Gaza must decide its own political future — before the world does for us

October 16, 2025
Mahmoud Mushtaha

We cannot repeat the slow death of Oslo nor replace Hamas with another detached faction, but instead rethink the foundations of our political culture.

Palestinians watch as other families return from the southern parts of the Gaza Strip to the north, along the coastal Al-Rashid road October 10, 2025

On Monday, world leaders gathered in Sharm El-Sheikh to promote what they described as a new “path toward peace” in Gaza. The summit was ostensibly intended to consolidate the phases of the ceasefire and outline a long-term governance and reconstruction plan for the Strip. Yet it ended with an ambiguous roadmap and an uncertain future for Palestinians — who, as usual, were entirely left out from the conversation.

No representatives from Gaza were present in those meetings, nor was there any public consultation or transparency about what was being discussed. For people in Gaza, information came only in fragments, filtered through foreign media and speculation, leaving them unsure what political bargains are being shaped in their name.

At the head of these discussions is the United States, which continues to refuse to recognize Palestine as a state, while simultaneously rejecting the Palestinian Authority’s representation at the UN. Foreign diplomats speak of my homeland’s prospects as if it were a technical problem to be managed, and negotiate a “future” for Gaza without acknowledging its political existence or the right of its people to representation.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s political system has collapsed. Hamas’ senior leadership has been killed, detained, or cut off, the PA remains absent, and no credible body exists to represent more than 2 million displaced civilians. Inside the Strip, clashes have erupted between Hamas and rival Palestinian militias, with armed confrontations and public executions spreading fear among civilians. These scenes have raised deep concerns that a new wave of internal violence could inflict even greater pain on an already shattered population.

What unfolded in Sharm El-Sheikh was not an effort to bring real change for Palestinians, but rather another act of regional choreography — a vision of a Middle East built around Israeli and U.S. interests, not Palestinian rights.

Based on what we know so far, U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, which he touts as one that will lead to “strong, durable, and everlasting peace,” will see Israel retain control of the Strip’s borders, airspace, and aid flows, with the very international actors who armed and financed its genocidal assault now acting as mediators and monitors of compliance.

This plan says nothing of ending the siege or dismantling the occupation, but instead looks to undermine Palestinian autonomy by imposing external oversight and governance. It imagines a pacified Gaza; subdued enough to pose no threat to Israel, yet still denied the power to protect or rebuild Palestinian life.

News outlets herald the ceasefire deal and Gaza plan as a “breakthrough.” Diplomats speak of confidence-building steps. Officials in Washington, Cairo, and Doha talk as if quiet skies were proof of progress. But for Gazans, this is only a fragile pause amid death and devastation — a moment to dig through the rubble, search for any survivors, and count the dead.

Erasing Gaza’s political agency

For decades, ceasefires and so-called peace plans in Gaza have been used as instruments of control, aiming to de-escalate rather than confront the causes of conflict: siege, displacement, and occupation. This latest iteration is no different.

At this stage, two potential scenarios are being quietly outlined. The first envisions that after the current exchange of prisoners concludes, a second phase would compel Hamas to surrender its weapons and dissolve its governing structures.

At the center of this version lies a proposal long circulating in Western and Arab capitals: to deploy an International Stabilization Force (ISF) to oversee Gaza’s “post-war transition.” The plan would install a temporary technocratic Palestinian committee tasked with administering daily affairs under the supervision of an international board, reportedly involving Trump himself and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, before eventually transferring authority to a “reformed” PA.

The arrangement echoes familiar models in which external oversight has substituted for genuine sovereignty — most notably in southern Lebanon under UNIFIL and in the West Bank under U.S.-led security coordination between the PA and Israel — frameworks that have long proved their failure.

In this version of the future, Gaza would be rebuilt just enough for its people to forget the question of liberation. Over time, Gazans would be encouraged to trade freedom for electricity, dignity for permits, and sovereignty for the illusion of stability. The goal is not only to suppress resistance but to make people forget why it existed in the first place.

The second scenario would unfold if Hamas refuses to surrender its weapons after releasing the Israeli hostages. In that case, Israel would maintain control over more than half of the Strip and claim that Hamas is violating the agreement as a pretext for renewed attacks, targeted incursions, and the ongoing destruction of civilian infrastructure.

Both scenarios, in different ways, seek to erase Gaza’s political agency; one through pacification and induced amnesia, the other through attrition and indefinite siege. Both would ultimately leave untouched the architecture of Israeli control that has defined Gaza for nearly two decades, where Israel remains free to calibrate the level of pressure — easing the blockade when international scrutiny intensifies, tightening it again whenever Gaza dares to assert autonomy.

And while the available draft of the deal reads less like a peace agreement than a blueprint for continued subjugation and fragmentation, what is most alarming is what we do not yet know. Reports suggest the existence of secret annexes to the agreement, and the size and composition of the proposed international force, the duration of its mandate, and the extent of U.S. participation all remain unclear.

