By: Rafael Wexler
Edited By: Joseph Schneider
Since the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on Israel and the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War, there have been multiple governance shifts in Palestine, especially with the Palestinian Authority (PA).
On February 26, PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh resigned, having served since 2019. On March 14, PA President Mahmoud Abbas appointed the Palestinian Investment Fund Chairman Mohammad Mustafa as the new PA Prime Minister. Abbas tasked Mustafa with introducing widespread government reforms. The White House welcomed the appointment, stating that “a reformed [PA] is essential to delivering results for the Palestinian people and establishing the conditions for stability in both the West Bank and [the Gaza Strip].” The next day, Hamas criticized the appointment of Mustafa as the new PA Prime Minister, accusing the PA of “individual decisions and engaging in superficial and empty steps.”
On March 20, a mission statement written by PA Prime Minister Mustafa outlined his commitment to appoint a “non-partisan, technocratic government” backed by the international community and the Palestinian people. It also said that the PA intended to hold presidential and parliamentary elections. However, the mission statement lacked a timetable, stating that it would depend on “realities on the ground” in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. By March 28, PA Prime Minister Mustafa had formed his new cabinet.
On April 23, PA Prime Minister Mustafa announced a series of reforms focusing on strengthening Palestinian institutions, improving the PA’s fiscal health, and empowering the private sector. However, according to the Wilson Center, progress has been modest. Reforms on governance have stalled as of June, with internal discontent among certain Fatah factions who, rather than swallow their pride and promote the reforms unconditionally, would prefer that PA President Abbas reach out to Hamas to incorporate their perspective on the reform package.
On November 27, PA President Mahmoud Abbas released a statement naming Palestinian National Council Chairman Rawhi Fattouh as a temporary successor in the event of a vacancy. Once a vacancy occurs, Fattouh would serve as interim President for up to 90 days while new elections are supposed to be held. If, for any reason, elections cannot be held during that time, the Palestinian Central Council can give Fattouh one extension to stay as interim President until elections can happen. Like most Palestinian political figures, Fattouh is not clear of controversy. In March 2008, Fattouh was caught smuggling 3,000 mobile phones in his car on his way from Jordan to the West Bank using Israeli-issued VIP passes. In May 2023, during a Nakba Day event in Algeria, Fattouh claimed that Palestinians have been living in Palestine for over 1.5 million years and that Jerusalem was founded by the Jebusites—whom he identifies as Palestinian forefathers—as far back as 5,000 BCE. In April 2024, during an interview on Official Palestinian Authority TV, Fattouh peddled the conspiratorial narrative that Israel is a colonialist/imperialist implant that the West deliberately created to prevent Arab unity.
Milton Friedman once said that “only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”
It is my utmost belief that if the stagnation and preservation of the status quo within the Palestinian Authority were to continue, there would be no path to Palestinian statehood through a two-state solution by the end of the Israel-Hamas War. To achieve statehood, the Palestinian Authority must embrace political shock therapy—or become obsolete.
“Shock therapy” in economics theorizes that sudden, dramatic changes in national economic policy can turn an economy from state-controlled to free-market. The political aspect of the policies was thoroughly discussed in Naomi Klein’s 2007 book The Shock Doctrine. However, she failed to realize that the definition of “shock therapy” can also be exclusively political rather than an aspect of economic policies. “Political shock therapy” would instead refer to the deliberate and rapid introduction of wide-scale political or institutional change as a response to a perceived substantial crisis or transition period. This includes transforming policies on a wholesale basis rather than introducing them piecemeal.
The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA) and their Initiative for Palestinian Authority Accountability and Reform (IPAAR) have a list of objectives that provide the best foundations for the political shock therapy to prescribe the PA. The list includes forcing the PA to moderate its violent incitement against Israel and Jews, ceasing the PA’s subversion of Israel’s existence as the nation-state of the Jewish people on the world stage, exposing the PA’s antisemitic rhetoric and political warfare in international institutions, and promoting a moderate PA that will advance a free and democratic society that truly represents the interests of Palestinians.
But this does not go as far as it needs to. Political shock therapy will not work without an aggregate dismantling of the influence, infrastructural setup, and ideology of all the Palestinian political or militant groups involved in the commission of acts of violence and terrorism. I call this process “De-Intifadaization.” Much like denazification after the Second World War, decommunization after the Cold War, and de-baathification after Operation Iraqi Freedom, this new process would seek to eliminate the symbols, practices, and leaders of the groups (i.e. the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hamas, the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Resistance Committees, etc.) from public life and entrench a new political order without the oppressiveness or extremity of the targeted groups’ legacies. At the end of the day, the outcome will be a Palestine with an uprooted leadership, without violent propaganda, and featuring education reform to bring long-term stability and put the PA on the correct path to a two-state solution.