Palestinians take control of an Israeli tank after crossing the border fence with Israel from Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo by Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images

Michael Koplow October 10, 2023

In the aftermath of the unspeakable and multiple failures that led to Saturday’s horrific massacres and abductions of Israelis by Hamas fighters, the recriminations inside of Israel are going to be thick.

Questions abound regarding the Israel Defense Forces’ preparedness and capabilities and the government’s placing its judicial overhaul and de facto West Bank annexation policies above everything else. Israeli society, too, will be challenged to overcome its divisions as the immediate shock wears off and move in a unified direction to address this security and emotional crisis.

But Israeli Jews are not the only people who must undergo this reckoning. Palestinians must as well, and this necessity extends from the bottom rungs of Palestinian society to the top of the Palestinian Authority leadership. Without undergoing a serious internal self-examination, Palestinians will lose another opportunity to turn around decades of failed political tactics and national policies.

The images that have been streaming out of Israel on television and social media since Saturday morning are terrible to behold. Alongside the bloodied victims, both dead and alive, I have been most horrified to see the faces of the Palestinians caught in the frames.

Editor’s note: The videos linked in the coming paragraphs are graphic.

There are Hamas fighters in combat gear, but there are also an alarming number of apparent civilians joining the effort to spirit Israeli hostages back into Gaza. Many wore wide grins as if they were at an adventure park with friends.

I saw ordinary Palestinians seeming to cheer their conquering heroes returning to the streets of Gaza with civilian captives as if their team had just won the World Cup. In one video, they practically knocked each other down for the chance to stomp on dead Israeli bodies.

For all of the outrage at the Hamas commandos, it is the non-Hamas commandos that worry me most. Because they show the extent to which dehumanizing Jew-hatred has penetrated Palestinian society, at least in Gaza, at least in these images flooding social media today.

We have seen celebrations of Palestinian martyrdom before, backed by the Palestinian Authority’s stipends to the surviving relatives of those who die attacking Israelis. But there is a world of difference between handing out baklava after a couple of Israelis are shot or stabbed on the street in Tel Aviv and gleefully abetting the kidnapping of young adults at a desert dance party.

For people like me who have long argued — including in front of Congress two weeks ago — that there is genuine value and an American interest in supporting the Palestinian people rather than Palestinian leaders, the scenes from Saturday present a fundamental challenge.

The gross immorality of Palestinians looking directly into the faces of Israeli innocents and celebrating their imminent torture cannot be ignored, excused, or swept away.

Statements about the right to resist occupation and arguments that all Israelis are complicit in it are abhorrent justifications. Palestinian society must take a step back and exhibit a modicum of humanity in order for the world not to conflate all Palestinians with their terrorist overlords.

Though the number of Palestinians caught on camera participating in Saturday’s horrors may be small, the number of Palestinians who have displayed any visible or discernible objection is also unfortunately small.

That includes the ostensible leaders in the Palestinian Authority, whose reaction to Saturday’s slaughter was no less repugnant for its predictability.

As of this writing, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has not uttered one word of condemnation, regret, sadness or empathy for the victims. The PA appears to be satisfied with simply saying, “I told you so.”

As they have so often, Abbas and his government are squandering a crisis they should exploit to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Hamas to demonstrate that a different approach could actually pay dividends.

If Israel indeed launches a ground operation in Gaza aimed at finally dislodging Hamas, someone will have to run the place when the smoke has cleared. It can’t be Israel. It should be the PA, as many in the international community have urged for 15 years.

For much of that time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unspoken preference was to keep Hamas in power in Gaza while controlling its military capabilities because a divided Palestinian leadership was a weakened Palestinian leadership. That policy disappeared with the carnage of Saturday morning.

Now, more than ever, there is a chance to isolate Hamas and its nihilistic approach, and demonstrate to Palestinians that there are benefits to choosing a different path. The Palestinian Authority could even be part of negotiating an eventual end to an Israeli operation in Gaza, making it easier for them to replace Hamas without looking as if they are simply riding in on Israeli tanks. But that can only work if the Palestinian Authority displays a degree of responsible empathy, which does not include applauding the murder of 1,000 Israeli Jews and the abduction of hundreds more.

Any remotely responsible PA approach would begin with condemning what Hamas did alongside the expected and understandable criticisms of Israeli occupation. So far, the PA has not acted responsibly.

Israelis have long attempted to reckon with the consequences of their country’s actions, in some ways that are satisfactory and in others that fall very short. If Palestinians do not show an inkling now of doing the same, they will end up suffering many consequences of the failure to examine whether their ends justify Saturday’s inhumane and indefensible means.

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