Salam Fayyad, a former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority seen as a reformist, argued on Thursday that Hamas should be brought into the Palestine Liberation Organization and that the U.S. should support a United Nations Security Council resolution backing Palestinians’ right to statehood.

Fayyad said at the Aspen Security Forum that a weakness in the cease-fire proposal laid out by the Biden administration is the lack of consideration and specificity about the post-war period in Gaza. 

He argued that Hamas cannot be eliminated as an influential force in Gaza, and that the only way forward is to bring it formally into the PLO and make it part of the future governing process.

“Hamas is a political movement and ideology,” Fayyad said. “The bottom line is that this is a political movement you cannot destroy. The only way you can deal with the political ideology is to have a competitive ideology that is seen as competitive by the people.”

Fayyad said that Hamas remains the dominant political force in Gaza, and that the PLO will have to make it a part of its coalition in order to preserve its standing and legitimacy with the Palestinian people. He noted that Hamas rose to prominence because of perceived failures of the PLO and Palestinian Authority.

The former PA leader laid out the same proposal in a recent op-ed.

He argued that the post-war path forward for the West Bank and Gaza requires a “consensus government, one that is not of the factions or by the factions,” and other reforms to the Palestinian Authority so that it can provide better governance. He said that plan must be ready to be implemented as soon as a cease-fire is reached.

Without such consensus, he said that Gaza will likely return to its pre-war status quo.

Pressed on the possibility that a militarized Hamas would seize control of the PLO by force, Fayyad argued that it’s premature to discuss the possibility of demilitarization prior to statehood talks.

He said that the interim period should include a “cease-fire and commitment to nonviolence” in all of Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Along those lines, Fayyad accused Israel of failing to follow through on the “simplest” of expectations in earlier peace processes — ceasing military incursions into parts of the West Bank administered exclusively by the Palestinian Authority, known as Area A.

Fayyad argued that the Israeli government is not currently prepared to offer any assurances on a path toward Palestinian statehood, so the U.S. and the international community should instead pursue a “work-around.”

He proposed a U.N. Security Council resolution that stops short of recognizing Palestinian statehood, but recognizes the Palestinians’ right to a sovereign state along the 1967 borders. He said that such a resolution could also help provide Saudi Arabia the assurances it wants to advance normalization with Israel.

“That’s the best service the United States can do in service of its own objective” of a two-state solution, Fayyad said, adding that such a resolution would provide a level of reciprocity between Israel and the PA.

He dismissed the idea of unilateral international recognition of a Palestinian state as “political fiction.”

“The statehood, the contours of it, the borders and everything else, has to be negotiated with Israel at some point. But you can’t hold the process hostage to this current government of Israel,” Fayyad said.

Fayyad said that a UNSC resolution would also act as a guardrail against the possibility of Israeli annexation of more the West Bank, which he said is a risk regardless of the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, but could be a particular risk if former President Donald Trump returns to office. He said that any chance for a future Palestinian state is currently in jeopardy, especially if Trump is re-elected.

“The U.S. is uniquely positioned to do something about this,” Fayyad said. “I think the U.S. really has a moral obligation to do something about it, against the backdrop of something that could foreclose forever, the possibility of us in a state emerging on the territory occupied in 1967.”