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The United States seems to be poised to reevaluate its tactics in implementing President Donald Trump’s plan for the Gaza Strip. It seems they are considering installing a Palestinian technocrat government and Palestinian police force before assembling their International Stabilization Force (ISF), which they are finding no country wants to be part of.

While this remains very far from acknowledging the rights of the Palestinian people, and even farther from realizing those rights in practice, it is a real vindication for the strategic decisions that the assortment of Palestinian factions — not only Hamas — made in the wake of the diminishment of Israel’s genocide in October.

According to recent reports, the governments of Egypt, Türkiye, and Qatar have managed to make the Trump administration understand that their push for quick Palestinian disarmament in Gaza and the subsequent occupation of the Strip by an international force that would not include Palestinians is a non-starter.

Now, Washington is trying to come up with a formula that is more in keeping with what they’ve heard from their allies and would still be something they can sell to Israel. For its part, Israel has been conspicuously silent about all of this, probably waiting for their prime minister’s visit to Washington next week to voice their objections.

On paper, that all seems to amount to a minor victory at best, but digging deeper, we can see it vindicates the strategy the Palestinians have pursued to end Israel’s genocide and avoid the total surrender that Israel has pursued as the price for ending that horror.

It’s worth keeping in mind that, while most media portray Hamas as the sole conductor of diplomacy in Gaza, decisions that affect all the people of Gaza and Palestine have actually been reached by a consensus of a wide array of Palestinian factions. This has even included Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, although it has been an inconsistent member and has often acted independently, often undermining the loosely unified factions.

That coalition agreed to the first stage of Trump’s plan, in which the militant factions, led by Hamas, ceased their offensive operations against Israelis, released all the remaining living hostages, as well as the bodies of those who are deceased (save two, one Israeli and one Thai hostage, who remain buried under rubble).

However, they never agreed to the rest of the plan, neither accepting nor rejecting it outright. In what was a bold but very risky move, the Palestinians insisted on more negotiations to find an accommodation that would allow Hamas to step aside from governance and lay down their arms without disappearing completely from Palestine or sacrificing the principle that........

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