Rhetoric Without Action..

In Palestine, as in the rest of the East, waves of articles, statements, and calls for "reform," "change," "building the state," and "renewing political thought" seem to be endless. A continuous stream of discussions about the necessity to update society, combat corruption, establish the rule of law, end the division, empower youth and women, reform education, and liberate the economy from dependence. Grand slogans that have been repeated since the beginnings of the modern national project, intensifying as the reality deteriorates.

The tragic paradox is that these demands, as theoretically valid as they may be, have hardly changed for decades, circulating in a never-ending loop. The names and contexts change, but the essence of the discourse remains captive to the same language: state, democracy, transparency, social justice, human dignity. However, the most critical question—how do we achieve this?—is the largest absence. It is as if the goals, by mere declaration, possess a magical ability to achieve themselves.

In Palestine, this predicament is exacerbated by the heavy specificity of occupation, division, and the political deadlock. Between a limited authority under occupation and de facto powers imposing the logic of weapons, the discourse of reform transforms into a form of rhetorical indulgence, consumed in seminars and statements, without finding its way into the solid structure of both authority and society.

From time to time, we receive elegantly worded statements about "liberating civil society," "restoring the public sphere," and "building popular oversight." This language is crystal clear, sharp in tone, yet it remains suspended in the air. There are no serious discussions about organizational tools, power balances, or the cost of clashing with the deep interests that have accumulated over long years of political rent, jobs, aid, and patronage.

The Palestinian division, at its core, is not merely a struggle for political legitimacy; it also expresses a structural failure to build a society of individuals who are independent in their choices and capable of holding their authorities accountable. We are neither a cohesive collective society around a comprehensive national project, nor are we a society of free individuals in the modern sense. We are in a gray area: closed political groups, isolated individuals, and civil society besieged by conditional funding, red lines, and security calculations.

With the absence of real change tools, a ready-made solution surfaces: "We want a civil state." This phrase is correct in essence, yet it transforms in the Palestinian context into a vague slogan that does not answer the question of actual authority: Who has the decision-making power? Who possesses the weapons? Who controls the money? Who can impose the law? A civil state is not built on wishes but by dismantling unchecked power systems and redefining the relationship between the political, security, and economic spheres, which is the unspoken issue.
Worse yet, the vacuum resulting from the failure of the modern state project does not remain empty for long. It is quickly filled by alternative forms of affiliations: factional, regional, familial, ideological, and sometimes, closed religious affiliations. Herein lies a deadly paradox: we raise the banners of modernity while our daily lives are managed by the logic of a pre-state existence.

Today, Palestine does not suffer from a lack of awareness but from an excess of paralyzed awareness. We know exactly what we want: freedom, justice, sovereignty, dignity. However, we have yet to succeed in producing the organizational and social structure capable of translating this awareness into a force for change. Between the occupation that paralyzes politics, the division that destroys the unity of society, and the economy that reproduces dependence, the meaning of reform itself erodes.

The real question is not: What do we want? But: How do we change? With what tools? At whose expense? Without a courageous answer to these questions, reform in Palestine, as elsewhere, will remain a beautiful moral discourse... postponed to an uncertain date.