Funding Gaza Under Hamas: International Donors and the Making of the Palestinian Split

Drawing on theories of international mediation and theories of change, this article argues that international donors have played a central role in deepening and entrenching the Palestinian split between Fatah and Hamas between 2007 and 2023. Donor aid policies often reinforced parallel governance structures, deepened institutional fragmentation, and narrowed the space for Palestinian political unity. By channeling support through the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, isolating Hamas, and refusing to engage with the realities of governance in Gaza, external actors helped shape the very division they later sought to manage. The article also shows that the international community’s reluctance to engage with Hamas after its revised charter represented a missed opportunity that could create better conditions for reviving the peace process and holding Israel accountable to its obligations. The article situates these donor policies within Israel’s settler-colonial structure, manifested in occupation, siege, and territorial fragmentation. It concludes that any future effort to unify Palestinian governance must take seriously the political and institutional realities produced not only by Palestinian factionalism, but also the Israeli-led political architecture that donor strategies have helped to reproduce.