Salam Fayyad on the ‘Day After’ in Gaza

Amid the recurring thrust and parry of attacks between Israel and Iran in recent months, a parallel track of cease-fire talks has also followed a pattern: a flurry of diplomacy followed by a familiar sense of resignation and failure. Amid these disappointments, the broader question of unified Palestinian governance—let alone a two-state solution—seems forgotten, like an old fever dream. 

Tell that to Salam Fayyad. The former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority once presided over a period of state-building and governance that raised hopes for the future. Today, as a professor at Princeton University, Fayyad’s name is often invoked as a possible leader for a hypothetical “day after”—a period following a cease-fire when the Palestinian territories can renounce violence and rebuild. 

I spoke with Fayyad on FP Live. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page. What follows is a condensed and edited transcript. 

Ravi Agrawal: It’s been more than 10 months since Oct. 7, and it seems to me that one reason things have become so protracted is that there’s no commonly accepted definition of “victory.” Israel defines victory as completely degrading Hamas. You have written that that is an impossible goal, and that, in fact, Hamas can claim victory simply for surviving for so long. As an outsider observing this, it feels there’s no end in sight.

Salam Fayyad: Sadly, it appears that way. From the very beginning, it appeared to me that this was going to be a war to the end, relative to the objectives declared by the government of Israel. First things first, let’s have this war of aggression come to an end. That’s what is important.

Granted, I was among the first to suggest that we should think about the “day after” the war, which should have come 10 months ago, in my humble opinion. But that didn’t happen. And to the best of my knowledge, so far, there is no consensus on how to manage that when the day actually arrives. But when it does, not a day too soon that will be.

What’s really important is to bring this round of diplomacy to fruition. We are at the point where the United States must assert more presence and try to persuade [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to stop moving the goalposts on this operation. This most recent round of diplomacy, which took the form of multiple meetings and discussions and negotiations, started out with President [Joe] Biden in May announcing a plan for bringing the war to an end. Then at the time, he said that was identical to what Prime Minister Netanyahu himself suggested as a way to actually begin to end the war. But since then, Israel continued to change the parameters of a deal in a way that has made getting to an agreement an elusive task at best. And here we are, months after Biden made that announcement and after the U.N. enshrined that declaration into a Security Council resolution, still at the point where we are not able to see an end to the war.

RA: Do you see the United States as a fair arbiter?

SF: I can tell you that the United States has to do more. My sense is the United States wishes for this war to end. With the problem having become an internal issue for the United States in many important ways, I can see the United States believes this war needs to come to an end.

But at the same time, I just don’t see it doing enough. It’s time for the United States to put its foot down and stop saying after each round of diplomacy [that] Israel agreed and now it’s really up to Hamas. How many times have we heard this? Netanyahu keeps on changing the parameters, and then he announces he agreed to the plan as amended by him. And then you have the United States saying, “Israel agrees with the plan, and it’s up to Hamas.” That game has to stop. It’s about time to call Netanyahu out on this.

To answer your question directly, my sense is that it’s time for the United States, if it really means what it says, to bring the war to an end. And this is well within what it can do.

RA: And you think it has the leverage to do that?

SF: Israel has been on a path that basically says “my way or the highway.” It’s a matter that has caused a lot of political commotion around the world. To the extent that it really matters, and I think it should, it’s time for the international community—and the United States, in particular—to actually put its foot down and say, enough already. The United States does have that capacity.

I have dealt with the U.S. administrations many years, and they say all the time that it’s up to the parties. We cannot really get them to do what they do not want to do or they’re not willing to do. But look, the issue has become a domestic policy issue for the United States, not to mention in its own standing in the region and internationally. Either it is a superpower—and it is—or are we supposed to believe that with all its might and influence and instruments at its disposal, it is unable to convince a country that ultimately depends on the United States for its ability to continue to prosecute the war, to stop the war, or to accept conditions that the U.S. administration itself thought were reasonable? That’s a legitimate question.

RA: I want to jump to what is known as “the day after.” This assumes that we have a cease-fire somehow, even though it seems very unlikely right now. You laid out some proposals for what that day after could look like. The first step you’ve said is that one has to include Hamas in the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization]. Can you explain how that works? Because it’s a huge stumbling block for everyone to accept.

