Palestine Between the Israeli Separation Project and the Requirements for Restoring National Decision

The war on Gaza is no longer an emergency military event, nor an additional chapter in the long record of Israeli aggression; it has transformed into an Israeli political tool to entrench an old yet renewed strategic project, the essence of which is to separate the Gaza Strip from the West Bank and to dismantle the Palestinian cause from a national liberation issue to managed humanitarian and security files. This project did not begin with the war, but it has found its most bloody and clear opportunity in it to accelerate its implementation.

What is presented today under the titles of "the day after" or "reconstruction" according to the theory of re-engineering Gazan society and dismantling its national fabric, and canceling its historical role as a lever for Palestinian nationalism, or what is called "preventing the return of violence," does not reflect a serious search for a solution, but rather an attempt to reproduce a permanent reality based on disassembly and fragmentation; the Gaza Strip is managed outside the national context, the West Bank daily erodes due to creeping settlement and annexation, and the Palestinian people are expected to adapt to this reality as if it were an inevitable fate with no escape or alternative.

The Separation Project: A Gateway to Liquidation

The real danger does not lie in the details of the circulating proposals regarding Gaza, but in their political logic. Treating the Gaza Strip as a separate issue from the West Bank, no matter how cloaked in humanitarian or security language, aligns perfectly with the Israeli vision that views separation as a condition for liquidating the idea of a Palestinian state. The war, in this context, is not just a means of deterrence, but a tool to re-engineer the political and geographical reality.

Any formula for managing Gaza, or reconstructing it, or "stabilizing" it, outside the framework of the unity of the land and the Palestinian entity, opens the door to entrenching separation as a fact on the ground, and transforms the occupation from a legal-political issue into an administrative matter subject to rotation.

National Unity: A Political Condition, Not an Ethical Slogan

To defeat this project, it is impossible without rebuilding a new Palestinian national unity, which is not based on sharing ineffective power, nor on reproducing division in more flexible forms, but rather on a clearly defined transitional consensus formula. Unity that is not reduced to reconciliation between two factions, but rather built on a comprehensive political program that restores the idea of one people and one land and unified national representation through consensus and then through ballot boxes.

This formula must be based on three essential elements: the political and legal unity of Gaza and the West Bank, a specific national program that sets an entirely sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital on the 1967 borders as a realistic interim goal, and the reactivation of the Palestine Liberation Organization as the representative framework that is amenable to reform and renewal on democratic national grounds.

The continuation of division, or acceptance of its management, does not mean neutrality, but practically opens the door to solutions imposed from the outside, which reduce the Palestinian cause to a humanitarian file in Gaza and a security file in the West Bank.

No Illusions About the Israeli Interior

The war has shown, beyond any doubt, that Israeli society has not moved toward a moral or political review, but rather toward further extremism and denial. Even the Israeli currents that still talk about the two-state solution have become marginal, weakly influential, and shackled by their fear of confronting the mainstream.

Betting on a near Israeli "awakening" is unrealistic. Any transformations, if they occur, will not be the result of persuasive discourse or moral calls, but rather the result of accumulated external pressure that changes the cost-benefit calculations and redefines the boundaries of what is politically acceptable.

The International Community at a Credibility Test

The United States and Europe today stand before a genuine political and moral test. Dealing with Gaza as a separate humanitarian crisis and with the West Bank as a manageable security file has not brought stability in the past and will not bring it in the future. Security is not built on denying national rights, nor on managing the conflict instead of resolving it.

What is required internationally is not balanced statements but clear positions: rejecting any formula that separates Gaza from the West Bank, linking reconstruction to a genuine political process that ends the occupation, not dismantling Gazan society, supporting Palestinian representation unity instead of sidestepping it, or proceeding to engineer it according to the Israeli vision, and activating accountability mechanisms according to international law, not just based on considerations of power.

As for the BRICS countries, which position themselves as an emerging international power, Palestine also represents a test of the credibility of their discourse regarding a multipolar world based on justice and law, not double standards.

International Solidarity: From Sympathy to Impact

During the war, the world witnessed a remarkable shift in public opinion, especially in the West, where the dominance of the Israeli narrative was broken, and a new legal and moral discourse emerged speaking about genocide and settler colonialism. However, this shift, no matter how significant, will remain limited in impact if it is not invested within a clear Palestinian political vision.

Popular movements do not change policies alone, but they can raise the cost of continued injustice when they translate into institutional pressure in parliaments, universities, unions, markets, and courts. Solidarity becomes a real force only when it is linked to a clear political goal.

A Possible Roadmap

What Palestinians need today is not a miracle, but a realistic political plan based on: the absolute and permanent rejection of the separation of the sector from the West Bank, a transitional national unity with a specific program and agreed-upon inclusive mechanisms at the level of the organization and the Authority's government, internationalizing the cause legally, not just humanely, a strategic partnership with global popular movements, and redefining resistance as a comprehensive national path—political, legal, and popular—that is long-term, and whose source of strength lies in national consensus around its forms and the extent of broad popular engagement in it.

When elites fail, rights do not fall. And when politics is besieged, will is not canceled.

To thwart the separation project is not the task of a specific faction or leadership, but rather a collective national responsibility. Palestine is not reduced to Gaza alone, nor to the West Bank alone, but lies in the unity of land and people, and in an inalienable right to self-determination. This is not a call for confrontation, but a plea for political rationality, in Palestine and the world: there is no stability without justice, no peace without ending the occupation, and no future without the unity of national decision.