Has Division Become the Form of the "New Palestine"?!

For nearly two decades, the Palestinian division has been treated as though it were a temporary political crisis, no matter how prolonged, that would ultimately find its way to resolution through dialogue, reconciliation, or national understandings. However, what has transpired in recent years, and what has become more apparent since the genocide against Gaza, necessitates a reassessment of the accuracy of this assumption.

The Division as an Environment for Reshaping Palestinian Reality

It seems that the question is no longer: When will the division end? Instead, are we still talking about division, or about a new reality being solidified as a framework through which the Palestinian cause and its political future are being redefined?

The danger of the current moment lies in the fact that the division has become not merely a byproduct of an internal crisis, but has gradually transformed into a conducive environment for reshaping the very political geography of Palestine. While the West Bank is undergoing a systematic dismantling through settlement expansion, annexation, and the isolation of cities and villages from one another — not just isolating Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings — arrangements are being proposed in Gaza that are political, security-related, and economic, which go beyond, in many aspects, the temporary nature presumed to accompany them.

These paths may seem diverse on the surface, yet they converge at a single conclusion: the entrenchment of separation among the components of the Palestinian people, effectively closing off any realistic possibility for the establishment of an independent and unified Palestinian state, at a time when the dominant forces in the scene show no real action to prevent or even obstruct this trajectory.

Israel has largely succeeded in shifting the focus of international attention away from the essence of the Palestinian cause as a matter of a people under occupation, towards issues of administration, containment, and stability control. The discourse has increasingly revolved around the future and administration of Gaza, and how to prevent collapse in the West Bank, rather than focusing on ending the occupation and realizing Palestinian national rights. This represents one of the most dangerous shifts facing the Palestinian cause. National issues are not merely defeated by military force, but can erode when they are redefined and repositioned in international and regional consciousness. More dangerously, numerous actors in the region and the world have begun to treat the division as a stable fact, rather than a temporary crisis. At a time when Palestinians continue to raise the banner of ending division without progressing towards dismantling it, many policies are being built on an entirely opposite premise: that this reality is here to stay, and that the required response is to adapt to it and manage it, not to change it.

Thus, the essence of the crisis is no longer linked to any committee here or a government and authority there, nor even to the absence of elections or the stumbling of reconciliation, despite the importance of all that. We are facing a crisis that strikes at the heart of the national project itself, and the ability of Palestinians to maintain the unity of their cause, its political representation, and its future vision.

Rebuilding the Political System or Adapting to Division?

This question gains special significance in light of the ongoing arrangements within the Palestinian political system, whether concerning what is called the "State Constitution" or the restructuring of national representation institutions and ambiguous "elections" for the Palestinian National Council. The issue here is not about the importance of reform or renewing legitimacy, which are undoubtedly national requirements, but rather about the context in which these steps are being carried out, the foundations upon which they are based, and the conclusions they may reach regarding entrenchment of exclusion and division.

Rebuilding national institutions should be the culmination of dialogue and national consensus around the nature of the national project, its priorities, and its tools, not a substitute for it. However, when major foundational arrangements are executed amid the existing division, and without broad national consensus, the pertinent question becomes: Are we in the process of rebuilding the Palestinian political system, or are we reinforcing its adaptation to the new realities imposed by division?

This course of action becomes even more dangerous if the situation shifts from excluding certain political forces or oppositions to ostracizing broad sectors of society from actual participation in shaping the national future. At that point, the crisis no longer merely revolves around political representation, but becomes a crisis of the relationship between the political system and its society, and between national institutions and the idea for which they were established.

Despite the countless calamities, defeats, and setbacks they have endured, Palestinians have possessed a unifying national idea embodied in the project of national liberation and the establishment of an independent state. Today, however, the challenge is no longer confined to the question of the state sought, but extends to a more urgent question: How do we preserve the very idea of a state from erosion before the possibility of manifesting it on the ground is lost?

States do not collapse only when they lose control over their territories, but also when their foundational elements disintegrate, particularly geographic unity, institutional unity, political system unity, and national vision unity.

If current trends continue without radical review, the danger lies not only in the loss of additional parts of Palestinian land, but in solidifying a reality where Gaza becomes a self-existing entity, more perilously, a distorted and unviable entity, while the West Bank devolves into mere isolated and besieged population clusters, with Jerusalem being excluded from any real political equation.

At that juncture, Palestinians will not be facing a deferred state project but rather a reality wherein the national cause is replaced by living, humanitarian, and administrative issues, regardless of their significance.

However, confronting this course does not begin with slogans, nor does it end with repeated calls for reconciliation. It calls for reconstructing the Palestinian national project itself, based on political and democratic partnership, restoring the role of unifying institutions, renewing the legitimacy of the political system, and linking all of this to a national vision capable of uniting Palestinians in the homeland and diaspora around shared goals.

It also requires transitioning from managing daily crises to strategic thinking about the future; for peoples engaged in liberation struggles need more than mere resilience; they also require a clear vision of what they want to become in a decade or two.

The battle today is not merely over land, despite its existential importance, but over the political meaning of Palestine itself; does it remain a cause of a people striving for freedom, independence, and self-determination, or does it transform into separate entities and communities, each managed under different conditions? Thus, the greatest challenge facing Palestinians is not only to end the division, but to prevent it from becoming a permanent structure that redefines the Palestinian cause and its future.

The opportunity still exists to change the course. However, time is no longer a neutral factor in the conflict; it has become one of its active components. The issue is no longer merely about ending a prolonged division; it is about preserving the unity of the national cause itself from disintegration and erosion. Perhaps the question has shifted from how to end the division, to how to prevent it from becoming the new form of Palestine, possibly paving the way for its erasure.