The past few years have seen a dramatic shift in American attitudes about Israel-Palestine. A poll of registered U.S. voters found that half of them believe Israel committed a genocide in Gaza, and a significant proportion of American Jews are saying the same. Votes calling to condition or restrict military aid to Israel are taking place in the U.S. Congress, which was unthinkable just a few years ago. Attitudes of Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank are also shifting and show that majority support a Palestinian state that exists alongside Israel. Meanwhile, extremist Israeli ministers are moving in the opposite direction and talking about abolishing the two-state framework.
But what is not improving much is the situation on the ground for ordinary Palestinians. It’s true that Palestinians in Gaza have what is being called a cease-fire. But at least 800 Palestinians have been killed since it was enacted—two-thirds the number of Israelis killed on Oct. 7, 2023. Now, Palestinians in Gaza are mostly penned into half of the former Gaza Strip, with limited movement and ability to grow their economy. Palestinians in the West Bank face a wave of Israeli settler violence, new settlements, checkpoints, and outposts.
The past few years have seen a dramatic shift in American attitudes about Israel-Palestine. A poll of registered U.S. voters found that half of them believe Israel committed a genocide in Gaza, and a significant proportion of American Jews are saying the same. Votes calling to condition or restrict military aid to Israel are taking place in the U.S. Congress, which was unthinkable just a few years ago. Attitudes of Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank are also shifting and show that majority support a Palestinian state that exists alongside Israel. Meanwhile, extremist Israeli ministers are moving in the opposite direction and talking about abolishing the two-state framework.
But what is not improving much is the situation on the ground for ordinary Palestinians. It’s true that Palestinians in Gaza have what is being called a cease-fire. But at least 800 Palestinians have been killed since it was enacted—two-thirds the number of Israelis killed on Oct. 7, 2023. Now, Palestinians in Gaza are mostly penned into half of the former Gaza Strip, with limited movement and ability to grow their economy. Palestinians in the West Bank face a wave of Israeli settler violence, new settlements, checkpoints, and outposts.
So, what can Americans—and their elected representatives—who want to improve the awful situation on the ground do? Not surprisingly, there are a range of ideas. Some believe that reforming the Palestinian Authority with help drive change, while others call for Washington to cut off aid to Israel.
Those steps may spark some change. But as I’ve seen firsthand over my many years of government service working on these issues, things are rarely that simple. And in this case, there are also other steps that Washington should take if it wants to advance a just solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
First, U.S. politicians and policymakers should reform the laws that govern the U.S.-Palestinian relationship and tie the United States’ hands behind its back. Second, they should reform the structures that govern the Israeli-Palestinian relationship itself. Finally, they should push for Palestinian elections to empower more representative and effective Palestinian leadership.
Over the last four decades, the U.S. Congress has played an outsized role in creating layers of legislative barriers to constrain the executive branch and prevent the deepening of the U.S.-Palestinian relationship. Updated annually through the appropriations process, these laws are ostensibly derived from a desire to fight terrorism—a good goal. But those very same laws have also ended up damaging the United States’ ability to undertake diplomacy. If you can’t talk to someone effectively, then you can’t solve problems or bridge differences with them effectively either.
Preventing a Palestinian office or embassy from existing in Washington may seem like a way to punish the Palestinian leadership, but it also harms the United States and its own ability to undertake the kind of diplomacy that can prevent conflict from happening in the first place. Polls show an overwhelming shift in American attitudes, with more people now wanting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict solved and equal rights for Palestinians. In this context, not having a Palestinian presence in Washington is diplomatic insanity. To solve this, Congress can and should undertake a review of existing laws—most notably the Anti-Terrorism act of 1987—with an eye toward reforms that will enable diplomacy.
On the U.S.-Palestinian front, there’s another change that could make a difference—one that need not wait for a new Congress or even a new president (even if it most likely will need to). While the United States and the international community voted to create a Palestinian state nearly 80 years ago, that state never came into being.
