The Palestinian Authority may become a casualty of the Trump plan and the new Western consensus

Western support for a two-state solution was never intended to create Palestinian statehood — it was meant to justify the existence of the Palestinian Authority. Now that the Western consensus is shifting, so are thoughts about the need for the PA.

Monodoweiss, By Qassam Muaddi October 17, 2025

Total and lasting “forever” peace. Not just for Palestine, but the entire Middle East.

That’s what U.S. President Donald Trump promised at the signing of the Gaza ceasefire deal in Egypt last week. One way the plan differs from previous incarnations of the “peace process” is that it abandons the framework of the two-state solution as the accepted way of resolving the Palestine question.

Historically, the U.S. model for integrating Israel into the region was the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994 after the Oslo Accords, which was given limited governing responsibilities over the West Bank and Gaza with the nominal assumption that it would be the precursor to a Palestinian state.

Trump’s plan tries to bypass all of this, putting Gaza under the administration of a U.S.-led board of “peace” headed by Trump himself. The PA has no clear role in running the Strip — at least not according to Trump’s 20 points, which mentions that the PA would have to undergo a series of “reforms” that could, in some unspecified future, establish “a path” toward Palestinian self-determination. During the reconstruction phase, the West Bank and Gaza would be politically split.

Israel has made its rejection of a Palestinian state official policy. But it is also a matter of national consensus across the Israeli political spectrum, as recently articulated by Benny Gantz, a member of the opposition, in the New York Times.

It goes back to well before October 7…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza two years ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that the PA will have no role in governing the Strip in the future. Yet the calls by Ben-Gvir and the Israeli far right to abolish the PA altogether are not so easy to implement.

The PA runs civil affairs in the West Bank, responsibilities that would otherwise fall to Israel. It also sustains the image of a peace process on which most Western countries and the UN base their official positions, anchored in the rhetoric of a “two-state solution.”

But nominal Western support for a two-state solution was never meant to actually implement it. Rather, the function this support has ended up performing has been to maintain the political rationale for supporting the continued existence of the PA. The demands of the maximalist Israeli far right have placed this in jeopardy.

If Trump’s “peace” plan, if one can call it that, is to have a chance, it would need some European buy-in, especially in funding and bankrolling the so-called “reforms.” That puts it at odds with the maximalist Israeli position.

Last Monday, as the leaders of 20 countries met in Egypt’s Sharm al-Sheikh to sign the Gaza ceasefire deal, the President of the European Council, Antonio Costa, told the media that the EU would increase its aid to the PA by 1.6 billion euros. He added that European intervention will focus on humanitarian aid, police training, governance, border control, and PA reforms, to ensure that “in the future, Palestine will be a democratic state, free of terrorism.”

The new global consensus

The PA has already adopted a political platform that recognizes Israel, rejects armed resistance, and commits to security cooperation. But the PA is also part of a larger Palestinian political spectrum. Even if there aren’t elections, the PA is still bound to operate in relation to other Palestinian political forces. This sets a bare minimum “floor” that the PA is obliged to maintain, which is the rhetorical insistence on a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and perhaps as an afterthought, paying some lip service to the right of return. Decades of Palestinian struggle since the Nakba have made it impossible for the PA to rhetorically sidestep this political ethos, even though it has done virtually everything on the ground to render it materially meaningless.

In other words, the PA cannot abandon its pretenses to being Palestinian and representing some notion of Palestinian nationhood. This is what Palestinians fear the “reforms” are about — turning the PA into a self-governing and apolitical body shorn of any remnants of Palestinian national culture and memory………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/the-trump-plan-the-palestinian-authority-and-the-new-western-consensus/