Palestine and the Standard of Regional Legitimacy

Not all issues maintain their position in the same way. Some recede, some disappear, while others redefine their role. The Palestinian issue belongs to the third category; it has not lost its status in the Middle East, but its function has changed. It is no longer solely the issue around which alliances revolve but has become one of the most important criteria for measuring the legitimacy of the new regional system.

For decades, the Palestinian issue has been described as the "central issue" in the Arab and regional system. This description was not just a political slogan, but it reflected the reality that most regional alignments, alliances, and positions were measured by their proximity or distance from Palestine. Today, amidst the accelerating transformations in the Middle East, the question is no longer: Is Palestine still the central issue? But rather: What role does Palestine play in a reshaping regional system?
In my view, Palestine's position has not declined as much as its nature has changed.

Palestine has not moved from the center of the regional system to its margins; rather, it has shifted from being a focus around which policies are built to one of the most important standards by which the legitimacy of those policies is measured, perhaps the most sensitive in the Middle East.

The Middle East has entered an unprecedented phase of political and security engineering in recent years. Issues of collective security, energy, trade corridors, artificial intelligence, and cross-border investments have become prominent in the calculations of states. The Palestinian issue no longer solely defines the directions of regional relations as it did in previous decades.

To understand this shift, one must read the status that Palestine occupied through the various stages of the development of the Arab regional system. In the 1950s and 60s, Palestine was linked to the Arab nationalism project and became a standard for measuring governments' commitment to the discourse of liberation and unity. With the transformations the region witnessed since the 1970s, as several countries adopted more realistic approaches, the Palestinian issue became a measure by which the legitimacy of Arab governments was assessed in the eyes of their peoples, even if their policies towards the conflict differed. Since the initiation of the peace process in the 1990s, Palestine has become a field for testing the ability of political settlements to produce a sustainable peace, not just political agreements.

Today, amid rapid geopolitical transformations, Palestine no longer represents a standard for the legitimacy of a specific system or ideology; it has become the measure through which the new regional system's ability to achieve stability, acceptance, and sustainability is tested. Thus, what has changed is not the importance of the Palestinian issue, but the political function it performs within the structure of the regional system.
This functional shift explains Palestine's continued presence at the heart of regional discussions, despite changing state priorities and tools.

However, this transformation does not mean that Palestine has lost its significance. The successive crises in the region have revealed that any regional project that treats the Palestinian issue as a file that can be postponed or bypassed soon collides with the limits of its ability to produce stability. Recurrent wars, escalating tensions, and the widening circle of uncertainty confirm that ignoring the roots of the conflict does not lead to its end but rather to its reproduction in more complex forms.

Here, the concept of regional legitimacy emerges as a framework through which to understand Palestine's position in the new Middle East. Regional legitimacy, as suggested here, does not merely mean the ability of any emerging system to build balances of power or form alliances but rather its ability to gain acceptance, stability, and sustainability by addressing the foundational issues of the conflict, foremost among them the Palestinian issue.

This legitimacy can be measured through three interrelated indicators: the capacity of the regional system to produce stability without merely managing crises, its consistency with the principles of international law and the rights of peoples, and the extent of its acceptance by regional public opinion, not just political elites. From this perspective, Palestine becomes not just one of the files in the region, but the most sensitive test of the legitimacy of any new regional system and its ability to endure.

Ironically, attempts to bypass the Palestinian issue have not led to a decrease in its presence; rather, they have led it to resurface in every crisis as the knot that hinders the completion of any new arrangements. It seems that the region can redraw its economic and security maps, but it cannot transcend the fundamental truth: that sustainable peace is not built on managing the conflict but on addressing it.

This transformation extends beyond the regional level to the international system itself. Positions on Palestine have become a measure of how consistent countries are with the principles they claim to defend, such as respecting international law, protecting civilians, rejecting occupation, and the right of peoples to self-determination. Here, the Palestinian issue is no longer just a test for regional policies, but a test of the credibility of the international system itself.

The real question is not whether Palestine has exited from the center of the regional system, but whether any new regional system can gain legitimacy and endure without a just resolution of the Palestinian issue. Historical experience indicates that ignoring Palestine may delay crises, but it does not eliminate them.

The Middle East has changed many times, its alliances have shifted, regimes have fallen and others have risen, yet Palestine has remained the most capable factor of exposing the limits of any new regional system. A system that can produce power without justice may impose itself temporarily, but it cannot produce legitimacy.

Palestine's position in the Middle East has changed, but it has not receded. From being the issue around which alliances revolve, it has become the standard that reveals their limits and grants them legitimacy or strips it away. Thus, the question is no longer: Where does Palestine fit in the regional system? But rather: Which regional system can gain legitimacy while failing to provide a just answer to the Palestinian issue? In answering this question, not only is Palestine's future determined, but also the features of the Middle East currently being shaped, its limits of legitimacy, and its ability to produce sustainable peace.