From the Liberation Project to Governance Structure: A Critical Reading of the Transformations in the Palestinian National Movement After Oslo

This discussion does not stem from a desire for debate or positioning, but rather as an attempt to rearrange political thought and understanding, and to clarify matters at a moment in Palestinian history where there is an urgent need for a comprehensive review of the entire national experience. Today, the issue is no longer just a disagreement between authority and opposition, nor merely a variance in political assessments, but rather a deep crisis concerning how to understand the national project itself and the limits of the paths that have led the Palestinian national movement to its current reality. Therefore, this text acts as an extension of an open dialogical state that may, if taken seriously, contribute to reshaping political alignments based on the logic of liberation and its laws, rather than on the basis of entrenched factional positions and the classic understanding of the Palestinian divide. The Palestinian national movement, in all its components, seems more than ever called upon to reassess its political and organizational experience based on the existing reality and the implications that have arisen from Oslo and the transformations that have affected the entire national structure afterward. The discussion here is not about condemning one side and exonerating another but rather about understanding how the national movement has gradually shifted from a national liberation project to a political structure revolving around administration and division, adapting to the conditions imposed by colonial forces. Therefore, any serious attempt to exit the current Palestinian impasse cannot be limited to critiquing the authority or opposing its policies; it must aim towards rebuilding the national movement itself — politically, organizationally, and intellectually — on principles that restore the logic of liberation as the organizing framework of the relationship with the occupation, rather than the logic of authority and managing populations under colonial control. In this context, the duality of (Authority and Opposition) is not merely a simplistic political reduction but a direct reproduction, even if it adopts a critical tone, of the logic that Oslo itself has established. The agreement did not redefine Palestinians as a people engaged in an open liberation struggle against a resistant colonial structure but reconstituted them as political groups conflicting within the confines of limited sovereignty (self-rule), inherently governed by the conditions of occupation and its security and economic management. Within this logic, the question shifts from: How is colonialism confronted? to: Who manages the population? And who holds the legitimacy of representation within the existing structure? Hence, Palestinian politics is reduced to a competition between authority and opposition, while the essence of the colonial relationship remains outside the realm of actual accountability. The authority here is not just a deficient state; it is an administrative function within a system of control, while the opposition often defines itself in relation to this function rather than outside of it. The most dangerous aspect is that this duality produces a political consciousness that sees Palestinians as actors within a governing system, not as a national liberation group still facing uprooting, settlement, and ongoing colonial dominance. Therefore, invoking concepts drawn from stable states, such as allegiance and opposition, rotation, and governmental legitimacy, without deconstructing the colonial context, only serves to obscure the original structure of the conflict: the power relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. In this sense, transcending Oslo’s logic does not begin with merely critiquing the authority but rather with critiquing the political language itself that Oslo imposed on the Palestinians, where internal division became the focal point of the scene while the question of liberation was marginalized to the periphery. However, this critique remains incomplete if responsibility is confined only to the forces that signed Oslo or managed its institutions, as Palestinian forces that opposed the agreement and its outcomes bear historical and political responsibility for the current situation, not because they participated in establishing the path itself, but because they failed to produce an alternative liberation that could transcend its conditions and rebuild the national project on new foundations. In liberation experiences, merely declaring rejection as an ethical or rhetorical stance is not sufficient, as the legitimacy of liberation forces is measured by their ability to build a different balance of power, organize society around a long-term resistance strategy, and provide a political vision that transcends managing division or investing in it. However, a significant portion of the Palestinian opposition gradually fell within the very structure it claimed to reject, either entering authority institutions directly or indirectly, submitting to its political and economic rhythms, or reproducing its factional logic based on the sharing of influence and representation. According to the laws of liberation movements, a vacuum does not remain a vacuum. When resistance forces fail to build a comprehensive national horizon, resistance itself becomes a tool within internal balances, and it is gradually absorbed into the existing system, even while raising its opposing discourse. The Palestinian crisis is thus no longer just a crisis of (authority), but a crisis of a complete national movement that has gradually lost its ability to redefine itself as a liberation