The Crisis of the Official Palestinian Leadership

Author: Younes Al-Amouri

The crisis that has plagued the Palestinian cause in recent years has not solely arisen from the imbalance of power with the Israeli occupation, nor is it a direct result of regional and international transformations that have reshaped the priorities of the region. Rather, it is also a product of a profound internal crisis that has affected the structure of the Palestinian political system and weakened its ability to keep pace with the historical transformations that the conflict has witnessed. Major national issues do not only regress when the adversary possesses the elements of power; they also regress when the leadership fails to review its options, renew its legitimacy, and rebuild its tools in accordance with the nature of the stage. Hence, discussing the crisis of the official Palestinian leadership is not confined to specific individuals; it is more about a political approach that has governed the past period and has today become in need of a comprehensive review that restores the national project as the regulatory framework for all policies and options. The modern Palestinian leadership emerged from the womb of the national liberation movement, deriving its legitimacy from the revolution and from its ability to unite the Palestinian people around the goal of liberation and self-determination. The Palestine Liberation Organization represented the unifying framework within which various forces and currents came together, while the national project remained the supreme reference from which institutions derived their existence and legitimacy. At that stage, leadership was not an end in itself; rather, it was a tool to achieve a greater goal, namely ending the occupation and embodying the fixed national rights of the Palestinian people. However, this equation began to gradually change with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as part of the Oslo Accords, which were presented as a transitional phase leading to the end of the occupation within a specified time frame. What was meant to be transitional has, over time, transformed into a permanent political reality, while occupation has expanded, settlement has grown, Jerusalem has continuously faced policies of Judaization, and the components of the independent Palestinian state have rapidly eroded. Conversely, the Authority transformed from a tool intended to serve the national project into a political and administrative structure that increasingly worked to manage the prevailing reality and maintain its continuity, to the point that preserving institutions became a goal that often took precedence over rebuilding the national strategy capable of altering this reality. This transformation was not merely a result of the obstinacy of successive Israeli governments, despite their full responsibility for thwarting the peace process. It was also linked to the absence of political review within the Palestinian system. When it became clear that Israel did not see negotiations as a path to end the occupation, but as a means to manage it and buy time to complete its settlement project, the Palestinian leadership was supposed to take the initiative to reevaluate the entire political path and reframe the tools of the national project in line with the new variables. However, this did not happen, and reliance continued on the same tools, despite a decline in their ability to achieve any real progress, which turned the political process into an end in itself, after it lost the ability to achieve the goal for which it was established. Therefore, the crux of the crisis does not lie in the continuation of this or that official, or in the circulation of positions within the existing political structure, but rather in the persistence of a political model that can no longer produce initiative or comprehend the transformations that have occurred in the conflict. The problem is not a leadership crisis in the personal sense, but rather a structural leadership crisis, where the political system has gradually lost mechanisms for review, renewing legitimacies, correcting mistakes, and has become more inclined to manage the crisis than to work towards overcoming it. Thus, changing individuals, no matter how important, will not be sufficient unless it is accompanied by a reconstruction of the political model that governs the relationship between leadership, institutions, and the national project itself. One of the most prominent manifestations of this dysfunction has been the reduction of the Palestinian national project to a single political path, to the extent that this path has become the framework within which all national policies and options are measured. When this path stumbled, the problem was not in its failure per se—every political option is subject to success or failure—but rather in the fact that the official leadership did not work to build an alternative national strategy that could accommodate the changes and reallocate the elements of power possessed by the Palestinian people. Thus, Palestinians found themselves facing a political project in decline, without a renewed national project capable of filling the void it left behind. One of the most dangerous consequences of this approach has been the retreat of resistance, in its comprehensive national sense, from its position as one of the fundamental pillars of the national liberation movement to a marginal position within the official strategy. The decline did not stop at the retreat of armed struggle, but more broadly and deeply it included the weakening of various forms of resistance held by peoples living under occupation. Investment in organized popular resistance, civil disobedience, mass action, and economic, academic, and