From Illusions of Settlement to the Imperatives of Liberation..

Author: Yunis Al-Amouri

In the fateful moments of people's history, it becomes impossible to escape forward, and linguistic embellishment can no longer conceal the extent of the disaster or mitigate its effects. There are historical moments that compel everyone to stand before the mirror and confront the truth as it is, without retouching or evasion or narrow calculations. Perhaps the Palestinian condition today stands before one of the most dangerous and sensitive of these moments in decades, as the Palestinian cause, in its national, political, social, and geographical dimensions, is facing an unprecedented onslaught, while the internal Palestinian scene seems engulfed in a state of paralysis, fragmentation, confusion, and an inability to produce a national response commensurate with the existing challenge...

Oh, mad absurdity in light of this unrestrained reality, enough destruction, enough recklessness, enough struggle over the illusions of a lost authority... The national decline has reached a point where it is no longer possible to continue in a state of denial, to escape forward, or to take refuge behind worn-out slogans and repeated speeches. Once again, the same equation is imposed on us coercively and decisively, one that simply and clearly states... We either exist or we do not... And once again, the Palestinian cause is facing one of its most dangerous historical phases, where the land is being looted, identity is being targeted, and the Palestinian person is subjected to attempts of breaking and subjugation, while circles of paralysis and confusion within the Palestinian political structure widen in an unprecedented manner...

What the Palestinian today lives is no longer just a transient political crisis, nor a temporary division that can be overcome with some meetings and statements and formal understandings... We are facing a comprehensive national crisis that affects the entire Palestinian national project and extends to various levels of political, social, economic, and cultural life. A crisis that threatens the essence of the Palestinian national movement, its historical function, and its fighting role, while simultaneously threatening the Palestinian society's capacity to endure and continue to confront the colonial project that targets its existence, identity, and future...

While Gaza is subjected to one of the most brutal destruction and annihilation operations in modern history, and while the West Bank is undergoing continuous invasions, settlements, displacement, land confiscation, and disintegration of the Palestinian geography, and while Jerusalem faces an open war targeting its identity and its Palestinian Arab existence, the Palestinian arena seems as if it is living in a state of general paralysis and collective incapacity to produce a national response commensurate with the existing challenges...

More dangerously, this incapacity is no longer limited to the political leadership, official institutions, or national and Islamic factions and forces, but has extended to the very mass condition. Not because the masses have lost their national sense or abandoned their cause, but because they have been subjected for many years to a systematic and continuous draining process. A political, economic, social, and psychological draining that has made wide sectors of the Palestinian people immersed in the concerns of daily survival and searching for a livelihood and social security in a stifling reality that nearly crushes the Palestinian person wherever they may be...

The Palestinian citizen today has become besieged by a series of accumulated crises. He faces the occupation with its brutality, oppression, settlement, barriers, and daily incursions, while at the same time confronting the crises of poverty, unemployment, declining services, and lack of economic prospects, as well as the state of political division that has torn apart societal unity and weakened its national immunity. Therefore, the real question is no longer why the masses are silent, but why have they reached this state of exhaustion, despair, and loss of trust...?

The Palestinian masses that have made the intifadas and revolutions and have offered hundreds of thousands of martyrs, wounded, and prisoners are not inherently incapable, nor are they unconcerned with what is happening around them. But these masses have been subjected over recent decades to a long series of national and political disappointments that have accumulated frustration upon frustration, weakening their capacity for initiative, action, and influence. How many promises were made in their name that were not fulfilled? How many projects were announced and ended in failure? How many slogans were raised only to become mere tools for political consumption?

Thus, the primary responsibility does not rest on the masses as much as it rests on the political forces and the Palestinian national movement in all its components. These forces, which are supposed to be a tool for expressing popular will and protecting the national project, have often turned into part of the very crisis. They have become unable to read the major transformations that the Palestinian cause and the region and the world are experiencing...

Wide sectors of the Palestinian political elite have failed to recognize the fact that the phase has changed dramatically. What existed years ago is no longer in existence today. The facts imposed by the occupation on the ground have far exceeded the calculations of political forces and their traditional programs. Nonetheless, a large part of this elite still acts as if time has stopped, as if the old equations are still valid, as if the Palestinian people have the luxury of wasting more time in internal disputes and conflicts...

The realities have proven without a doubt that the illusions of a political settlement that have been marketed for decades have reached their operational end. Their collapse was not the result of a preconceived ideological position, but rather the result of tangible realities on the ground. These illusions have fallen under the rubble of Gaza, have fallen under the feet of settlers devouring what remains of the West Bank, have fallen before scenes of displacement and daily incursions, and have fallen before the reality of Jerusalem, which is undergoing the most dangerous demographic and cultural transformation in its modern history.