movement, transitioning, along with its authority and opposition, from the question of liberation to the question of administration, and from a national liberation project to a struggle over space within the structure established by colonialism and reorganized through Oslo. To understand these transformations more deeply, it is necessary to return briefly to the historical context of the Oslo Agreement’s endorsement. Before its formal ratification within the Palestinian National Council in 1996, several sessions of the Palestinian Central Council were indeed held in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the Central Council practically transforming gradually into the actual political reference for the Palestine Liberation Organization amid the inability to convene the National Council permanently. The pivotal session that followed the signing of Oslo directly was that of the Central Council held in Tunis from October 10-12, 1993, just weeks after the agreement was signed in Washington. During that session, the political decision was made to establish the (Palestinian National Authority) and to charge the Executive Committee with its formation. However, prior to that, consecutive sessions of the Central Council were held during the political transformation phase that preceded Oslo, including the sessions of 1990 in Tunis, April 1991, October 1991, and May 1992. This point is politically important because the shift towards settlement did not begin suddenly with Oslo as a (separate incident), but there was a complete political path within the organization’s institutions since the late 1980s — acceptance of international legitimacy resolutions, the declaration of independence in 1988, engagement in the Madrid Conference in 1991, and then secret negotiations that culminated in Oslo. Therefore, the deeper critical question is not only: Did the opposing forces participate in the session of endorsing Oslo? But rather: Were those forces, especially those within the organization’s institutions, actually capable of obstructing the political path that had been gradually forming for years? The facts indicate that opposition within the organization existed, but it was not capable of producing an organizational or strategic rupture with the general trajectory. Some forces boycotted, some protested, and some remained within the frameworks with reservations, but in the end, the same institutional legitimacy that produced Oslo continued to operate in the name of (national consensus). Here lies one of the paradoxes of the Palestinian experience: a political opposition that largely continued to operate within the structure it opposed the results of. In ordinary political contexts, disagreements are resolved through mechanisms of representative democracy, voting, majority, and a minority commits to a collective decision and then continues to operate within the system itself. However, in national liberation movements, the issue becomes more complicated because the subject of disagreement concerns not just government programs or economic policies, but sometimes the essence of the national project itself and the boundaries of possible concessions. Thus, invoking the concepts of (majority and minority) within a case like the Palestinian experience cannot be mechanical or detached from the nature of the historical phase. When the national movement is in a state of liberation from settler colonialism, legitimacy is not only measured by institutional procedures but also by the extent to which decisions align with the historical goal of the national movement and its ability to maintain the unity of the national group and its fundamental rights. Here arises the dilemma ushered in by Oslo: Was it sufficient for the leadership to have institutional majority within the PLO for the strategic shift towards settlement to be obligatory for everyone as a democratic decision? Or are there decisions in liberation movements that transcend the logic of numerical majority because they touch upon the very definition of the cause? In major liberation experiences, revolutionary and political legitimacy has often been based on a complex balance between the institutional and historical dimensions. While the majority might grant procedural legitimacy, it is not enough on its own to provide historical legitimacy if the decision leads to dismantling the goals of the movement or reproducing colonial dominance in new forms. Conversely, the opposing minority cannot settle for claiming (revolutionary purity) if it remains practically within the same institutions, benefiting from their legitimacy, accepting their rules at times, and rejecting their outcomes at others. The logic of national liberation does not negate the importance of institutions, but it presupposes that the institutions themselves serve the liberation project, rather than becoming an end independent of this project. Therefore, the crisis of the Palestinian national movement after Oslo was not just a crisis of political decision, but a crisis of meaning. Has the national institutions become a framework for managing the population under occupation, or have they remained a framework for leading a liberation project? When the separation occurs between (the institution) and (liberation), democracy itself is at risk of transforming into a mechanism for legitimizing existing power balances, rather than a liberation project. Here specifically appear the limits of the duality of majority and minority in liberation movements. The issue is not just about who won the vote, but who maintained the function of the national movement as a liberation movement, and who contributed, knowingly or unknowingly, to shifting it towards the logic of authority, administration, and adaptation to colonial conditions.