“Nothing has changed for Gazans except that the bombs have stopped.”

One week into the start of a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, important elements of the first phase of U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan remain unfinished. What happens next for Palestinians? If a two-state solution is now a mirage, what do Palestinians want, and how does one get there?“We have to begin by looking at the question of accountability,” said Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization. “I live in Haifa most of the time. When you live there, you see that your neighbors think that what they did in Gaza is OK. … When they think that it’s OK to drop bombs on hospitals, to kill—we have to get to a place where there is a measure of accountability.”And how should Palestinians think about that same issue? “I don’t think that the Palestinian leadership has ever really been held to account for Oslo,” Buttu said. “I was part of that era. I didn’t sign it. It wasn’t my fault. But I was part of it. And I don’t think that the policy leadership has ever been held accountable for the way that they’ve behaved over the course of the past two decades, and they should be.”

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