SF: Well, it has not been tried actually. If by everyone you mean Israel, Israel’s not going to accept anything. Israel, from the very beginning, said “no” to a Palestinian Authority presence in Gaza. And it continues to say that. That’s Israel’s position. The international community is another method. Where the international community, including the United States, would eventually stand on the question of including Hamas in Palestinian policy is a proposition that is yet to be tested. And part of the reason, if not the main reason why that has not happened yet, is because we Palestinians have not moved to make it happen.

Going back to late October of last year, a couple of weeks after Oct. 7, I proposed including Hamas in the PLO, which is the umbrella organization for all Palestinian factions. And it is referred to as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and it’s accepted as such—broadly, internationally, regionally. But it’s an entity that has lost much of its standing over time, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the failure of the paradigm on which it stood upon the signing of the Oslo Accords, when it signaled its willingness to accept a state on the territories as [they were] occupied in 1967 as a solution to the conflict. But since the signing of the Oslo Accords, there has been a fracture in that Palestinian body politic that became deeper and deeper over time. In any event, the bet that the PLO made on Oslo did not actually pan out, as everybody knows very well. This is a failure of doctrine, if you will. So it’s not surprising for its standing to diminish with the Palestinian public, not only in Palestine but throughout the world. And that vacuum was going to be filled by ideologies that were competing with the PLO’s platform to begin with.

RA: How do you square that circle, given that even the United States has said it would reject any long-term governance of Gaza by Hamas?

SF: That’s part of the solution of getting Palestinian governance in postwar Gaza. Part of the solution is to bring everyone around the table—that’s the PLO—and that must include factions that are opposed to the process, because continuing to exclude them would continue to make the PLO irrelevant in the minds of the Palestinian people. It’s supposed to represent all of us. It’s supposed to be our sole legitimate representative. So there is a basic, fundamental, flagrant contradiction of terms here. How can an entity be the sole legitimate representative of the people when the majority of Palestinians do not support this platform?

Now, if you bring everybody around the table, and the important task of that forum is to consent to a government that is not of the factions to govern in Gaza and the West Bank. That’s the major advance. And I submit it’s a necessary step in order to restore Palestinian governance in Gaza. So Hamas is not going to be a part of the government. And, by the way, they signaled their willingness to accept that formulation, when all of the factions went to Beijing for talks and signed a [unity] document. All Palestinian factions, including Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and everyone else, agree with a formulation where the PLO, under a temporary leadership framework, would convene with the key objective being a unified leadership.

The most immediate task is the formation of a non-factional government to assume responsibility for the needs of all people in Gaza and in the West Bank. The goal was not for Hamas to govern Gaza, but for Hamas to be included in a leadership framework within the PLO. A key task of that forum would be to agree to a Palestinian Authority government that’s able to deal with the needs of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. But the first step is a process of political accommodation that can bring about the unity that is necessary for this proposed formula to actually be implemented. I truly believe if all Palestinians band together, the international community, including the United States, will find a way to deal with this.

If you want to connect all of this to the idea of restoring a pathway to Palestinian statehood on the territory Israel occupied in 1967, part of what needs to be firmly in place would be a commitment to nonviolence. The question I ask everyone: How credible can a Palestinian commitment to nonviolence be if Hamas and those with the guns are not a part of that agreement? The PLO, as it stands now, does not include those forces, the armed factions. Unless they are part of that consensus, no commitment to nonviolence can or should be viewed as credible. And I believe, personally, that is an essential ingredient for moving forward.

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RA: Aaron David Miller, as you know, is a longtime Mideast negotiator representing several U.S. administrations. And he writes in to say that the two-state solution is “an idea for a galaxy far, far away,” in part because of a crisis of leadership. And he’s wondering, “Where is the leader who has legitimacy to create a unified Palestinian national movement with one gun, one authority, and one negotiating position?”

SF: The two-state solution has been pronounced dead or near death since the turn of the century. I don’t know if one should be so definitive about the fate of a solution between us, Palestinians and Israelis. Now, a lot has to change, for sure, in order for that to become reality. I said recently, particularly in connection with Saudi normalization, that effort needs to be inclusive of a Palestinian component. 

RA: But to get to the second part of Aaron’s question, where is the leader who has legitimacy to speak for the Palestinian people?

SF: I think Aaron would agree with me that for much too long the search has been on for a leader rather than a process that could produce leadership. We have not had elections since 2005 and 2006. That’s a long period of time. It’s difficult to see how elections can have their place under current conditions. That’s why I’m saying what we really need is a multiyear transitional period in which there is commitment to nonviolence.

