The Economist is faking history:
Bibi Netanyahu is the wrong man in the wrong place – Economist – October 31, 2023
In the absence of clear government direction the Israeli defence establishment is doing all the planning. Its preferred solution is to see the PA ultimately return to Gaza, which it controlled until Hamas’s coup in 2007.
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There was no 'Hamas coup', neither in 2007 nor before or after it. But there was indeed a coup attempt in Gaza. It was led by Muhammad Dahlan of the Fatah, which was also leading the Palestinian Authority, who, with U.S. support, was trying to overthrow the legally elected Hamas government of Gaza.
The Gaza Bombshell – Vanity Fair – March 3, 2008
After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, the author reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.
Then President Bush called Muhammad Dahlan 'our guy' and did everything he could to further a coup:
Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power.
It is a long complex story. In the end the Bush administration gave up and simply tried to ignore Hamas and Gaza. That did not work either.
As the Vanity Fair piece concluded at that time:
It is impossible to say for sure whether the outcome in Gaza would have been any better—for the Palestinian people, for the Israelis, and for America’s allies in Fatah—if the Bush administration had pursued a different policy. One thing, however, seems certain: it could not be any worse.
Seeing how helpless the Palestinians are in the West Bank, where the settlers and army are torturing and terrorizing them, it is difficult to agree with that conclusion.