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

Author: يونس العموري 

This discussion does not stem from a desire for debate or to take sides, but rather comes as an attempt to rearrange political thought and understanding, and to clarify the situation at a moment when the Palestinian cause seems to urgently require a comprehensive review of the entire national experience. The issue today is no longer merely a disagreement between authority and opposition, nor simply a variance in political assessments, but 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 serves as an extension of an open dialogical state, which, if taken seriously, could contribute to reshaping political alignments based on the logic of liberation and its laws, and not on the basis of entrenched factional positions and the classical understanding of the Palestinian division. The Palestinian national movement, with all its components, seems today more than ever called to reassess its political and organizational experience based on the existing reality, and on the results that Oslo and the subsequent transformations have led to for the entire national structure.

The discussion here does not concern condemning one party and exonerating another, but is an attempt to understand how the national movement gradually transitioned from a national liberation project to a political structure revolving around administration, division, and adaptation to the reality imposed by colonialism. Thus, any serious attempt to break free from the current Palestinian impasse cannot be limited to criticizing the authority or opposing its policies, but must aim toward rebuilding the national movement itself - politically, organizationally, and intellectually - on foundations that restore the credibility of the logic of liberation as the organizing framework for the relationship with the occupation, rather than the logic of authority and population management under colonial control.

In this context, the binary (Authority and Opposition) is not merely a naive political reduction, but a direct reproduction, even if couched in critical language, of the logic established by Oslo itself. The agreement did not redefine Palestinians as a people engaged in an ongoing liberation struggle against an intractable colonial structure, but reshaped them as political groups conflicting within the confines of a limited sovereignty (self-rule) that is fundamentally 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 possesses the legitimacy of representation within the existing structure? Thus, Palestinian politics is reduced to a competition between authority and opposition, while the essence of the colonial relationship remains outside the actual accountability sphere... The authority here is not only a partial state but an administrative function within the system of control, and the opposition often defines itself in relation to this function rather than outside it... The more dangerous aspect is that this binary produces a political consciousness that sees Palestinians as actors within a governing system, rather than as a national liberation group still facing uprooting, settlement, and ongoing colonial domination. Therefore, invoking concepts drawn from stable states, like loyalty and opposition, turnover, and governmental legitimacy, without dismantling 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 the Oslo logic does not only start with criticizing the authority but with critiquing the very political language that Oslo imposed on Palestinians, where internal division became the center of the scene, while the question of liberation itself was marginalized to the periphery. However, this critique remains incomplete if the responsibility is confined to the forces that signed Oslo or managed its institutions only; the Palestinian forces that opposed the agreement and its outcomes bear historical and political responsibility for what the situation has become, not because they participated in establishing the path itself but because they failed to produce a liberatory alternative capable of transcending its conditions and rebuilding the national project on new foundations.

In liberation experiences, merely declaring rejection as an ethical or rhetorical stance is insufficient; 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 goes beyond managing division or investing in it. However, a significant portion of the Palestinian opposition gradually found itself within the very structure it claimed to oppose. It entered the institutions of the authority directly or indirectly, succumbed to its political and economic rhythms, or reproduced its factional logic based on sharing influence and representation... In the laws of liberation movements, void does not remain void. When resistance forces fail to build a comprehensive national horizon, resistance itself becomes a tool within internal balances and is gradually absorbed into the existing system, even while it raises an oppositional discourse. Thus, the Palestinian crisis is no longer merely a crisis of (authority) but an entire national movement that has gradually lost its ability to redefine itself as a liberation movement and transitioned, with its authority and opposition, from the question of liberation to the question of management, and from the national liberation project to a struggle over space within the structure that colonialism has created and reorganized through Oslo... To understand these transformations more deeply, we must return a bit to the historical context of the approval of Oslo. Before being formally established within the Palestinian National Council in 1996, several sessions of the Palestinian Central Council were indeed held in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the Central Council was gradually transforming into the actual political reference of the PLO amidst the impossibility of holding the National Council permanently... The pivotal session that followed the signing of Oslo directly was the session of the Central Council held in Tunisia from October 10-12, 1993, mere weeks after the signing of the agreement in Washington. In that session, the political decision to create the Palestinian National Authority and task the Executive Committee with forming it was made... However, prior to that, consecutive sessions of the Central Council were held during the political transition phase that preceded Oslo, including the sessions of 1990 in Tunisia, April 1991, October 1991, and May 1992.

This point is politically significant because the shift towards settlement did not suddenly begin with Oslo as a "separate incident,” but there has been 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, then the secret negotiations that culminated in Oslo... Therefore, the deeper critical question is not only... did the opposition forces participate in the session approving Oslo? But: Were those forces, especially those within the organization's institutions, truly capable of halting the political path that had been gradually taking shape for years? The facts indicate that opposition within the organization existed, but it was unable to produce a 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 remained active within the structure whose outcomes it opposed... In ordinary political contexts, disputes are resolved through mechanisms of representative democracy: voting, majority, and minority adhering to the collective decision, and then continuing their work within the system itself... However, in national liberation movements, the issue becomes more complex, as the subject of the disagreement is not only about governmental programs or economic policies, but sometimes about the nature of the national project itself and the limits of possible concessions within it.

This is why invoking the concepts of (majority and minority) within an experience 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 the decision aligns with the historical goal of the national movement and its ability to maintain the unity of the national community and its fundamental rights... Hence, the dilemma that Oslo exploded: Was it sufficient for the leadership to have institutional majorities within the PLO for the strategic shift towards settlement to become 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 issue itself? In major liberation experiences, revolutionary and political legitimacy often establish a complex balance between the institutional and historical dimensions. The majority may grant procedural legitimacy, but it is not enough to provide historical legitimacy if the decision leads to dismantling the movement's objectives or reproducing colonial hegemony in new forms... Conversely, the opposing minority cannot be content with claiming "revolutionary purity" if it remains practically inside the same institutions, benefiting from their legitimacy, and accepting their rules at times while rejecting their outcomes at other times... The logic of national liberation does not diminish the importance of institutions, but it assumes that the institutions themselves should be tools to serve the liberation project, not become an independent end apart from this project... This is why the crisis of the Palestinian national movement post-Oslo was not just a crisis of political decision but a crisis of meaning... Did the national institutions become a framework for managing the population under occupation, or did they remain a framework for leading a liberation project? And when separation occurs between (the institution) and (liberation), democracy itself risks becoming a mechanism to legitimize existing power balances, rather than a liberation project... Here precisely lies the limits of the majority-minority binary in liberation movements... The issue is not just about who won the vote, but who preserved the function of the national movement as a liberation movement, and who contributed, intentionally or unintentionally, to shifting it toward the logic of authority, administration, and adaptation to colonial conditions.