A key component of that is recognition of the Palestinian people’s right to a sovereign state on the territory Israel occupied in 1967. That is different from recognizing the state of Palestine, which some 150 countries already do. I’m talking about recognition of our right to statehood. I think any process, particularly given the failures of the past more than three decades, that begins without a clear and unequivocal statement of recognition of our natural rights as a people, including our right to a sovereign state on the territory Israel occupied in 1967, is not going to yield better results than what we have experienced in the past.

Palestinian leadership engaged in a highly transactional process under Oslo. Aaron David Miller knows that very well. They did so in the hope and expectation that recognizing the right of the state of Israel to exist in peace and security was going to deliver a [Palestinian] state in another five years. When that did not happen, and it eluded those who tried to make that happen, one administration after another as well as Palestinians, Arabs, Israelis, I think it’s time to ask, “Are we on the right path?” The answer is no.

All you have to do is listen to the rhetoric coming out from the government of Israel, from Mr. Netanyahu himself. He actually ran for prime minister for the first time in 1996 on a platform that was opposed to Oslo. Every election he used to say: “Not on my watch. There’s not going to ever be sovereignty anywhere between the River Jordan and Mediterranean except for Israel.” So how can you really take a process seriously if it begins with this denial of our most basic of rights?

RA: Are you, in effect, saying that none of the things you’re proposing is possible as long as Netanyahu is prime minister?

SF: I submit to you, if a piece of paper is submitted to the government of Israel to sign that says, we agree with the idea of a reversible and revocable path to a Palestinian state, they would not sign it because they are opposed to the idea of Palestinian statehood. So, therefore, I proposed a workaround to this issue should there be a next phase. You cannot condition movement on Palestinian statehood, which is essential, on Israel joining the party on the outset. It’s not going to. And to continue to hold that process hostage would continue to leave the region in the sorry state it has been in for many decades. Even the war in Gaza right now is a manifestation of that.

So my proposal is to begin concretely with an unequivocally clear statement recognizing our natural rights as a people, including the right to self-determination, including the right to a sovereign state on the territory Israel occupied in 1967. Enshrine that in the Security Council resolution. Israel does not have to agree to that. That’s the international community, that’s the highest level of international decision-making. Have that right enshrined in international law and then work on getting this transition. When things begin to calm down, we have space in which to actually project the reality of our state on the ground.

If we continue to wait for Mr. Netanyahu or anyone else governing Israel to say yes, they’re not about to give it up. That’s fundamentally what this is about. They’re not accepting of the principle of Palestinian statehood.

I understand the importance of security, understand the need for the political process to be underpinned by firm commitment to nonviolence, and for that to be subject to all kinds of monitoring. I’m all for that, as a matter of fact. But for that process to really mean something, and for it to really begin to give the Palestinian people a sense of hope about a better tomorrow, that means being able to live as free people, with dignity. I think that’s when you begin to see a little bit of balance restored.

But to continue to say you need to somehow audition for your right to something no other people in the world is actually expected to live up to? The days for this are done. It is no longer acceptable for the needs of one party, or the narrative of one party, to be prioritized over the needs of the other.

RA: As you talk about a possible transitional government, has anyone approached you to be a part of such a government?

SF: No, there has not been anything like that. There have been reports of my involvement in postwar Gaza. These are conversations about me, but none of them has been with me.

RA: What is your sense of how a President [Donald] Trump or President [Kamala] Harris would move the needle on what seems to be an intractable problem?

SF: I’m not very invested in thinking about elections in terms of how they bear on our situation because we’ve been through many administrations before. I’m interested in a day when we Palestinians can actually go to the polls and elect our own leadership. I’m more interested in what we do for ourselves to most doggedly invest in projecting the reality of our statehood on the ground in the face of occupation, on the way to ending it.

But changes have taken place recently, especially amongst younger people. Certainly, the war in Gaza has become a kitchen-table conversation in many homes in the United States. The fact that it got the mention it did at the Democratic National Convention the other day, Israel’s security needs and all of that was recognized, if you listen carefully you also must have sensed the great enthusiasm with which reference to Palestinian needs was received by delegates. That’s significant.

But let’s just begin with the most basic thing of all. If this is about two states, one of them has been in existence for more than three-quarters of a century. So the process has to be redefined in terms of the outcome that should matter the most, the emergence of that other state.