The first thing you need to know is that Palestinian leadership is divided.
On one side there's Hamas. They control the Gaza Strip.
It's their military wing that was firing some of the rockets at Israel.
The US and Israel consider Hamas terrorists.
In Gaza Hamas is led by Yahya Sinwar. Then there's the Palestinian Authority.
The PA was set up in 1994 and it's effectively like the Palestinian
government but today with Hamas in control of Gaza
the PA's control is very limited except for parts of the West Bank and
even there it's Israel, as the occupying power, that has control
over most things. Since 2005 the PA has been controlled by
Fatah a political party led by Mahmoud Abbas.
He's the Palestinian president and represents Palestine on the
international stage. This split between Hamas and the
Palestinian Authority creates all sorts of problems and raises the
question of who actually represents the Palestinians.
The PA was going to hold elections in May but Mahmoud Abbas cancelled them at
the last minute. He said it was because of Israeli
restrictions on campaigning and voting in occupied East Jerusalem.
But some Palestinians question if that's the whole story.
Now, this political division has existed for a long time
but it now seems there's another centre of political power that's getting
stronger
and that's the power of the Palestinian people themselves
on the streets and across social media.
So that's an overview of the situation on the Palestinian side.
The second thing you need to know is that on the Israeli side politics are
also in a mess. In March Israel held its fourth election in two years without a
clear result. There were weeks of deal making and now
Benjamin Netanyahu is being pushed out after 12 years in power.
His opponents formed a coalition with Naftali Bennett — a far-right politician
set to be the new prime minister. He's supported by Yair Lapid
a centrist who's expected to take over as prime minister in two years.
So how does all this play into the Israeli-Palestinian issue?
Well, of course, it's hard to say definitively. The issue
hasn't come up much in any of the recent election campaigns
and most Israelis support keeping things with the Palestinians
pretty much as they are. But here's what we know about the new leaders.
OK, so on the Palestinian side we've got a major political split and on the
Israeli side we've got chronic political uncertainty even with
the new coalition. It doesn't exactly look great when it
comes to finding the kind of committed — maybe even visionary — political
action needed to bring lasting peace.
Now the other big factor in all this is the US's relationship with Israel
because the third thing you need to know is that the US has always been Israel's
biggest supporter.
For Palestinians it often feels like this friendship comes at their expense
and under President Trump it reached a whole new level.
He recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the US embassy
there from Tel Aviv. This ignored Palestinian claims to East
Jerusalem as their capital. He pulled more than $200 million
in aid to the Palestinian Authority and the US had opposed Israeli
settlements but Trump reversed that policy.
So going forward the question is how the Biden administration
might do things differently. And so far there has been a change of tone
compared to the Trump years.
But when Israel started bombing Gaza in May it took
eight days for Biden to express support for a ceasefire.
The US also blocked three attempts by the UN Security Council to condemn the
violence and around the same time news broke
about a US weapons sale to Israel worth $735 million.
But when it comes to US support for Israel
we've recently seen a lot more open criticism.
But does the US leadership have any appetite to really deal with
the underlying issues?
The thing is
it seems that it's never been the right time for peace.
But from Palestine to the US to cities around the world
the voices calling for some kind of change are getting louder.
For politicians the pressure is on.
If you want to know more about some of the issues that caused the violence we
saw in May check out our episode on how the fighting between Israelis and
Palestinians got so bad. You can find that and other Start Here
content on YouTube and our social media pages.
See you next week.