The classic two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t just fading from view — it’s practically vanished from the political map. The shock of October 7, 2023, blew up what remained of trust on both sides, leaving many analysts convinced the vacuum is now permanent. Yet out of this same vacuum, once-unthinkable alternatives are starting to take shape.
One such alternative is brewing in Hebron, the historic and politically combustible heart of the southern West Bank. There, a group of influential tribal sheikhs, led by Wadi al-Jaabari — better known as Abu Sanad — has gone public for the first time with a radical proposal: to break away from the Palestinian Authority and establish a new framework of cooperation with Israel.
What these sheikhs are putting on the table amounts to an unprecedented challenge to the entire architecture of the peace process. In a letter they signed, they recognized Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people — a step the Palestinian Authority has refused to take for three decades. Their intention is clear: to swap out the Oslo compromises for a new deal under the umbrella of the Abraham Accords, weaving Hebron into a broader network of Arab-Israeli cooperation across the region.
It’s a statement that crashes straight through the old dogmas of Palestinian nationalism. In essence, the sheikhs are trying to restore power to Hebron’s traditional elites, who ran the city’s social and economic life for centuries before the PLO and its offshoot, the Palestinian Authority, claimed the right to represent the Palestinian people.
In their letter, the sheikhs don’t mince words: they blame the Oslo framework, with its bloated bureaucracies and corrupt patronage networks, for driving Hebron into catastrophe. Their counterproposal is something they’re calling the “Hebron Emirate” — a form of territorial autonomy that would partner directly with Israel on jobs, infrastructure, and trade. Symbolically, they’re already floating employment quotas for one thousand, then five thousand, and ultimately up to fifty thousand Palestinian workers. For a local economy in free fall since October 7, that’s nothing short of a lifeline.
This overture comes as the Palestinian Authority’s own legitimacy is on the brink of collapse. It can’t provide security, it can’t deliver even a basic sense of social justice, and the sheikhs are ready to challenge it head-on. They’re pledging zero tolerance for terrorism coming from their own communities, in direct contrast to Ramallah’s policy of paying stipends to the families of militants.
Inside Israel’s leadership, the Hebron initiative is drawing cautious interest. Economy Minister Nir Barkat, a long-standing backer of alternative peace strategies, has already held more than ten meetings with the group, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is signaling guarded optimism, leaving the door open for more. Among Israelis exhausted by endless violence and dead-end talks with Ramallah, a bottom-up peace track like this might actually get traction — especially if it pays off in real economic terms.
Hebron’s social fabric, after all, is truly unique. It’s one of the rare Palestinian communities where tribal and clan loyalties still carry far more weight than any formal state institution. Within these traditional networks, the word of an elder or sheikh counts for far more than the decisions of distant bureaucrats, who are often seen as imposed from the outside. The sheikhs are betting that these clan allegiances will prove stronger than any threats from the Palestinian Authority.
According to draft documents prepared in tandem with Barkat, the project also envisions an economic zone spanning more than a thousand acres along the separation barrier, which could launch large-scale job programs. The scale is significant: initial negotiations would cover roughly 204,000 people, with a second stage reaching another 350,000 — together a majority of Hebron’s district population.
Their rhetoric is blunt and unapologetic. They describe the Palestinian Authority as an instrument of exploitation, created by the PLO “to collect taxes, not to represent the people.” Gone, too, are any illusions about a future Palestinian state; the sheikhs openly voice their skepticism that such a state could ever materialize. In their eyes, the only realistic path forward is a pragmatic alliance with Israel, one that guarantees security and at least a minimum of stability.
This political shift carries far-reaching consequences. For the first time since the signing of the Oslo Accords, internal Palestinian forces are openly challenging official authorities with their own vision of sovereignty, rooted in traditional legitimacy and direct deals with Israel. This is more than a local initiative; it’s a trial balloon that could spark similar movements in other West Bank cities where the Palestinian Authority’s grip is just as fragile.
In that sense, the Hebron sheikhs’ declaration is no exotic sideshow. It’s a potential marker of a deeper crisis within Palestinian society, where traditional structures are beginning to reclaim power at the expense of weakened formal institutions. Wrapped up in this challenge to the region’s old political architecture is a message: if the old formulas no longer work, there’s room for new alliances and new centers of power to emerge.
