Washington negotiations: an attempt at legitimization or a new step toward liquidating our national liberation cause?

While the ultra-racist and supremacist Jewish settler flag demonstration took place in Jerusalem the day before yesterday, which reinforces the occupation government's vision, and while more massacres are being committed in Gaza, behind the scenes, unannounced negotiations are taking place these days between the United States and Hamas, under Egyptian and Qatari sponsorship. These negotiations are based on a paper said to have been drafted by Palestinian researcher Bishara Bahbah, according to media sources, in coordination with US envoy Witkoff. These developments, which have been the subject of conflicting reports, come amid the ongoing Israeli holocaust in Gaza, the ethnic cleansing and destruction of West Bank refugee camps, and the faltering of the Palestinian political track, as well as the October 7th track, despite the right and legitimacy of resistance. This is due to miscalculations and a lack of understanding of the essence of the Zionist movement and its project, which will not accept any political path that achieves self-determination and freedom for our people. There is also the erosion of popular confidence in the policies of waiting and silence, as well as in both the official Arab and international reality.
But reading these movements requires a political awareness that goes beyond the media headlines. The issue is not simply an attempt to end the war or seek humanitarian arrangements. Rather, it relates to the essence of the Palestinian national liberation project, and even to the future of the Palestinian cause as a whole.
The ongoing negotiations are not a political recognition of Hamas or a change in the traditional American position. Rather, they are an attempt to employ Hamas, through the international Muslim Brotherhood movement, within functional arrangements to control the situation in Gaza after the war. This is in line with the previous experience during the so-called Arab Spring project to destroy the nation-state in order to implement the New Middle East project, which is being fully implemented today with new realities. On the other hand, a scenario resembling "administrative self-rule" is being proposed at the Palestinian level, through a long-term truce and local administration supported by external funding, without any commitment to a comprehensive political solution or to ending the occupation.
These arrangements seek to transform Gaza into a separate entity managed by security and economics, while the occupation continues its settlement and Judaization project in the West Bank and Jerusalem and establishes the reality of geographical isolation "Bantos" that may enjoy a form of expanded self-administration, while maintaining the occupation's security control over the land, resources, borders and airspace, as well as the division as a tool to continue undermining Palestinian unity.
The paper attributed to Bishara Bahbah, which is said to be currently being discussed in these negotiations, proposes lines consistent with this vision of a long-term truce, an indirect security role, and perhaps later local electoral arrangements. However, in my opinion, it essentially removes Gaza from the Palestinian national framework and reproduces the division under an international and Arab umbrella.
This is not a national initiative, but rather a recycled version of the "neutralization in exchange for funding" idea, integrating Hamas into a regional and international system that guarantees Israel's security. This is similar to what Washington and its allies in the West Bank are seeking through "political domestication" using money, normalization, and threats against the Palestinian Authority, which absorbs the anger of the Arab street without achieving the minimum national rights for our Palestinian people.
The United States, Israel, and some regional powers are working to impose new facts on the ground under the banner of "reconstruction." However, the real goal is to end the liberation character of the Palestinian national cause and transform it into a manageable humanitarian, security, and economic issue, far removed from any path leading to ending the settler occupation or achieving the national political rights of our Palestinian people.
These movements are taking place in the shadow of the marginalization of the Palestine Liberation Organization, whose role and legacy have been targeted since the beginning, the siege and decline of the role of the Palestinian National Authority, the disintegration of the Palestinian house due to the division and the crisis of our political system, the absence of a unified national strategy that relies on the capabilities of our people as a source of authority, the absence of a clear program in light of the policies of reactions, and engagement with the policies of official Arab positions that do not possess the will to confront Trump's vision, but rather have paid him the price for protecting and preserving it.
In the face of these risks, a comprehensive national action is necessary based on the following axes:
1. Rebuilding the Palestine Liberation Organization in action, not just words, on transparent democratic and representative foundations, including all political, civil and independent groups of our people, and restoring its role as a comprehensive national authority, the sole legitimate representative and an instrument for democratic national liberation. This requires, for this purpose, the revival of the Fatah movement and the restoration of its role as the pillar of the Palestinian national movement, alongside the rest of the national factions, forces and independents, based on the very idea of its existence.
2. Rejecting any solutions that perpetuate division or turn Gaza into a separate entity or the West Bank into isolated enclaves with the presence of settlements.
3. Developing a comprehensive resistance strategy—political, legal, and popular—that restores national rights and the standing of our liberation cause in the eyes of the world. This strategy builds on the growing international popular solidarity, which has become an embarrassment to Western governments and is contributing to Israel's isolation on the world stage, in addition to the internal structural crisis it is currently suffering from.
4. Reforming the role and position of the PLO and developing its structure as a broad national front based on the unity of the people, land, and cause, and confronting attempts to transform the Palestinian struggle into a regional negotiating card between capitals.
What is being proposed today through these announced negotiations in the absence of political negotiations on the entire Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which must lead to the end of the occupation of all occupied territories first, is not a solution, but rather a political trap to gradually liquidate the Palestinian issue, somewhat similar in meaning to the repercussions of the Oslo Accords, which Israel buried and brought us to where we are today. It is believed that this will take place under the guise of calm and “humanitarian” aid, the mechanisms of which are being revealed today.
If the national and democratic forces do not assume their responsibilities, not only at the Palestinian level, we may soon find ourselves facing a new Palestinian reality in which Gaza is separated from the West Bank, and the issue is reduced to managing life affairs that have nothing to do with democratic national liberation and dignity, nor with embodying the principle of the right to self-determination and defeating the colonial settlement project in Palestine, which is intended to expand in the region through Israel’s dominant role, regardless of the disagreements taking place between Netanyahu and Trump, who is seeking to achieve the “grand bargain,” especially after his recent tour to pay the price and the expected roles of the parties included in the visit.