Guest Essay Sept. 23, 2026, 1:00 a.m. ET The debate inside the Democratic Party over Israel has changed more in the last two years than in the previous 30. In 2024, the party platform boasted that Joe Biden had given the Jewish state $14 billion in military aid. These days, among the Democrats jockeying for the 2028 presidential nomination, the prospect of eliminating all military aid appears likely to be a centrist position.

Progressives will probably call for stopping most arms sales as well. As dizzying as this transformation has been, something essential is still missing. While Democrats are rethinking their approach to Israel, they haven’t yet rethought their approach to the Palestinians.

As the party looks toward the midterms and beyond, Democrats should do more than pledge to stop subsidizing Israel’s crimes. They must also stop supporting Palestinian authoritarianism — whether practiced by Hamas or by Mahmoud Abbas, the longtime president of the Palestinian Authority and leader of Fatah — and champion the right of Palestinians to choose their own leaders. Today, unfortunately, top Democrats often ignore that right.

In a speech at Tel Aviv University this summer endorsing American pressure to create a Palestinian state, the likely presidential hopeful Rahm Emanuel advised Arab countries to be “the adult in the room with the Palestinian leadership” and “stand up a governing authority capable of accepting the historic Jewish connection to this land.” He noted that “corrupt Palestinian leadership has never lived up to the Palestinian people’s legitimate aspirations for sovereignty and self-determination” but said nothing about the need for Palestinian people to choose their own leaders. This absence made Mr. Emanuel’s advice both patronizing and detached from reality. No Palestinian leader can legitimately commit his people to a vision for peace — be it two states, one state with equality for all or something in between — absent a mandate from Palestinians themselves.

That mandate requires allowing Palestinians to vote. Under pressure from the European Union and the United States, Mr. Abbas has promised to hold elections for the Palestinian Authority’s Parliament in November, and for its presidency early next year. Unless Washington commits to fully supporting the effort, however, Israel may throw up roadblocks, which Mr. Abbas could use as an excuse to cancel the vote.

American presidents of both parties have been enabling Mr. Abbas’s dictatorial tendencies for the past 20 years. In 2006, the last time Palestinians held elections for the Parliament of the Palestinian Authority, which encompasses the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, Hamas won a majority of the seats. The Bush administration responded by demanding that Hamas endorse a series of conditions set by international interlocutors and accepted by its rivals in Fatah as part of the Oslo Accords — which included forswearing violence and recognizing Israel.

During negotiations brokered by Saudi Arabia, Hamas still refused to recognize Israel but agreed to “respect” those commitments. That wasn’t enough for Washington. So, the United States reportedly tried to overturn the election results by force.

It developed a plan that called for allies in the region to funnel weapons to Fatah fighters in the hopes that they would oust Hamas from its stronghold in Gaza. (The Bush administration denied this). The plan backfired and the Islamist group seized control of the Strip. Mr. Abbas then declared a state of emergency. This allowed him to suspend Parliament, eventually seize control of the judiciary and rule as an autocrat.

He’s been doing so ever since, and has transformed not only the Authority, but also the Palestine Liberation Organization — which historically included all Palestinian parties — into his personal fief. This authoritarianism, argues Omar H. Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, has left Palestinians “saddled with a weak yet ...