For much of the 20th century, Arab nationalism—the idea that a common language and heritage should unite politically the Arabic-speaking peoples—was the dominant ideology of the Middle East. While this ideology has been dying for decades, Emanuele Ottolenghi argues that Israeli’s normalization agreements with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have shown that it is finally dead:

The accords recognize the Jewish and Arab people’s common ancestry in the region, accepting that Jews as a people and their faith are indigenous to the Middle East and have a legitimate right to be there. This affirmation discards two central tenets of Arab nationalism: the inherent rejection of a Jewish state as an alien, colonialist presence in the region and the idea that Arab-Israeli peace must defer to Palestinian grievances. The affirmation thus marks the end of Arab nationalism. Henceforth, the Arab countries that join the accords signal that they intend to pursue their national interest and seek alliances with the Jewish state, each on its own terms and without the need of a pan-Arab strategy.

Arab nationalism, from its inception, engaged both Christian and Muslim intellectuals. It sought to transcend Islam as the basis for political allegiance to, and membership in, the nation. But it never seriously entertained the possibility that Jews, of which there were many across Arab lands, had any part in the project. . . .

[T]he Great Arab Revolt, which pitched the Arab national movement against the Jews, convulsing the British Mandate in Palestine between 1936 and 1939, . . . aligned Arab nationalists with European fascism and its ideological lure, which included a paranoid, conspiracy-minded hatred for Jews. The exclusion of Jews from the Arab nationalist project was final and absolute. They were a foreign implant that did not belong in the region.

War in Yemen and Israel’s devastating 1967 victory over Arab armies further undermined Arab nationalism as a mobilizing force. . . . The 1967 war also marked the beginning of the ascendance of Islamism, a force first born out of the desire to countenance the secular appeal of Arab nationalism in the 1920s but hardly more inclusive. Yet the cause of Palestine, which rallied nationalists from the start, continued to hold regional governments to ransom, forcing them to prioritize the struggle against Israel or delay normalization, even when these actions clearly ran counter to their interests.

While some Arab states will no doubt persist in refusing to make peace with Israel, the Palestinian cause has now been drained of its former potency.

Over the weekend, Elliot Kaufman of the Wall Street Journal reported about a formal letter, signed by five prominent sheikhs from the Judean city of Hebron and addressed to the Israeli economy minister Nir Barkat. The letter proposed that Hebron, one of the West Bank’s largest municipalities, “break out of the Palestinian Authority (PA), establish an emirate of its own, and join the Abraham Accords.” Kaufman spoke with some of the sheikhs, who emphasized their resentment at the PA’s corruption and fecklessness, and their desire for peace.

Responding to these unusual events, Seth Mandel looks back to what he describes as his favorite “‘what if’ moment in the Arab-Israeli conflict,” involving

a plan for the West Bank drawn up in the late 1980s by the former Israeli foreign minister Moshe Arens. The point of the plan was to prioritize local Arab Palestinian leadership instead of facilitating the PLO’s top-down governing approach, which was corrupt and authoritarian from the start.

Mandel, however, is somewhat skeptical about whether such a plan can work in 2025:

Yet, . . . while it is almost surely a better idea than anything the PA has or will come up with, the primary obstacle is not the quality of the plan but its feasibility under current conditions. The Arens plan was a “what if” moment because there was no clear-cut governing structure in the West Bank and the PLO, then led by Yasir Arafat, was trying to direct the Palestinian side of the peace process from abroad (Lebanon, then Tunisia). In fact, Arens’s idea was to hold local elections among the Palestinians in order to build a certain amount of democratic legitimacy into the foundation of the Arab side of the conflict.

Whatever becomes of the Hebron proposal, there is an important lesson for Gaza from the ignored Arens plan: it was a mistake, as one sheikh told Kaufman, to bring in Palestinian leaders who had spent decades in Tunisia and Lebanon to rule the West Bank after Oslo. Likewise, Gaza will do best if led by the people there on the ground, not new leaders imported from the West Bank, Qatar, or anywhere else.