Palestinian Defensive Strategy

This is not the first time we write about the necessity of developing a national strategy instead of practicing politics in a fragmented and improvised manner, from a narrow party perspective. While some may see that it is too late to reach this strategy, we believe it is still possible and necessary given the positive shifts in global public opinion in favor of the justice of our national cause and the conflicts in the region, including the war on Iran that may alter the map of the Middle East. This is also crucial so that we can remove the excuses of those who blame the Palestinian people entirely for what has happened to them.

It has become clear that Israel, with direct participation from the Trump administration, is waging a comprehensive war against the people and the cause, both in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, aiming to liquidate and eradicate the constants of the cause, such as the right of return by targeting refugee camps and UNRWA, targeting land through the expansion of settlement and annexation projects that leave little in the hands of the rightful owners of the land, targeting the resilience of the people by restricting their sources of livelihood, targeting international gains by rejecting international legitimacy and restricting international organizations operating in the occupied territories, and targeting culture and national identity, among others.

Every action or decision taken by the right-wing government in Israel is not separate from a strategy that the Zionist movement has prepared and prepared for years, since it decided to assassinate Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and overturn the Oslo Agreement and besiege the Palestinian Authority. Everything that has happened since then, including negotiations and talk of a political settlement, has been a waste of time that Israel has utilized to its advantage by intensifying settlement, enhancing Palestinian division, and tightening the noose around the Palestinian Authority, despite the political and diplomatic achievements made in favor of the idea and project of the Palestinian state.

All of this requires a defensive strategy far from relying on direct military resistance or solely on international legitimacy to restore our legitimate rights, or on the existing Palestinian parties and political structures and their sterile thinking and slogans.

The failure or inability of the leadership to achieve the hopes and fundamental demands of the people is understandable if the people find credibility in their leaders. However, to accompany this failure with a failure in managing the crisis and the conflict, a failure to develop a strategy for preserving national identity, a failure to maintain what has been achieved previously, and a failure to keep the flame of hope alive in the hearts and minds of the people... this is strategic failure that is unforgivable and unacceptable to a rational mind.

The majority of the world’s peoples have experienced military defeat or cultural decline, and many have suffered under foreign occupation for decades, yet these nations have risen, rebuilt themselves, and imposed their presence again as independent sovereign states. In many cases, this was not due to military victories achieved by the peoples, but rather to their ability to maintain their identity and national culture, and the existence of political and social elites who are keen on the people's interests and reject any compromise on their rights while logically exploiting global public opinion.

Defeat in a battle or due to an imbalance of power in favor of the enemy at a certain era does not justify surrender to the status quo, abandonment of national rights, or loss of self-confidence.

No power or state can erase or nullify the existence of another people with identity and culture, unless that people itself abandons its identity, culture, and history, and the Palestinian people have not renounced their national identity or culture and remain steadfast in their rights, firmly rooted in their land.

The justice of the Palestinian cause and the legitimacy of Palestinian rights cannot be measured by the reality of the political system and its elite or by the failure and inadequacy in achieving these objectives. War is a debate, power balances are not fixed, and measures of victory and defeat cannot be evaluated solely militarily; rather, they are measured by the principle of justice and rights themselves and by the extent to which the people continue to cling to their rights, steadfast in their positions, and willing to struggle for the restoration of these rights.

Thus, if we talk about the imbalance or strategic reasons for the besieged Palestinian situation and the inability of Palestinians to achieve their goals now, it can be attributed to the imbalance of power with the enemy and to Palestinian elites and a political system that have failed to manage the conflict and rise to the level of the justice of the cause and the greatness of the people, and to formulate a strategy for changing the reality and preserving national identity until the balance of power and regional and international equations change.

The decline and absence of a liberation strategy has led the elites into a state of frustration and despair, searching for personal redemption and competing to benefit from the distribution of the legacy of the national liberation and jihad phase or employing slogans from that phase to bestow legitimacy upon themselves that is otherwise lacking.

What is required today from the leadership and national elites keen on the interests of the homeland is to work on this strategy through wise management of the conflict with the enemy, and wise management of internal disputes between components of the Palestinian situation.

The most important components of this strategy are:

1- The existence of a unified national leadership capable of managing the conflict; religion does not grant legitimacy to a ruler any more than history does, and the danger in the Palestinian case lies in the struggle for the leadership of the people and the absence of leadership that represents all Palestinians. If the current leadership designates its successor from within its ranks, this means entrenching the imbalance and reproducing the crisis.

2- Working to review the previous phase and to address the public with the truth, as well as reassessing the network of relationships with friends and allies, or reevaluating the validity of previous classifications of the camp of friends versus the camp of enemies, especially after the transformations in the positions of countries and peoples of the world in favor of the Palestinian people after the Zionist genocide war.

3- Searching for the sources and centers of self-strength, for no people exists without sources of power. If armed struggle cannot be practiced now, popular resistance and civil disobedience and direct confrontations with the occupation could be pursued, which might begin with stones as occurred in the first intifada, with good utilization of social media, the media, and global public opinion; the important thing is for it to be within a national strategy.

4- Overcoming and ending previous political disputes and reaching a unifying national strategy even in the presence of geographical division, for the contemporary Palestinian revolution emerged and imposed its presence in the mid-1960s amid dispersion and a lack of communication between Palestinian communities.

5- Preserving national culture and identity as they are guarantees of the continuity of the people, rights, and constants. This requires using all symbols of national identity and national history as a cultural weapon in confronting the enemy's policy to liquidate the cause and erase the Palestinian national presence on the land of Palestine.

6- Providing the minimum for a dignified life for citizens free of the conditions and humiliation of the enemy or foreign donor entities, which requires an austere economy and careful monitoring of the funds that enter the authority areas. We affirm that what has entered Gaza and the West Bank in funds and aids, in addition to taxes, should have been sufficient to provide Palestinians with a decent living standard, but official and unofficial corruption devours a large portion of these funds.

7- Among the requirements of a strategy for self-preservation is to protect national identity from all forms of distortion and skepticism, and the spread of corruption within society and within the authorities of both governments and civil society institutions. Despite numerous allegations of corruption against ministers and officials, no official or minister has been held accountable or imprisoned, as if discussing the fight against corruption is merely to sedate or distract the masses.