Palestinian leaders are playing dangerous games, again.

Fatah's willingness to flirt with integrating Hamas into the Palestinian Authority is regionally treacherous, which is exactly what the terror group desires.

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The reactions to the October 7th massacre of the leadership of Fatah (which runs the Palestinian Authority) are no less than morally scandalous.

Politically, they make perfect sense of course, since Fatah knows it may very well need to integrate Hamas into the Palestinian Authority “the day after” the Israel-Hamas war ends, which would be a victory for Hamas and political suicide for Fatah.

Within Hamas there are voices, especially among the leadership outside of Gaza, who call for Hamas to be integrated into the Palestinian Authority, a tiring goal for the terror group.

It seems that the foreign leaders see integration not only as a long-term way to take control of the Palestine Liberation Organization (and hence the the Palestinian Authority), but also as a method of political survival following the disaster that Hamas unleashed on Gaza — turning it into its personal fiefdom with little-to-no regard for the two million people who live there, during the last 16 years.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Fatah has tried to reach understandings and agreements with Hamas. During the Oslo Accords, Yasser Arafat refused to dismantle Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, even though their terror activities were one of the main reasons for the failure of the political process. And during the Second Intifada, Hamas battalions joined the Palestinian Authority’s terrorism against Israel.

Then, at the conclusion of the Second Intifada, then-Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas decided against disbanding Hamas and other “resistance” organizations, instead signing a “calm” agreement with them in 2005, in order to quiet the Gaza Strip in preparation for the implementation of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan from Gaza in the summer of 2005.

This move by Abbas (now the Authority’s chairman) was in stark contrast to the positions of Israel and the United States, but his need to maintain the appearance of Palestinian solidarity prevailed over other interests.

It is worth noting that the Hamas-Fatah agreement used the Arabic term “tahidia” and not “hodna” (which means ceasefire), thus demonstrating that, from the beginning, the “resistance” organizations did not intend to lay down their weapons, just to create an appearance of reconciliation, in order to not harm Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.

However, in the six months preceding the disengagement, terrorist activities did not stop completely, and Hamas boasted that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza — just like Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon — was the result of an armed struggle, rather than a political move. This position, along with the Palestinian Authority reeking of corruption, brought Hamas victory during the 2006 Legislative Council elections in Gaza.

In 2007, Hamas and Fatah signed an agreement in Riyadh, mediated by Saudi Arabia, which led to the establishment of a Palestinian unity government. Five months later, Hamas violently expelled the Palestinian Authority from Gaza — including throwing political opponents off the top of buildings and public executions — in complete defiance of the agreement’s first clause which stated “a complete prohibition of the shedding of Palestinian blood, and reliance on dialogue alone as a basis for resolving the political disputes in the Palestinian arena.”

In 2013, the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt was reportedly ordered to be closed by the U.S. until forces loyal to Abbas regained control, prompting a Hamas official to accuse the Palestinian Authority leadership of playing a major role in enforcing this blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Then, during the midst of negotiations to resolve the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, the Shin Bet (Israel’s secret service) revealed an alleged plot by Hamas to depose Fatah in the West Bank, by deploying Hamas cells to incite a third intifada and overwhelm Palestinian Authority forces. Abbas said the plot was “a grave threat to the unity of the Palestinian people and its future.”

In 2018, Abbas accused Hamas of orchestrating an “assassination attempt” on then-Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah as his convoy entered the Gaza Strip. Analysts said the attack was intended to put a strain on a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement signed the previous year, which was supposed to end a decade of division between two parallel governments operating in Gaza and the West Bank.

In response to Abbas’ accusations of an assassination attempt, Hamas called for general elections, including presidential, parliamentary, and national council elections, “so that the Palestinian people can choose their leadership.”

Both parties agreed in 2020 to new elections, but they were postponed “indefinitely” by Abbas. While the Palestinian Authority cited Israeli restrictions on Jerusalem residents voting as the cause for this delay, many surmise that it was more due to Abbas’ low popularity in recent polls, with challenges not only from Hamas, but also from two Fatah splinter groups.

