Elections After Genocide: Rebuilding the Social Contract or Reproducing Exclusionary Domination?

When wars fail to impose their political outcomes, politics sometimes attempts to achieve what military force could not. Amid the rubble of Gaza, where genocide remains open to its possibilities, discussions about Palestinian elections return as a postponed entitlement. However, the pressing question is not when we will vote, but what we want these elections to produce, for the benefit of which national project, and under what power balances shaped by the fire of war.

In the midst of the genocidal war being waged against our people and the unprecedented destruction inflicted upon the Gaza Strip, the issue of Palestinian elections has resurfaced at the forefront of political discussion. Yet, the real question lies not in the necessity of elections, but in the reasons for their urgency to return now, and the political function they are intended to serve.

If elections are a national necessity, why have they been sidelined for nearly two decades? Why have repeated popular demands, throughout years of division, institutional decay, and the suspension of the legislative council, not managed to bring them to the forefront? Why have they become a pressing topic in international and Palestinian discourses today, after the genocide in Gaza?

It seems that explaining this solely in terms of popular will is insufficient. Palestinian society has long called for renewing legitimacy and rebuilding institutions to end division, yet these demands have not been enough to break the political stagnation. Now, elections have become part of a broader discussion concerning what is called the "day after" the war, completing the engineering of the Palestinian scene, and producing a political partner capable of managing the upcoming phase.

Here arises a question that is no less important than the elections themselves: Are we witnessing a delayed response to an internal national necessity, or a bending to external pressures and demands imposed by the war and its aftermath?

Elections between the entitlement of popular will and the pressures of the "day after"

The occupation government has failed, despite the mass extermination and immense destruction, to extract a decisive political achievement from the Palestinian people. It could neither liquidate the national cause, nor produce an alternative leadership, nor extract Palestinian legitimacy for the projects it sought to impose by force.

The question that must be taken seriously is: Can some internal political arrangements transform into a means to deliver what the war could not impose?

The danger lies not in the elections themselves, but in turning them into a tool for delineating the political outcomes of the war or for legitimizing realities imposed by destruction and the imbalance of power. Israel, which has failed to extract a decisive political achievement through brute force, may find an opportunity to reap some political fruits of the war if Palestinian internal arrangements respond to what the war could not impose. Do we provide that for them?

The political system crisis is deeper than the absence of elections

Elections, at their core, represent a moment to redefine national partnership and the rules of the social contract that governs political relations within society. The crisis of the Palestinian political system is not merely an election absence crisis. It is a deeper crisis related to the erosion of legitimacy, the paralysis of institutions, geographic and political division, the decline in the role of inclusive national institutions, and the collapse of trust in political forces and ruling elites. Therefore, reducing the crisis to an absence of elections misrepresents the real problem. Elections do not create democracy by themselves, nor do they automatically produce national partnership. Under certain conditions, they may turn into a mechanism for reproducing division or cementing domination or providing formal legitimacy to distorted realities. The Palestinian experience itself offers lessons that should not be ignored. When prior national agreements are absent, trust collapses among political actors, and guarantees to respect outcomes are absent, elections become a battleground for power more than a means to rebuild the political system.

Hence, the question is not whether to conduct elections or postpone them, but the political conditions that make them part of the solution rather than a new factor for perpetuating the crisis and perhaps deepening it. Conducting elections under the weight of the power balances produced by war, or under external pressures seeking to reshape the political system according to "day after" requirements, may convert them from a tool for renewing legitimacy into a means for reproducing existing imbalances and legitimizing them.

Elections as the culmination of a new national path

The elections that can form an entry point for national salvation are those that come as a culmination of an inclusive national dialogue, an agreement on partnership rules, a comprehensive political program, an agreed transitional phase, and the rebuilding of national institutions, foremost of which is the Palestine Liberation Organization as the collective framework for the Palestinian people.

In this context, the need for a consensual transitional government appears as a national necessity, not as a new formula for power sharing, but as a tool for reuniting institutions, alleviating the effects of division, and preparing the political, legal, and administrative environment for conducting free and fair elections, and ensuring respect for their outcomes.

Thus, the warning against rushing elections without national consensus is not aimed at delaying them, but at preventing them from turning into another tool for cementing division or exclusion and affirming that elections should be the culmination of an agreed transitional national path rather than its starting point.

As for elections proposed as a response to external pressures, or as part of "day after" arrangements, or as a means of redistributing power within the power balances produced by the war, they could become a tool for reproducing domination and exclusion rather than a lever for rebuilding the political system.

What is required is not to produce a new legitimacy that adapts to the results of war, but to re-establish national legitimacy based on participation, free will, and true representation to safeguard rights and energize the capacities able to achieve it.

In light of the organized attempts to destroy Palestinian society in Gaza and to reshape the conditions of its political existence, it becomes dangerous for the discussion around elections to turn into a procedural discussion separate from the larger questions posed by war. The problem does not lie in the ballot boxes, but in the political project that these boxes will legitimize.

Elections that rebuild the Palestinian social contract, establish true national partnership, and restore the unity of the political system represent an indispensable national necessity. As for elections used to legitimize results imposed by war, or to reproduce dominance and exclusion, they will not be a gateway to salvation, but may turn into one of the political fruits that Israel has failed to reap through war.

Therefore, the real question is not: Are we for or against elections? But rather, which elections? For what purpose? In service of which national project? It is here that it is determined whether elections will be a lever for rebuilding the social contract and political system, or a new tool for reproducing the same crisis under the banner of legitimacy and democracy.

Reconstructing the Palestinian political system has become an urgent national necessity, but this mission does not start solely from ballot boxes, but from rebuilding national partnership, renewing the social contract, and restoring the unity of institutions and national references. Only then can elections transition into a foundational act for the Palestinian future, not a tool for managing the results of war or adapting to its outcomes, but a moment for rebuilding the national project, restoring the political meaning of freedom, and shaping the foundations of a homeland that emerges from the rubble to not repeat its crises but to open a new path toward freedom and dignity.