After Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, the illusion of a workable two-state solution collapsed and with it, the credibility of centralized Arab governance in the territories. Palestinians see the Palestinian Authority as corrupt and illegitimate, with polling showing a majority demanding Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s resignation. Hamas, meanwhile, has demonstrated it can wage terror but not administer a functioning civil society. The idea that all Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank can unify under a single political authority has failed. What is needed now is not a rebranded version of the 1993 Oslo Accords but a different approach: decentralized Arab emirates with internal autonomy under overarching Israeli control.
Even if Israel were to annex the West Bank, absorbing millions of Arab residents as full citizens would undermine Israel’s Jewish majority and alter the character of the state.
The weakness of centralized Arab governance has been evident for decades. Western attempts to impose nation-state templates on clan-based societies have repeatedly collapsed across the Middle East—from Libya to Iraq to Syria—where tribal, familial, and local identities supersede national ones. The same dynamics shape Arab communities in the West Bank, where rival clans, factions, and militias have more authority than the Palestinian Authority. International Crisis Group reporting has documented how clans often fill the power vacuum as the Palestinian Authority weakens, and recent incidents across the West Bank confirm that these local structures, not Ramallah, are the true arbiters of order. Attempts to impose a single centralized authority on such a fragmented social landscape only ensure instability.
Demography adds another constraint. Even if Israel were to annex the West Bank, absorbing millions of Arab residents as full citizens would undermine Israel’s Jewish majority and alter the character of the state. Demographers at the Israel Democracy Institute have said repeatedly that long-term stability requires preserving a strong Jewish majority within sovereign Israel. That reality does not negate historical or legal claims to the territory; it only means political sovereignty and demographic integration cannot happen simultaneously. What Israel needs is a model that grants Arabs meaningful self-rule without forcing demographic absorption.
Mordechai Kedar has argued for a series of emirates that would follow the natural structure of Arab social organization: autonomous city-state emirates, each governed by its dominant local clan or municipal elite rather than by an artificial centralized authority. In this framework, Gaza, Hebron, Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah, Jericho, and other regions govern their own internal affairs—education, civil policing, local commerce, and municipal services—according to their established clan structures. These clans command far more local legitimacy than the Palestinian Authority ever has. Meanwhile, Israel retains responsibility for external sovereignty: borders, airspace, demilitarization, counterterrorism, and strategic security. This mirrors the internal-external sovereignty divide that underpins successful models like the Persian Gulf emirates, where decentralized governance co-exists with unified security.
Under this arrangement, the Palestinian Authority would not disappear but would transform into little more than an umbrella. It would handle donor relations, mediate intra-emirate disputes, and provide a diplomatic interface for the international community. It would have no army, no borders, and no coercive power. This preserves a recognizable institutional address for diplomacy without replicating the structural vulnerabilities that plagued the Palestinian Authority. Arab municipal leaders themselves have already explored such a system, including proposals for locally governed “city emirates” supported by Israeli security.
Under this arrangement, the Palestinian Authority would not disappear but would transform into little more than an umbrella.
If the autonomous Arab emirates choose, they may voluntarily form a loose federation. Such a federation would have no external sovereignty, no foreign policy, and no military capability, preventing any single faction or ideology from dominating the others. This provides flexibility: Arabs in these regions gain authentic self-rule, while Israel retains the strategic supremacy needed to prevent the reemergence of a hostile state.
The practical benefits are significant. Arabs receive internal autonomy consistent with their cultural and social structures, rather than external templates imposed by foreign diplomats. Local governance becomes accountable to communities rather than distant elites. Economic development becomes a tool for stability rather than a bargaining chip in negotiations. For Israel, the arrangement avoids both the demographic risks of full annexation and the security dangers of a sovereign Palestinian state. Israel retains control over borders, airspace, and counterterrorism—pillars of Israeli defense doctrine—without micromanaging everyday civil life.
After October 7, 2023, returning to the Oslo paradigm is neither realistic nor responsible. A decentralized emirates model—grounded in Arab social realities, aligned with Israeli security requirements, and resilient against extremist capture—offers the first workable framework in decades. It corrects the mistake of Dennis Ross and the original Oslo negotiators who ignored the grassroots Palestinians who drove the first intifada in favor of reviving the exiled Palestine Liberation Organization and returning the mercurial and corrupt Yasser Arafat to relevance in the mistaken belief that a dictator could deliver. Rather than double down on a failed strategy, it is essential to declare the Oslo assumptions dead and put forward another model more consistent with Palestinian society.
