On May 22, the Palestinian Authority (PA) plans to hold elections for its legislative council (PLC); these are to be followed by presidential elections on July 31 and then, a month later, elections for the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the quasi-parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The last PA elections, held in 2006, led to a Hamas victory in the legislative council, a brief civil war, and the Islamists group’s takeover in Gaza. While it remains possible that the current PA president, Mahmoud Abbas, might find an excuse to cancel the elections, he may have painted himself into a corner. Elliott Abrams believes it likely that Hamas will do very well in the upcoming elections, and fears a repeat of 2006:

From the U.S., Israeli, or Jordanian point of view, these 2021 elections are a nightmare. For Jordan, still in the throes of Hashemite family clashes, a new Hamas presence in the PLC and more importantly in the West Bank would mean nothing but trouble. The real fear in Amman is that Hamas would increase its influence on Jordanian Islamists, enticing them into tougher anti-Israel and anti-Hashemite stands or even into the use of violence. For Israel, which deals with the PA every day on issues from vaccinations to anti-terrorist cooperation, a Hamas presence in the PA and in the West Bank would similarly make an already extremely difficult modus vivendi far harder to maintain. For Washington, the Biden administration’s efforts to rebuild relations with the PA would face an impossible burden if the PA and PLC contain an officially designated terrorist group.

But what if the PLC elections are in fact canceled? This decision lies solely in Abbas’s hands, and it is likely that today he feels trapped by bad choices. While such an outcome avoids the many problems noted here, it deepens the crisis of legitimacy for Abbas, who would still be ruling by decree after fourteen years. Canceling the presidential and PNC elections as well make that problem even worse, leaving Palestinians with no institutional political life, an eighty-six-year-old president-for-life, and no way to address the Fatah-Hamas split either now or when Abbas dies.

The fundamental problem remains what it was in 2006. Neither of the two Palestinian entities, the West Bank and Gaza, is democratically governed, and Gaza is ruled by a terrorist organization that has shown no sign of being willing to abandon violence. These elections may come off, but they will have moved the Palestinian people no closer to being governed peacefully by democratic political parties, nor will they have reinvigorated the “peace process.” Indeed, if Hamas comes to take an official role in the West Bank and in the PLO, the establishment of a Palestinian state will—for better or for worse—be even less realistic than it appears now.

As in Lebanon due to the role of Hizballah, Palestinians face what is for now an impossible task: coping with an armed, aggressive terrorist group that seeks to use political mechanisms to enhance its power but will not disarm and submit itself to democratic control. Elections cannot solve that problem. Elections that enlarge the role of terrorist groups without demanding that they abandon armed struggle simply make it worse.

While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.