When the Wretched Meets the Hopeless
There are popular sayings that are born on people’s tongues and then grow larger than themselves because, in just a few words, they say what long speeches fail to express. Few are harsher or more bitter than the saying: “When the wretched meets the hopeless.” It is a saying that needs little explanation: the wretched is the one whose bad choices have pursued him until stumbling becomes part of his story, while the hopeless is the one who chases a hope he knows, deep down, will never come. And when the two meet, it does not necessarily mean that fortune is about to change. It may simply mean that each has found in the other something that resembles him: one defeat searching for another, one disappointment extending its hand to another, and a past heavy with wounds trying to form an alliance with a future that has not yet been born.
In one way or another, this is how the growing talk of a possible rapprochement or electoral alliance between Hamas and Mohammed Dahlan’s political current can be viewed. Not as an ordinary alliance between two political forces that suddenly discovered the virtues of national unity, but as one of the most paradoxical scenes in Palestinian politics after long years of bloodshed, division, and hostility. The man who left Gaza amid the roar of armed confrontation in 2007, and the movement that tightened its grip on the Strip after that confrontation, are today sitting—or moving closer to sitting—before the same map, searching for a road to the ballot box after the previous roads became filled with bullets.
The scene itself seems to say:
Politics knows no impossibilities, but it knows very well how to turn the impossible into a subject for bargaining.
Public reports and consultations in recent days have confirmed contacts between Hamas and the Democratic Reform Current within Fatah, led by Mohammed Dahlan, as part of efforts to explore the possibility of forming a broader electoral coalition alongside other Palestinian forces and figures. But the discussion still remains within the realm of possibility and negotiation and has not, according to publicly available information, become a final, officially announced list.
But what could possibly bring together two sides that, less than two decades ago, stood at opposite ends of the gun?
From the Bullets of 2007 to Ballot Papers
In Palestinian politics, events do not die simply because time has passed. They remain suspended in the memory like old photographs on the wall of an abandoned house. And 2007 is not a mere detail in the history of either Hamas or Dahlan; it is one of the bloodiest and most sensitive chapters in the modern history of Palestinian division.
There, in Gaza, the house was divided until blood flowed between its rooms.
There, the weapon that was supposed to bear one face in confronting the occupation became part of an internal struggle over power and legitimacy.
And there, Mohammed Dahlan disappeared from the Gaza scene, while Hamas emerged from the ballot box to take full control of the Strip.
The real loser in that battle was neither an organization nor an individual, but the Palestinian idea itself: the idea that one people should have one decision, one set of institutions, one law, and one weapon subject to a single political authority.
Today, nearly two decades later, the same names are returning to the table—not because history has forgiven anyone, but because reality has become harsher than old hostilities.
Hamas emerged from the latest war facing an existential question about the future of its rule, its weapons, and its political role. The Gaza plan being discussed by Washington and the mediators is based, in part, on linking the reorganization of the Strip to the issue of disarmament and the rebuilding of civil administration. In recent days, reports have also spoken of direct meetings between Hamas representatives and American envoys, within discussions concerning the next phase, disarmament, and the reshaping of Gaza’s administration.
As for Dahlan, he is the man Palestinian politics can no longer treat as merely a page from the past. After years in exile, he rebuilt a network of regional relationships, particularly in the United Arab Emirates, and maintained a political and social presence connected to Gaza. Reports also speak of his efforts to return to the heart of the Palestinian political scene through new alliances and anticipated elections.
Thus, the two sides meet not on the ground of the past, but above its ruins.
Hamas is searching for a political exit.
Dahlan is searching for a political return.
And here begins the philosophy of the popular saying: have the wretched and the hopeless finally met, or have two old enemies come together because each has discovered that going it alone no longer leads anywhere?
Has Regional Identity Played a Role?
Here, a question emerges that many prefer not to approach because it touches one of the most sensitive nerves in Palestinian life:
Has regional identity—specifically, belonging to Gaza—played a role in this rapprochement?
The most honest answer is: yes, it may be an influential factor, but it is certainly not the only explanation, and it would be wrong to reduce the entire alliance to geography.
Dahlan is from Gaza, and Hamas has governed Gaza for years. Many leaders on both sides also had their political and social consciousness shaped within the same Gazan environment. After everything that has happened to the Strip, Gaza is no longer merely a place; it has become a new political identity imposed by war, siege, destruction, and displacement.
When a place is destroyed, geography becomes more than geography.
It becomes memory.
And the son of a city, even when he disagrees with another son of that same city, may sometimes be governed by a single question:
Who will restore to us what we have lost?
Years of division have created a reality in which Gaza and the West Bank have lived through two markedly different political experiences. Gaza has endured siege, wars, one-party rule, and accumulated destruction, while the West Bank has lived under a different reality of occupation, settlement expansion, fragmentation, and limited authority. Then came the latest war, making the psychological and political distance between the two experiences greater than mere geographical distance.
And here, regional identity can slip into politics without ever announcing itself.
No one necessarily has to say: “We are sons of Gaza, so let us form an alliance.”
Politics is more cunning than that.
It is enough for interests, memories, social networks, and the search for the future of the Strip to overlap for geography to become a silent factor in shaping alliances.
But the danger begins when Gaza is transformed from part of the national project into a substitute project for it.
When reorganizing governance in Gaza becomes more important than the question of Palestinian unity.
And when Gaza’s suffering becomes electoral capital or a ticket to power.