The West Bank’s geopolitical landscape is slowly, but inevitably, shifting in ways that could unsettle the fragile balance established after Oslo. An initiative that, on paper, looks like a compromise between Hebron’s traditional sheikhs and leaders of Israeli settlements is, in practice, a direct challenge to the entire paradigm of Palestinian nation-building — a paradigm that for decades relied on a manufactured national identity and centralized rule from Ramallah.
For some Israeli settlers, the sheikhs’ offer looks tempting. It could open the door to revisiting existing borders in Area C while legitimizing the presence of Jewish settlements through a kind of “land swap” with local clans. But even in its infancy, the project raises thorny questions — how much land, where exactly, under what guarantees? That’s where the biggest risk lies: this plan could easily spiral into a new round of territorial reshuffling, triggering a flood of violence and legal battles.
The issues the sheikhs outlined as future negotiation points are a potential minefield, threatening to tear apart the social fabric of Palestinian communities. The sheikhs themselves, including the head of the powerful Jaabari clan, say they’re ready to engage in dialogue with the settler movement in Samaria, led by Yossi Dagan. Dagan has expressed faith in the possibility of “peace among the faithful,” recalling his first meeting with Sheikh Jaabari more than a decade ago and praising the courage of the sheikh’s father and the continuity of his family’s traditions.
Behind these contacts lurks the concept of an “emirate model” — a plan to restructure the West Bank politically around clan-based governance. This idea has long been championed by Professor Mordechai Kedar, who has argued for transferring authority to the seven largest urban communities and their traditional leaders. Drawing inspiration from the Gulf monarchies, where ruling families have historically guaranteed stability and loyalty, Kedar challenges the Western political blueprint of the nation-state that was imposed on Palestine in recent decades.
He argues bluntly that the Palestinian identity cultivated by the PLO and the Palestinian Authority has failed, unable to dislodge deeply rooted clan structures. Worse still, Kedar contends, that artificial identity only fanned the flames of radicalism, giving Hamas a foothold to exploit the leadership vacuum and push its own extremist agenda. In the eyes of many Palestinians, family clans remain the most natural, time-tested system of social protection and trust.
Kedar sees Hebron as especially crucial — the most conservative, most deeply tribal city in the West Bank. In his view, Hebron could serve as a proving ground for the new model, which might later be rolled out in Bethlehem and other urban centers. In this framework, clans would become the new pillars of authority, crowding out the corrupt and discredited structures of Ramallah.
It’s no surprise that the sheikhs’ representatives are openly voicing their distrust of the Palestinian Authority. They fear that if Ramallah loses its grip, it might resort to destabilizing the territory Hamas-style, potentially unleashing a massacre reminiscent of October 7. One sheikh went so far as to say that, with the backing of President Trump and the United States, Hebron could follow a Dubai-style path and become an island of stability and prosperity.
The concept of so-called Palestinian emirates also neatly lines up with Israel’s own geopolitical interests. With the two-state framework paralyzed and the one-state option terrifying Israelis with the prospect of a demographic tidal wave, the emirate model looks like a workable compromise — preserving Israeli security control while devolving some power to local leaders. That, at least, is how Nir Barkat explains the growing confusion abroad: “If it’s not two states, and it’s not one, then what is it?” Mordechai Kedar’s answer sounds like a new formula: “emiratization” instead of statehood.
Even inside Israel, however, the idea raises serious doubts. The security establishment — especially the Shin Bet and the army — has been conditioned for thirty years to treat the Palestinian Authority as its sole counterterrorism partner. Shifting that framework to work with tribal sheikhs would mean tearing down decades of institutional habits, a move likely to spark fierce resistance within Israel’s own corridors of power.
The military and intelligence agencies have good reasons to be wary. A sudden redistribution of power to armed clans could trigger a chain reaction in other West Bank cities that lack Hebron’s deep-rooted traditional elites. That kind of social chaos could end up being even more destructive than the fragile status quo carefully maintained through Ramallah’s mediation.