Recognizing a Palestinian state, as some European governments have recently done, isn’t a magic wand that can will such a state into existence or create equal rights for all. But it would allow the U.S. president to create a more normal U.S.-Palestinian diplomatic relationship. For example, it would enable the appointment of a Palestinian ambassador to the United States and a U.S. ambassador to Palestine. It might be quite some time before actual embassies are established, but teams could operate remotely in the meantime. Though Congress would control foreign aid, such change would enable productive day-to-day channels, which would allow for actual diplomacy to take place—something both we and the Palestinians have long lacked in this relationship.
Reforming how the United States legally engages the Palestinian leadership can also help trigger a second reform—namely of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. For more than 30 years, their formal relationship has been an unequal one, structured such that one side controls the other. Some exclusively blame Israel for this. But the Oslo Accords, signed at the White House in 1993 by both the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel, also codify the dominance.
The Oslo agreement allows Israel control of the exits and entrances to the West Bank, through which Palestinians must pass to reach the rest of the world. Israel controls the airwaves through which Palestinian mobile phone signals travel. Israel also controls the source of majority of the funds that the Palestinian Authority (PA) uses to run its government, and it is preventing billions of dollars from reaching the Palestinian government, which would use the money to pay for ordinary expenses.
As a result, the Palestinian economy has stagnated while Israel’s economy has soared. Israeli per capita GDP, which was about twelve times higher than Palestinian GDP when the Oslo Accords were signed, is now twenty-one times higher. That astonishing income inequality also drives instability and conflict.
The Oslo Accords—and the 1994 Paris Protocol that governs the Israeli-Palestinian economic relationship—have long been viewed as a triumph. But they actually contain a key flaw that has prevented the establishment of real peace in the long term. In the accords, a far weaker party gave up most of its agency to its stronger adversary. Israeli control has created a contradiction for the Palestinian side. It is nearly impossible for the PLO-PA structure to be both a national liberation movement seeking the freedom of their people while also being judged by how well they serve as a partner for Israel. Until a modicum of Palestinian self-reliance is restored, actual progress toward peace will remain elusive.
There are several measures that could help change the Israeli-Palestinian relationship and redress this imbalance. The Paris Protocol needs to be changed so that Palestinians can collect their own import taxes, bypassing Israel entirely. Additional proposals that give Palestinians more agency in their economic management include the creation of a Palestinian digital currency, the direct collection by Palestinians of their own import taxes, and ironclad guarantees that Israel will never again confiscate Palestinian funds. Beyond these purely economic measures, Palestinians need freedom of movement not only within the West Bank, but externally and between the West Bank and Gaza.
Finally, Palestinians need national elections. Democratic elections, after all, are often the best mechanism to spur reform. Palestinians have a perfectly capable elections authority that just oversaw municipal elections in the West Bank and even one area of Gaza. What is needed now is political adjustments on all sides. The United States should shift from being ambivalent or even opposed to Palestinian elections to advocating for them. Israel, in turn, should acquiesce to the Palestinians holding national elections, not only for president but also for the now-defunct Palestinian Legislative Council.
These elections should take place not only in the West Bank, but also in the Gaza Strip and, as they have in the past, East Jerusalem. To mitigate concerns about Hamas or other violent actors benefitting from elections, candidates and parties could make commitments, akin to those found in the German Constitution, that political parties be required to maintain a commitment to a “free democratic basic order.” Indeed, Israel would also benefit from more robustly implementing its own existing restrictions, under which candidates and parties—such as Kach in 1988 and Kahane Chai in 1992—can be banned from running in the Knesset for racism.
Palestinians, for their part, would benefit from going forward with elections even under imperfect conditions, such as Israeli attempts to restrict voting in areas under Israel’s control. They should defiantly plow ahead and vote where they can. Indeed, elections are the most powerful tool of reform—and not having them has only led to internal Palestinian strife and anger.
None of these changes will secure equality, freedom, or security for Palestinians or Israeli-Palestinian peace overnight or even in the medium term. Nor will they appeal to those who want more dramatic action. But the reality is that in this conflict, as in so many areas, ongoing interactions are driven by underlying frameworks and laws. Taking these steps to reform the laws and agreements that govern both the U.S.-Palestinian and the Israeli-Palestinian relationships will at least open the door for actual progress.
This is not to say that other bold steps should not be taken. But without these reforms, the situation on the ground will likely grow even more tragic—and that is something that Washington should not let happen.
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