Alignments of the Emperors of Lies at the Gates of the Boxes of Wonder
There are moments in history that peoples do not enter through the door of politics, but through the door of necessity. And when peoples stand before ballot boxes after long years of bloodshed, devastation, and division, elections cease to be merely white papers and ink on voters’ fingers. They become a final examination of memory: What have we learned from everything that happened? Who are we after all this death? And who has the right to ask people for their trust after trust between them and politics itself has evaporated?
This is how the upcoming Palestinian elections appear, amid the regional and international arrangements surrounding them: like boxes of wonder from which no one knows exactly what will emerge.
According to the announced electoral timetable, Palestine is heading toward legislative elections on November 28, 2026, approximately one month after the Israeli elections and roughly around the same time as the U.S. midterm elections.
But the real question is not: Who will win?
The harsher question is:
Which Palestine will enter these elections, and which Palestine will emerge from them?
Palestinians are not approaching the ballot boxes as they did in 2006. There is Gaza, emerging from a devastating war. There is a West Bank being eroded by settlement expansion and escalating violence. There is an Authority struggling to remain alive under the blows of Israel’s right-wing government. Fatah is searching for a new definition of itself, while Hamas faces the question of how to trade its weapons for political survival. And there are regional and international players who see the elections as part of a broader effort to reshape the entire Palestinian political system.
And amid all of them stands the United States, with the Donald Trump administration’s extraordinary talent for turning politics into a deal, the deal into a test, and the test into a narrow passage whose endpoint no one knows.
Here begins the strange story.
From the Gun to the Ballot Box
Perhaps the most striking paradox in the Palestinian scene is that the movement that once entered power through the ballot box, only to emerge from it into government through the force of arms, may now find itself facing the test of returning to the ballot box once again.
Hamas is no longer facing the old question: Should we participate in elections or not?
The question has changed.
The question now is: At what price?
After the Gaza war, and following the transformations imposed by the current U.S. plan, weapons have become part of an international political equation far larger than Gaza itself. The proposed U.S. plan links Hamas’s disarmament to the restructuring of governance and security in the Strip, while sharp disagreements remain over the sequencing of steps between Israeli withdrawal and disarmament.
Here, the transition from the rifle to the ballot paper becomes far more complicated than a mere organizational decision.
It is a transition from one philosophy to another.
From the belief that legitimacy can come from force, to the recognition that legitimacy requires society.
From this perspective, everything surrounding Hamas’s potential participation in the elections can be understood as part of a much larger question: Can the movement transform itself from an armed faction with a political project into a political force that accepts the full rules of the democratic game?
That is the real test.
Not the elections.
Mohammed Dahlan… or the Mirror Everyone Fears Looking Into?
Elsewhere in the picture, the name Mohammed Dahlan appears.
A name that requires no introduction in Palestinian politics, and one that enters no negotiating room without leaving behind a shadow of questions.
Last July, Al-Alamein witnessed consultations over the formation of a broad national electoral list, involving representatives of Hamas, Fatah’s reformist current, and the Popular Front, with Dahlan and Samir Mashharawi present, while leaving the door open to other forces.
And here the narratives begin.
Some say Dahlan could serve as a bridge for Hamas’s participation in new political arrangements, and that, with Emirati support, he would help secure funds in the form of generous end-of-service compensation for Hamas employees who would leave public-sector employment in the Gaza Strip.
Others say he is one of Washington’s regional keys.
A third group says the man represents nothing more than a breakaway current within Fatah.
But Palestinian politics, in its stranger moments, does not require a narrative to be entirely true for it to become influential.
It is enough for the players to believe it.
Thus, Dahlan becomes more than a person in this equation.
He becomes a potential gateway.
A gateway through which Hamas could enter the new political landscape, through which Arab and regional actors could enter the process of rearranging the Palestinian house, and which Washington could use as part of its engineering of the postwar order.
But here, caution is necessary against turning possibility into fact.
To say that Dahlan is “Hamas’s only gateway,” or that Washington has already decided he will be the godfather of the next phase, requires evidence that the current public information does not provide.
And politics, like journalism, hates manufactured certainty.
What a List!
Imagine the scene for a moment:
Hamas.
Fatah’s reformist current.
The Popular Front.
Perhaps the Democratic Front.
Perhaps the Initiative.
And perhaps others who call themselves independents.
And Mohammed Dahlan in the background.
And before all of them stands one name that provokes their ire: Mahmoud Abbas.
This is how one of the strangest maps of Palestinian political alliances could take shape.
Yesterday’s adversaries sitting around the same table, not because they suddenly grew fond of one another, but because a common adversary can sometimes be stronger than ideological differences.
This is politics in its most pragmatic form.
The left, which has long criticized political Islam, may find itself on the same list as Hamas.
Fatah’s reformist current may find itself confronting the traditional Fatah leadership.
Hamas, which fought a long political and military struggle with the Palestinian Authority, may find itself in an electoral alliance with figures historically associated with its opponents.
Everything is possible in politics.
Except saying that everything is impossible.
But can this mixture produce a national program?
That is where the catastrophe lies.
Who Writes a Program Above the Rubble?
It is very easy to write an electoral program in a country living a normal life.
You write about education.
The economy.
Healthcare.
Unemployment.
Taxes.
Infrastructure.
But in Palestine today, you are required to write a program above the rubble.
How do you write about the economy when most of Gaza needs to be rebuilt?