Still, the clan leaders believe their grassroots support is growing, and that the Palestinian Authority’s legitimacy is crumbling. There’s a barely veiled threat in their words: the only thing holding them back is fear of Israeli crackdowns aimed at protecting the Palestinian Authority itself. If Tel Aviv decides to dismantle the existing order, the consequences for the broader Middle East could be enormous. An experiment in “emiratizing” Palestinian territories wouldn’t just reshape the West Bank — it could upend the entire logic of the region’s conflict, built for decades on the notion of national self-determination.
At the heart of this initiative lies far more than a local Hebron compromise. What’s emerging is an effort to rewrite Palestinian political identity itself, returning to a pre-reform, clan- or even tribal-based system of governance — one that would set new ground rules for coexisting with Israel. In these rules, the familiar notion of Palestinian statehood dissolves, replaced by a new reality in which power is determined not by elections but by traditional alliances accustomed to hard bargaining and holding onto power at any cost.
A fierce debate is now brewing within Israel’s political and military circles — a debate that could well decide the future of the entire West Bank. Can Israel really lean on the West Bank’s fragmented clans and family networks to replace an exhausted, increasingly unpopular Palestinian Authority?
Many senior Israeli officers doubt it. In their view, sprawling family networks with their own armed militias and intricate pecking orders simply cannot build stable governance. Retired Major General Gadi Shamni, who commanded the IDF’s Central Command in the late 2000s, put it bluntly: “Try dealing with dozens of families, each armed to the teeth and answering only to its own code — you’ll be trapped in chaos.” In his mind, without centralized authority, there is no way to maintain law and order, let alone guarantee even minimal security for Israeli citizens.
There’s a different current of thought circulating inside Israel’s security and policy circles, voiced, for example, by retired Brigadier General Amir Avivi, founder of the influential Israel Defense and Security Forum. Avivi argues that over the years, the Palestinian Authority has turned into a breeding ground for radicalism, nurturing a culture of violence through school indoctrination and by financing terrorists’ families. In his view, betting on the clans could be a workable alternative, especially if Shin Bet, under its new chief David Zini — a military man with ties to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition — shifts its priorities accordingly.
Avivi pays particular attention to Sheikh Jaabari of Hebron, who has built a rare alliance of tribal leaders by West Bank standards. In Jaabari, he sees a strong figure with enough clout and resources to take on the Palestinian Authority and even push it out of key urban centers. The sheikhs themselves make no secret of their intentions: they claim they could dismantle the PA’s presence in Hebron in a matter of days — as long as Israel doesn’t stand in their way. Their calculations rest on the belief that President Trump’s new administration is willing to back more radical departures from Oslo.
The sheikhs’ arguments read almost like a business pitch. They’re offering order in exchange for noninterference, stressing that they can identify and suppress terrorist activity on their own turf. “We know who’s who here,” they say, “because we live on this land ourselves.” For these tribal elites, the main threat is not Israel, but extremist ideology that chips away at their authority, undermines their local economy, and tears at their social fabric.
Cynics, of course, will see nothing more than a scramble for cash. The revenues controlled by the Palestinian Authority are hefty, and plenty of clans would love to get their hands on them. Especially since recent clashes have shown just how fast the PA’s authority is evaporating in tribal areas. Back in 2007, after a teenage member of the Jaabari clan was killed by Palestinian police, local gunmen effectively staged an uprising — torching police jeeps, taking dozens of security officers hostage, and eventually forcing Mahmoud Abbas himself to issue a public apology and pay compensation. From that moment on, Hebron slipped out of Ramallah’s grip for good.
Today, the sheikhs sense history shifting in their favor. They’re ready to step up as new brokers between Israel and the Palestinian population — brokers who will bargain hard, but from a place of hard-nosed pragmatism rather than slogans of national liberation.
When I asked Sheikh Jaabari whether he feared being accused of betraying the Palestinian cause, he just smirked. “The betrayal happened in Oslo,” he said, “when they traded our lives for billions in aid, condemning us to endless poverty and violence. I remember that better than anyone.” His words sound like a manifesto for a new generation of clan-based political leaders, whose mission is no longer about building a mythical nation-state, but about saving what’s left of their land and their people.
For now, this vision remains risky and could easily spiral into a large-scale escalation. But with trust in the Palestinian Authority collapsing and youth radicalization on the rise, its implosion no longer seems far-fetched. And if that happens, Israel may indeed find itself forced to choose — between chaos, or the very clans it still hesitates to sit down with today.