No Palestinians, no factions anywhere on the Palestinian spectrum, entered the American-Israeli war on Iran. While some locals and factions have expressed sympathy with Iran, these positions do not amount to strategic alignment. Rather, they are a reflection of the simple fact that the Palestinians’ primary adversary, Benjamin Netanyahu is a partner of this war effort, and Palestinians stand on the opposite side of where he is.
Even before Iran entered the war after a devastating initial blow (with its supreme leader and several senior aides assassinated within hours) Palestinians had already paid a heavy price.
Israel launched its genocidal Gaza war in retaliation for the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, while the West Bank witnessed the most intense military confrontations it had since 1967.
Hamas, which carried out the operation, had called on what it considered allies in the Axis of Resistance to join in its success and build on it in order to begin the battle liberation. The response was uneven. Hezbollah entered a support war alongside Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and the Houthis joined from a distance, at lower intensity. For its part, Iran kept its distance from the outset, denying that it had had any role in the attack and describing it as a purely Palestinian operation.
The current round of the American-Israeli war on Iran immediately raised concerns. First, Palestinians worried about its implications for the trajectory in Gaza, where things had been moving forward through sustained American-led global pressure by Arab and Muslim states.
Second, they worried about the consequences for the West Bank, where Israel’s threats of annexation and settlement expansion have intensified as the world focuses on the broader war. More broadly, they worried that already distant prospects for a political solution have been pushed further out of reach by the barriers erected by Israel’s right-wing government.
These concerns are well founded. As long as the war on Iran, the repercussions of which undermine the interests of countries across the globe, continues to dominate global attention, international efforts will shift toward containing the conflict, managing fallout, and preventing its escalation into a broader regional war.
Before the war, Arab and Muslim countries had built a political safety net for the Palestinian cause, most notably through the New York Conference. That effort reassured Palestinians that their issue remained on the international agenda and that the goal of Palestinian statehood remained viable.
It has shifted the focus of the very Arab and Muslim countries that had led the diplomatic effort that helped create a path forward in Gaza and secured Donald Trump’s rejection of Israeli plans to the West Bank annexation, effectively burying proposals to displace Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. Iran has become the center of concern. For understandable reasons, Pakistan has played a direct role in mediation, hosting negotiations that had seemed all but inconceivable until very recently.
Palestinians, often presented as being among the losers in this war, have a strong stake in seeing it end. Their priority is retaining international attention to their cause and the resumption of the track set for Gaza, which they hope will expand into a broader political process. This trajectory was reflected in United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803, which in fact is the first international resolution that sets a framework for peace based on Palestinian statehood.
The collapse of the first round of talks in Islamabad was, therefore, unwelcome news. At the same time, statements from the negotiating parties and their Pakistani hosts, who also signaled that the failure of one round would not close the door to further talks, offered a degree of reassurance.
Palestinians are not betting on the war, especially since their cause has rarely factored into it. At the same time, any failure for Benjamin Netanyahu is seen as a win for Palestinians, who understand how he leverages political or military success to sideline their cause and impede meaningful solutions.
What Palestinians are ultimately counting on, alongside their continued resilience on their own land, is the success of their Arab and Muslim backers in ending the war, and placing the Palestinian cause back in the center of international politics, and resuming work on Gaza, which must be followed by a process that returns to the fundamentals of the Palestinian question. That, in essence, is where Palestinians stand on this war.