How do you write about security when security itself has become a political question?
How do you write about weapons?
How do you write about the relationship between Gaza and the West Bank?
How do you write about Israel?
How do you write about the United States?
How do you write about the future of the Palestinian Authority?
How do you write about the Palestine Liberation Organization?
How do you write about the Palestinian state?
And how do you tell people that tomorrow will be better while many are still searching for yesterday beneath the rubble?
These are not ordinary elections.
They are an attempt to redefine Palestine itself.
Who Is Betting on Trump?
As for those who believe that Donald Trump’s administration will hand someone a political blank check, perhaps they need to reread the man.
Trump does not operate according to the logic of political sentiment.
He does not usually ask: Who is in the right?
He asks: What do I get in return?
That is the difference between traditional politics and Trumpian politics.
The current U.S. administration has dealt with the Gaza file through an equation based on security, disarmament, and restructuring governance, alongside new international and regional arrangements. At the same time, recent developments have demonstrated that implementation of the plan is running into deep contradictions between Israel and Hamas over sequencing and guarantees.
Therefore, betting on Trump as the sole “guarantor of the Palestinian future” is not politics.
It is gambling.
And perhaps the most dangerous thing about political gambling is that the player does not merely lose his money.
Sometimes he loses a country.
The Boxes of Wonder
But the greatest paradox lies neither with Trump, nor Dahlan, nor Hamas, nor Fatah.
The paradox lies with the Palestinian himself.
That Palestinian who will go to the ballot box.
What will he choose?
The past?
Or the future?
Will he vote for the one who promised him victory?
Or for the one who promises him life?
Does he want another rifle?
Or a school?
Does he want another speech about resistance?
Or a new home for his child?
Does he want slogans about liberation?
Or a homeland in which he can live before he liberates it?
These questions are not against resistance.
Nor are they in favor of surrender.
They are questions of life.
For politics that cannot protect life eventually becomes a prolonged funeral ritual.
The Problem Is Not the Ballot Box
Perhaps the mistake is to burden elections with more than they can carry.
Elections do not perform miracles.
The ballot box does not rebuild Gaza.
It does not stop settlement expansion on its own.
It does not end the occupation on its own.
Nor does it unite Palestinians simply by announcing the results.
But the ballot box can do one thing of enormous importance:
It can return the decision to the people.
That alone would be a historic achievement if it takes place through free, comprehensive, and competitive elections.
The Palestinian local elections in April 2026 demonstrated that the democratic process remains possible, but they also exposed weak participation and a gap of trust between society and its leadership, while Hamas officially boycotted the local elections despite the presence of its supporters in some areas.
Here, we must not repeat the old mistake.
It is not enough for elections to exist.
They must be credible.
The Alignments of the Emperors of Lies
Perhaps the title sounds harsh.
But we live in an age in which politicians have become capable of selling illusions before selling programs.
Every side will come with its own story.
Hamas will say that it emerged from the war stronger.
Fatah will say that it possesses historic legitimacy.
Dahlan will say that the future requires renewal.
The left will say that Palestine is larger than any faction.
The United States will say that it wants peace.
Israel will say that it wants security.
The Arabs will say that they want stability.
And in the end, the Palestinian citizen will stand before the ballot box.
Alone.
Without a translator.
Without an intermediary.
And without a negotiating table.
He will hold the pen.
At that precise moment, all the masks fall.
For elections are not merely a test for political parties.
They are a test for the voter.
And if politicians have spent years manufacturing narratives, the voter can do something more dangerous than calling them liars:
He can ignore them.
Conclusion
Perhaps Palestine is approaching one of its strangest political moments.
Hamas is searching for a place in a new political system.
Fatah is searching for renewed legitimacy.
Dahlan is appearing in spaces that were once closed to him.
The left is searching for a new meaning for its existence.
And the United States is attempting to engineer the postwar phase.
Meanwhile, Israel is watching all of this, fully aware that Palestinian elections are not merely a Palestinian affair.
And therefore, the most dangerous thing that could happen is for the elections to become a deal among elites.
The most beautiful thing that could happen is precisely the opposite:
For the elections to become a deal between the people and their future.
The problem is not that Hamas, Dahlan, the left, and Fatah’s opponents might come together on a single list.
Politics allows for the strangest alliances.
The problem is for them all to come together without knowing where they want to go.
For a homeland is not an electoral list.
A homeland is not a deal.
A homeland is not a prize awarded to whoever defeats his opponent.
A homeland is the place that must be spacious enough for everyone.
And therefore, the question that should come before all the names of the candidates is not:
Who is with us?
Nor:
Who is against Mahmoud Abbas?
Nor:
Who does Trump approve of?
But:
Who can restore to the Palestinians their right to be a people, rather than a battlefield for the projects of others?
Only there does politics begin.
And only there does the ballot box acquire meaning.
But if we enter the elections with the same mentality of domination that led us into division and bloodshed, with the same language that produced wars, and with the same alliances united only by hatred of the adversary, then the ballot boxes will be nothing more than a new mirror reflecting an old division.
And after the last ballot box is closed, the Palestinian will discover that the emperors of politics have merely changed positions on the stage, while the same audience remains seated in the waiting seats.
But this time, perhaps the audience will have a pen.
And perhaps the pen will be more powerful than everything that came before.
Because peoples who have paid the price of politics with their blood have finally earned the right to pay its price with ink alone.
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