognized by the ICC is a terrorist state, the leaders of which must all be held accountable for war crimes.

By hosting the talks in Cairo, Egypt seeks to display its leadership in the Arab world and turn Gaza's energies northward toward Israel and the West Bank and away from the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt.

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Ramallah takes pride in its achievements in the Istanbul talks in September 2020, in which Hamas and Qatar agreed to recognize the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinians, but doing so allowed Hamas leaders from the West Bank (in exile) such as Khalid Mashaal and Saleh al-Arouri to gain legitimacy in the race to succeed Abbas.

Will Fatah accept this? And what will happen with Fatah's internal differences, the status of Marwan Barghouti and Muhammad Dahlan?

It is doubtful if these problems will be resolved by May – if at all.

Featured on JNS.org, this article was originally published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

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On Nov. 17, the Palestinian Authority announced it would restore security cooperation with Israel and agreed to receive tax monies Israel had collected for it. Despite this, however, the PA's prospects for the near future remain gloomy.

The Arab Spring changed priorities in the Middle East. Observers must be careful to avoid the common mistake of judging the PA's prospects through the binary view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the truer, wider assessment should be regional. The Palestinians must make decisions with their eyes focused on their natural milieu – the Arab Sunni world – and not Turkey, Iran or the Shi'ite world in general. In the new Middle East reality, the Sunni Arabs find themselves siding with Israel, not with the Palestinians.

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What makes things even worse for PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is that the Israeli-Arab Sunni alliance is attracting European powers such as France because of the Turkish-French tensions in the Mediterranean and the proxy war in Libya. President-elect Joe Biden cannot ignore or dismiss these real facts on the ground. What he can do is convince the PA and Israel to return to the negotiation table. In other words, not to challenge the Israeli-Arab Sunni alliance but to add the PA to it.

The PA's hesitation in this regard is due to its fear of losing Turkey and Iran as diplomatic cards to use, and being compelled to rely on Qatar to balance the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. During the Trump term, this was not possible. In a Biden presidency, the PA hopes it can keep the Sunni world while placing Turkey and Qatar on the side without losing them. This is especially important to Abbas because of the challenge he faces from political rival Mohammed Dahlan, who lives in the United Arab Emirates. Relying only on the Gulf with no other cards to play means strengthening Dahlan's loyalists in the West Bank and the Palestinian diaspora.

Abbas' shuffling of cards with the fake reconciliation talks in Turkey led by the Qatari proxies Jibril Rajoub (Fatah) and Saleh Arouri (Hamas) was considered anti-Trump. In the Arab Sunni world, however, the maneuver was deemed dangerous.

The first Arab state alarmed by the Fatah-Hamas talks was Jordan. The very prospect of Hamas gaining power in the West Bank is a horror for the Hashemite Kingdom. Although the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a subsidiary, is a legitimate power in Jordan as a political party, Hamas is seen as its dangerous armed wing.

According to Palestinian sources, Jordan recently exploited the visit of a senior American figure who has open doors to both Trump and Biden to convince Abbas to draw back from his Hamas track and return to the negotiating table with Israel. The American official promised to work with Biden, once elected, to renew the talks with Israel. Apparently, Jordan also applied its diplomacy in Washington in this regard.

During the fake talks between Fatah's Rajoub and Hamas's Arouri in Turkey, Abbas considered giving his approval to elections with a joint Hamas-Fatah list – but not actually elections – to bring fresh relevance to the long-forgotten and bypassed "Palestinian problem."

On Nov. 17, the PA announced it would restore PA-Israel security cooperation, accept $100 million a month in tax money collected for it by Israel and restore salaries to public workers. With that, Abbas is signaling to the Biden administration his readiness to return to negotiations, but on the PLO's terms. That includes restoration of American aid, a repeal of Trump's policies on Jerusalem and the US embassy, 1967 boundaries and a solution for Palestinian refugees.

Those maximalist negotiating points do not fit the new mood of the Arab Sunni countries, that prefer the bargaining approach and a compromise on borders in the West Bank over the PLO's myth of a "popular struggle," even a political struggle. These Sunni countries acquiesced to the Trump moves regarding Jerusalem, but the issue of Jerusalem is very sensitive in inter-Arab-Muslim struggles and deserves a separate examination.

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An issue that concerns the Arab Sunni powers is the refocusing on human-rights issues that Biden, like former President Barack Obama, almost surely will adopt. Worried Saudi and Egyptian voices are already being heard.

The news that Trump lost the elections was received in Ramallah with relief not so much because of political prospects of renewing the peace talks, but because the Trump plan had annulled the PLO doctrine of liberating Palestine by "struggle" – military or political. The path of "struggle" led the Palestinians to a deadlock; the path of a "deal" led to the normalization agreements between Israel and the Gulf states. Today, the term "peace" is associated with the Gulf and not with Palestine, and the incentive of Western leaders to invest in the Palestinian problem to win their Nobel prizes is dramatically reduced.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The PA has already announced the cessation of security coordination with Israel. However, my discussions with Palestinian sources indicate that coordination continues in alternative ways, and IDF forces continue to operate in the PA territories with the knowledge of Palestinian security forces.

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As long as Jordan's border crossings are in Israel's hands, the PA cannot detach itself from the security coordination with Israel. Without such cooperation, the PA's leaders will not be able to cross over to Jordan, and that would sever their ties with the Arab world.

Is the implied threat to renew terrorism realistic? No.

Arafat launched the Second Intifada when he had logistical support in Jordan and beyond, in Syria, Sudan and Iran. Today's Jordan is not Jordan from back then, and Jordanian security forces are now blocking Palestinian terrorist activity from being launched from their territory.

The Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, with ties to the royal palace, is also opposed to "Hamasification" within Jordan, and is careful not to arm itself or allow any branch to follow Hamas's footsteps.

Large arsenals can be found in the refugee camps and cities of the West Bank, such as Yaabed, Jenin, Tulkarm and Nablus, but these are weapons provided to supporters of dissident Mohammed Dahlan and are reserved for the expected violent power struggle after Abbas leaves the scene. So far, the violence against the IDF has been mostly throwing stones; these firearms are being saved – at least for now – for internal conflicts.

Fatah's Tanzim militia, which is a criminal organization in nationalist camouflage, is better off maintaining the status quo because it is good for business. They do not want to challenge the IDF or for Abbas to intervene. Therefore, they do not provoke the IDF, nor do they challenge Abbas, as long as the Palestinian security forces maintain their distance from the refugee camps.

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Surprisingly, Hamas also has no interest in overthrowing Abbas. Hamas understands that as long as Abbas demands full control of Gaza, Israel will not overthrow Hamas rule there, because Abbas will fill the vacuum. There is a shared interest between Hamas and Israel: Israel wants to keep Hamas rule in Gaza to prevent an expansion of an Abbas-led Palestinian state, a state that would have a safe passage route between the West Bank and Gaza, bisecting Israel.

If terrorism is limited and security coordination continues, what will happen?

Part of the Tanzim seeks to oust PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh's technocratic government precisely because it has managed the coronavirus crisis well. They want to replace it with "government of organizations," including Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). This was at the center of the talks between Hamas leaders Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh on the one hand, and Fatah's Abbas on the other. However, since then, there has been a break in talks between the PA and the PFLP. Meanwhile, a picture posted by Iran, showing Haniyeh as the Palestinian leader of the al-Aqsa "liberation," must have cooled the enthusiasm, if any, for a deal with Hamas.

If so, what will we see in the future from the Fatah-led government, considering the restrictions on a real terror war? Possibly another edition of "Popular Struggle" – stones, firebombs, and the like, if anything at all. In the absence of any real violent options, the PA will turn to a diplomatic struggle, dealing its cards with Jordan, Europe and the Democratic Party in the United States.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

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The trigger for the turmoil among the refugees was the Lebanese Labor Ministry's actions against foreign workers in the state, including the Palestinians, who, even after all the years that have passed, are still considered guests and cannot receive work permits.

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The Syrian crisis caused a deep demographic change in Lebanon after one million Sunni Syrians flooded the country, including many Palestinians from the Syrian camps. The change has introduced many radical elements and reinforced various al-Qaida groups in the camps in Lebanon.

Lebanon doesn't want them to set down roots in the country, and in any case, the Lebanese hate the Syrians and want to throw them out and to use the opportunity to get rid of the Palestinians.

Now, along comes US President Donald Trump with his plan negating the Palestinian "right of return" and Lebanon is signaling that it doesn't approve. The Palestinians are signaling that they want to be absorbed into Lebanon and don't believe the Palestine Liberation Organization slogans of their "immigration" to Palestine.

Generally, the crisis in Syria severed the Palestinians there from the PLO that was unconcerned about them – almost 4,000 Palestinian men, women, and children were killed in the civil war. The Palestinians formed ad hoc groups to represent and care for themselves. No refugee from Syria wants to go to Palestine; they all want to go to Turkey and beyond, to Europe.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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From a historical point of view, the Hashemites having been pushed out as the guardians of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina makes it extremely difficult for them to come to terms with losing guardianship over the Al-Aqsa mosque. Jordanian spokesmen have expressed themselves harshly on this issue, saying that this is a red line and that Jordan will reconsider all of its regional alliances as a result of such a move.

Developments behind the scenes with regard to the management of the Islamic waqf should be noted in this connection. At first, Jordan reached an agreement with Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas about a change in the waqf administration and the inclusion of Fatah personnel in it. Although neither have said so officially, this was a signal to Saudi Arabia that Jordan and Abbas are the landlords of the mosques and will not allow themselves to be pushed out.

However, just when it seemed that Jordan and the PA had created a united front against Saudi Arabia, they began to clash over who would actually lead the new waqf administration.

Jordan saw to it that the addition of senior Fatah officials would not violate Jordan's practical control of the council, but the PA in Ramallah had other ideas. Sources in eastern Jerusalem report an all-out war is underway over the leadership of the new council. Ramallah wants to appoint Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, an Abbas loyalist, to lead the council. Jordan is completely opposed; it offered leadership of the council to Sheikh Ekrima Sa'id Sabri. Abbas removed Sabri, who had been appointed by Yasser Arafat, as mufti of Jerusalem back in 2006, reportedly for his growing popularity and dangerous political views. Sheikh Hussein was appointed by Abbas as Sabri's successor. Sources revealed that when Ramallah found out, Tanzim-Fatah forces threatened Sheikh Sabri. He informed the Jordanians that he had been threatened and thus could not take them up on their offer. Thus after a brief honeymoon, Jordan and Ramallah are now again divided over Jerusalem.

Before the recent summit in Tunis, Jordan's King Abdullah took an interesting step. He met with King Hassan II of Morocco, who is also from the Hashemite dynasty, in other words from the family of sharifs [guardians] that claim descent from the prophet Mohammed.

Morocco is also currently fighting local Wahhabist elements and attributes this pressure to Saudi Arabia. Relations between Morocco and the Saudis have chilled a great deal as a result. The two Hashemite kings have thus identified a joint interest and are uniting against what they attribute to Saudi Arabia's strong influence over the design of the U.S. plan.

This article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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