Why, then, is Fatah apparently now so willing to integrate Hamas into the Palestinian Authority, when it is clearly not in its self-interest? And especially knowing that the United States and Israel, as well as (quietly) Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, would oppose such a move, meaning it has no political viability in the region?

One explanation is weakness or the lack of internal legitimacy, which obliges Abbas and Palestinian Authority leaders to take a position that appeals to public opinion. A survey by the esteemed Palestinian Institute of Khalil Shakaki, conducted after the outbreak of the war, shows that support for Hamas in the West Bank has tripled, while support and trust in Abbas and Fatah have dropped significantly, with 90 percent supporting his resignation.

Furthermore, about 60 percent of Palestinians see the armed struggle as the most effective tool in the struggle against Israel, whereas Fatah has largely favored diplomacy, if we can even call it that.

In this respect, Abbas and Palestinian Authority officials are no different in their behavior than some leaders of Arab countries — Jordan in particular — who do not condemn Hamas, just Israel, often in harsh terms. However, while Jordan adhered to the peace agreement, it is difficult at this time to know to what extent Abbas still adheres to a political process. His advisor, Mahmoud Habash, recently claimed that Abbas condemns Hamas in every meeting he holds with world leaders, but he will not do so publicly as long as the war is ongoing.

Another explanation that is gaining momentum in Israel is that there is no real difference in the positions of Fatah and Hamas, just in tactics to achieve the goal of eliminating Israel and establishing a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea.” Therefore, it would not be surprising if the Soviet-educated Abbas changed his tune, in order to ensure political survival, to fit Hamas’ transparent goals of annihilating the Jewish state.

After all, Hamas has the Palestinian street, as well as Iran and its proxies across the Middle East. Just look at what the Houthis in Yemen are doing to shipping emanating out of the Red Sea, and they are considered one of the “weaker” Iranian proxies. Aside from a wishy-washy U.S. foreign policy and an increasingly irrelevant European Union, geopolitically speaking, who does Fatah have in its corner?

The UAE, which used to fund the Palestinian Authority, is no longer swallowing Abbas’ lies. Even a member of the UAE Federal Council recently said that Abbas is “what we call in Arabic ‘Tager Shanta,’ which is a simple merchant walking around with his bag.”¹

“I think now the UAE has had enough and Saudi Arabia has had enough,” the Emirati lawmaker added.

Despite widening division between the two Palestinian ranks since the 1990s, this is likely why Fatah is flirting with integrating Hamas into the Palestinian Authority, or welcoming its overtures.

Meanwhile, the international community and particularly Israel seem to hope that punishing Hamas militarily and otherwise will simply make the terror group disappear from Gaza and render the strip more pliable, but it might just drive Hamas into Fatah and the Palestinian Authority’s arms, thus hampering a true diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and the Palestinians to resolve, or at least manage, the conflict.

In other words, this is exactly the desired outcome of Hamas — and, by extension, Iran.

The good news, at least for Israel, is that both Fatah and Hamas would likely continue to vie for the other’s destruc­tion and down­fall, creating echoes of “fit­na,” an Ara­bic term used to describe inter­nal Mus­lim con­flicts.²

Interestingly, “fit­na” comes from the Arabic root word “fatana,” meaning to remove impurities.³ Which is exactly what Fatah and the Palestinian Authority should do if they want to play a role in Gaza on the so-called “day after” the Israel-Hamas war — or allow Hamas to exploit a crisis they ignited, and hijack whatever future the Palestinians have.

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1. “UAE lawmaker: ‘Hamas and the PA are both corrupt and murderers.’” The Jerusalem Post.

2. “Hamas vs. Fatah: The Strug­gle for Palestine.” Jewish Book Council.

3. “What does the word ‘fitna’ mean in its original sense in the Quran?” Quora.