This secrecy is not incidental. By keeping the full details of the agreement hidden, negotiators deny Palestinians the ability to shape, influence, or even comprehend the conditions that will govern their lives.

A need to rethink strategy

Now that the outlines of the ceasefire, however shadowy, are beginning to surface, and the question of who will govern Gaza becomes relevant again, Palestinians must take responsibility — not for what was done to us, but for how we forge a path toward dignity and sovereignty. The most urgent question is who will define the direction of our national movement.

For decades, we have lived within frameworks designed by others: the Oslo Accords, the blockade, the endless cycle of wars, ceasefires, and reconstruction. If this moment is to mean anything beyond mere survival, it must begin with self-reflection. We cannot limit our outrage to foreign powers while remaining silent about our own failures of vision and leadership.

The starting point is popular legitimacy, something neither Hamas nor the PA can claim without significant reform. Hamas has ruled Gaza for 18 years — long enough to assert absolute control, but not to advance the cause of liberation. When it won the 2006 elections before later seizing control of the Strip, it did so on the credible basis that diplomacy had failed and that resistance, however costly, was the only language Israel understood.

The movement sought deterrence through confrontation and steadfastness, believing this path would compel Israel to make concessions. But the strategy was fatally flawed. Without parallel diplomacy or a unified national vision, militancy could not break through Israel’s siege and only deepened Gaza’s isolation. Over time, Hamas’ defiance became static — unable to achieve victory, yet impossible to defeat — and increasingly alienated the group from the public it claimed to defend.

The PA, meanwhile, has for nearly three decades maintained an illusion of autonomy in the West Bank, burdened with civilian administration while doing the occupier’s bidding in security matters. It holds no control over borders, resources, mobility, or even its own tax revenue, and cannot protect a single village from settlers. In the eyes of the world, it remains the “legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people, but this legitimacy is upheld by the same international structures that sustain the occupation.

Crucially, not a single Palestinian leader, neither from Hamas nor from the PA, has addressed the public with honesty or clarity about what is being negotiated in our name. This silence exposes a deeper crisis — the lack of transparency and accountability — that has plagued Palestinian politics far longer than this current chapter.

Civil society, unions, professional associations, student groups, and local councils: these are the groups that should form the basis of our political revival. While not perfect, they remain the only fragments of self-governance that survived decades of occupation and factional control.

Resistance must also be redefined. When armed struggle brings only devastation to the very people it seeks to defend, it ends up serving the occupier rather than challenging it.

Of course, no people can live indefinitely under suffocation without pushing back. History shows that as Israel increases pressure on Palestinians, through siege, land dispossession, or outright violence, it inevitably provokes a response. But while the right to resist occupation is inalienable, its form must evolve with reality.

Effective resistance must be multidimensional — political, economic, legal, and cultural. It should erode the occupation not only through armed confrontation, but through pressure and delegitimization. Israel, after all, is an extension of Western power and its survival depends on Western patronage, which is why the threats of arms embargoes, cultural boycotts, and sanctions are so potent.

This is not a call to abandon armed struggle, but to give it purpose. Resistance must serve a political vision, not persist as reflex. Violence without strategy strengthens the occupier’s claim to “self-defense” and undermines our own; its power endures by turning its “security” into our submission. This illusion breaks only when Palestinian actions, armed or otherwise, are united by a single political aim accountable to the people that bear the brunt of Israel’s genocidal violence.

What is required now

As Gazans, we have paid an unimaginably heavy price for the October 7 attacks, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. While Hamas cannot be absolved of responsibility for our predicament, what has happened to Gaza is not the consequence of a single group’s actions, but the culmination of decades of siege, occupation, and broader political failure.

Even before October 7, normal life in Gaza was an illusion built on permission. Israel decided what could enter and what could leave — fuel, medicine, concrete, even books. The siege was as psychological as it was physical: a way of shrinking what people could imagine. While we learned to make life out of this scarcity, to turn every pause in bombing into rebuilding, I refuse to pass on this cycle of trauma to the next generation.

When I write to my family and friends still in Gaza, there have often been days of silence before a short message arrives: “We moved again,” or “There are no places to stay.” Nothing more. These fragments are the reality behind every political statement now being debated. They remind me that our leadership’s failure to adapt and unify is not abstract — it determines who eats, who has shelter, and who survives.

If two years of genocide have taught us anything, it is that the Palestinian national movement can no longer afford to operate through slogans or by clinging to outdated political visions. If we truly seek liberation, we cannot repeat the slow death of Oslo or replace Hamas with another faction detached from the people.

What is required now is to rethink the very foundations of our political culture, and to build new forms of political organization that can outlast despair. Israel has failed to erase the Palestinian people, but through its destruction of Gaza, it has exposed the bankruptcy of every system that claimed to manage us.