Experience has demonstrated that the occupation has never viewed the settlement as a way to end the occupation or recognize Palestinian national rights, but rather as a means to manage the conflict and reproduce colonial control in new forms. While Palestinians were waiting for statehood, sovereignty, independence, the occupation was reshaping Palestinian geography and deepening the facts of control and dominance over the land and the people.

Here, precisely, the laws of the national liberation phase reassert themselves as the only laws capable of interpreting the reality and defining priorities. The peoples under occupation cannot build their strategies based on the logic of authority, partisan competition, or narrow factional calculations. Rather, they build them based on the main contradiction between occupation and liberation... This is the essential equation upon which the Palestinian national movement must be rebuilt. It is also the equation that imposes a comprehensive historical sorting process within Palestinian society and among its various political powers. Sorting between those who prioritize national liberation absolutely and those who prioritize maintaining their privileges and personal gains. Sorting between those who stand with the masses and their pains and aspirations and those who align themselves with their organizational and factional calculations. Sorting between those who see national unity as a condition for victory and those who deal with it as merely a slogan for media consumption...

The laws of national liberation do not recognize stagnation nor grant anyone eternal immunity. History does not protect leaderships simply because they are leaderships, nor does it protect factions because they are factions, nor does it protect institutions because they are institutions. Rather, it grants legitimacy only to those who succeed in expressing the requirements of the phase and the interests and national goals of the people... Therefore, the current crisis is essentially a leadership crisis, a vision crisis, and a national function crisis. Many Palestinian forces are still imprisoned by past calculations and are unable to produce a comprehensive national project that responds to current challenges. Moreover, the ongoing state of division is no longer merely a political disagreement; it has become an existential threat that undermines the entirety of the Palestinian national project and weakens society's ability to endure and confront...

Gaza, which pays legendary prices in the blood and sacrifices of its sons, does not need statements of solidarity as much as it needs a national project that unites Palestinian energies. The West Bank, which is subjected daily to dismantling and settlement, does not need seasonal speeches as much as it needs a comprehensive national resistance strategy. Jerusalem, which faces uprooting and judaization schemes, does not need more emotions as much as it needs organized political and fighting action to protect its existence and identity...

Thus, restoring validity to the struggle for liberation does not mean replicating past experiences or reproducing traditional slogans, but rather means rebuilding the Palestinian national project on new foundations based on national unity, popular participation, and the ability to utilize various forms of political, popular, and mass struggle within a clear national liberation strategy... Restoring validity to the struggle for liberation also means restoring validity to the Palestinian person himself. To the Palestinian dignity that has been violated. To the national rights that have been marginalized. To the popular voice that has been long ignored. The Palestinian cause has never been a matter of authority, positions, or privileges; rather, it has always been and remains a matter of a people struggling for freedom, sovereignty, independence, and its natural right to self-determination over its land.

What is required today is not just a new political agreement between forces and factions, but rather a comprehensive re-establishment of the Palestinian national condition based on the comprehensive liberation project. A project that redefines national priorities, reinstates the importance of national unity, rebuilds trust between the people and their institutions, and restores the Palestinian struggle as a tool for liberation rather than a means to manage crises.

Opportunities have shrunk to their minimum, and the entire Palestinian political class faces a historical test that may be the last. Either it succeeds in absorbing the ongoing transformations and achieving a consensual national condition that meets the requirements of the phase, or it enters into an open confrontation with history itself. The peoples that struggle for their freedom always possess the ability to renew their tools and reproduce their leadership and create their national alternatives when the existing elites fail to perform their role... Therefore, the historical sorting process is no longer a future possibility; it has become an existing reality shaped daily by the dripping Palestinian blood in Gaza, by the incursions and settlements in the West Bank, and by the economic and social suffering experienced by Palestinians in various places of their existence. This process will continue until it rearranges the national scene on a clear basis that does not allow for misinterpretation... A basis of occupation and liberation.

In the end, the great Palestinian truth remains clearer than ever. Everything that is outside the equation of national liberation is destined to decay and fall, no matter how much power and influence it possesses. As for the Palestinian people, who have faced the Nakba, displacement, occupation, wars, and siege, they will remain capable of reproducing their national identity, restoring their dignity, renewing their struggle tools, and asserting their presence in the equations of reality and history. Therefore, the message that all forces and leaders should hear is clear and explicit... If you do not rise to the level of this people's sacrifices and the requirements of this phase, then the people themselves will reproduce their national equation and will create their own tools and leadership anew, as they have always done at every historical turn in their long journey towards freedom and independence.