Gaza is not a prize for whoever wins the election. It is not a kingdom for whoever possesses the money, nor a reward for whoever succeeds in forging international arrangements.
Gaza is part of Palestine.
And whoever forgets that, whatever slogan they may raise, will reproduce division in a new language.
Interests Create What Affection Cannot
Let us be honest: politics has never been built on affection.
No one expects Hamas to have suddenly awakened and declared that Dahlan had been right all these years. Nor does anyone expect Dahlan to have discovered overnight that everything Hamas did was right.
This is not a story of emotional reconciliation.
It is an intersection of interests.
Hamas needs a broader political umbrella, particularly at a time when it faces enormous pressure regarding the future of its weapons and its role in government. It has already expressed a desire to contest elections within the broadest possible national coalition and to hold contacts with different political currents and factions.
Dahlan, meanwhile, needs alliances that go beyond the limits of his own current, because returning to Palestinian politics through the main gate requires an electoral bloc and a network broader than his own supporters and former adversaries.
And somewhere between need and need, memory becomes negotiable.
But the more important question is not:
Can they form an alliance?
Politics says yes.
The question is:
What will they form an alliance around?
A clear national program?
Or a common enemy?
And here lies the difference between a political alliance and an alliance of revenge.
It is not difficult for opposition to the Palestinian president or the Fatah leadership to bring together forces that are ideologically and politically contradictory.
But what happens after they come together?
Can political Islam, the left, Fatah’s opponents, and Dahlan’s current write a single program concerning weapons?
The Palestine Liberation Organization?
The Palestinian Authority?
Relations with Israel?
The shape of the state?
The relationship between Gaza and the West Bank?
The regional future?
An alliance that knows very well whom it hates but does not know where it wants to go is an alliance walking toward a wall with its eyes wide open.
Gaza: The Wound That Is Reordering Everyone
The latest war has changed the rules of the game.
The issue is no longer simply who governs Gaza, but who can guarantee life within it.
Who can restore electricity?
Who can reopen the schools?
Who can prevent the next war?
Who can rebuild the home instead of raising a new speech above its rubble?
That is why politics after destruction is not the same as politics before it.
The slogans that worked in the age of public squares may no longer work in the age of tents.
And the words that once stirred the masses may not feed a child.
Here lies the opportunity for any potential alliance between Hamas and Dahlan: for both sides to recognize that time has changed and that Gaza cannot remain hostage to the past.
But here also lies its greatest threat.
If the alliance is merely a recycling of old faces in a new boat, then it will be nothing more than another version of the problem.
The people do not need an alliance among those who were wrong yesterday merely so they can argue tomorrow over who has the right to be wrong again.
The people need those who will tell them the truth.
And the truth, however painful, is that Gaza has paid an enormous price for division, one-party rule, weapons outside the national consensus, and the failure to build a political system capable of accommodating everyone.
“When the Wretched Meets the Hopeless”... or Have They Learned the Lesson?
Some may say that the title is harsh on both Hamas and Dahlan.
But sometimes harshness lies not in the words, but in the mirror the words reveal.
After everything that has happened, Hamas cannot enter a new phase as though nothing has occurred. It must answer questions about governance, war, weapons, division, and the future.
Nor can Dahlan return to the scene as though 2007 never happened, as though years of hostility, accusations, and bloodshed left no scars on Palestinian memory.
No one can ask the people to forget.
But everyone can learn.
And here lies the difference between an alliance of the wretched and the hopeless and a genuine political alliance.
If the two sides come together because each is pursuing a personal or factional interest, then the popular saying will be entirely fitting.
But if they unite around a program that acknowledges there can be no return to one-party rule, no separate weapon outside the national decision, no Gaza as a political island, and no elections that become merely another round in a postponed civil war, then the meeting may amount to something greater than personal calculations.
The real test is not in the photograph of a handshake.
Photographs are easy.
The test lies in the answer to one question:
Can those who once carried weapons against one another place Palestine above themselves?
Conclusion
Gaza—as an identity, a memory, a shared interest, and a common wound—may play a role in the rapprochement between Hamas and Mohammed Dahlan. Regional identity may be a hidden factor in the background, reinforced by the social, political, and economic networks that have developed inside the Strip over decades.
But it would be wrong to explain everything through regionalism.
Palestinian politics today is also driven by the need for survival, political repositioning, post-war pressures, the future of weapons, elections, the struggle for legitimacy, and regional and international calculations.
That is why Hamas and Dahlan are not meeting merely because both are from Gaza.
They are meeting because Gaza itself has become a test for everyone.
Either geography becomes a bridge toward genuine national unity, or it becomes a new wall separating Palestinian from Palestinian.
Either the alliance becomes an acknowledgment that years of hostility have brought everyone to a dead end, or it becomes merely another attempt to escape accountability.
In the end, no electoral list, however broad, has any value if it is built more on hatred than on vision.
Nor is there any value in an alliance that brings together contradictions if it cannot explain to the people what it will do the day after victory.
Politics is not about gathering the largest possible number of enemies in one photograph.
Politics is about making them, perhaps for the first time, agree that the people will not pay the price for their differences again.
But if they gather today around a ballot box after having separated yesterday over a gun, only to return tomorrow to the same old instincts, then this story will be neither an alliance, nor reconciliation, nor national salvation.
The Palestinian, looking at the same stage and the same faces merely changing their seats, will say:
“The wretched met the hopeless... and nothing changed.”
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