cultural boycotts, as well as people-to-people diplomacy, trade union and student action, legal paths before international courts and bodies, protecting the national narrative, and strengthening elements of economic and social resilience has receded, even though all these tools collectively constitute an integrated resistance system capable of exhausting the occupation politically, legally, and morally, and raising the cost of its continuity before the international community. This regression was not merely a product of objective circumstances imposed by reality; it also resulted from a political choice that confined national action within the framework of the negotiation process, treating other tools of struggle as secondary, deferred options or inconsistent with the official political approach. Thus, the impact of this approach did not only extend to the failure of a specific political option but also extended to disabling most of the elements of power that the Palestinian people possess, gradually removing them from the equation of national action at a time when Israel was using all political, military, legal, economic, and media tools to impose its colonial settlement project on the ground. This approach does not align with what international law has established, which has not confined the rights of peoples living under occupation to a single means of defending their rights but has emphasized their right to self-determination, to end the occupation, and to continue their struggle utilizing all legitimate means that align with the rules of international law, the UN Charter, international humanitarian law, and related international covenants and norms. Therefore, restoring respect for resistance does not mean calling for a specific form of it, but rather restoring a comprehensive national understanding of it, as an integrated system in which political, popular, legal, diplomatic, media, economic, and all other legitimate means come together to enable the Palestinian people to enhance their steadfastness, accumulate elements of power, and regain the initiative. In parallel, the Palestinian political system has witnessed a continuous decline in the level of democratic participation, as elections have been stalled, representative institutions have weakened, the role of unifying national frameworks has diminished, mechanisms for oversight and accountability have regressed, while the decision-making process has concentrated within a narrow circle, leading to a widening gap between leadership and society and weakening public trust in official institutions. Over time, the legitimacy crisis has become linked not only to the expiration of the legal terms of institutions but also to the absence of political participation, the stalling of renewal mechanisms, and the diminishing capacity of the political system to accommodate the various components of the Palestinian people at home and in the diaspora. The Palestinian division has further complicated this crisis, turning from a political disagreement into a structural reality that continuously reproduces itself. The division is no longer merely a difference in programs or priorities; it has become a political and institutional environment that has weakened the unity of national decision-making, exhausted Palestinian society, and provided the occupation with a historic opportunity to deepen its settlement project in the absence of a unified national reference capable of directing Palestinian energies towards the central goal of ending the occupation. Over time, the division has become part of the crisis, not just a result of it, and its management has turned into an alternative to addressing it, while the realities imposed by the occupation continue to expand rapidly. In light of this reality, the concept of the unifying national project, which has long formed the essential meeting point for Palestinians, has diminished. The national project was based on the unity of the people, unity of representation, and unity of purpose—anchors that gave the Palestinian cause its political and moral presence on both Arab and international levels. However, these anchors have undergone clear tremors in recent years due to the absence of a unified strategic vision that defines the nature of the stage, its priorities, tools, and the boundaries of the relationship between the political and the struggle, and between the Authority and the national liberation movement. When the unifying project disappears, policies become scattered reactions, and leadership loses its ability to initiate and shape the future. Nevertheless, the stagnation of the political project does not mean the failure of the national project, just as the failure of a settlement does not negate the historical and legal rights of the Palestinian people. These rights derive their legitimacy not from a political agreement but from the rules of international law, the UN Charter, and international legitimacy decisions which affirm the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, to end the occupation, to establish their independent state, and to enjoy all of their inalienable rights. Thus, the crisis is not a crisis of rights but a crisis of managing those rights and transforming them into a political and struggle project capable of imposing its presence in the international balance of power. Re-establishing the Palestinian national project has become not just a political option among several, but a national necessity imposed by the nature of this stage. This task does not begin with reproducing the existing political structure but with rebuilding the political system on the basis of national partnership, renewing legitimacy through popular will, and restoring the unifying role of national institutions, foremost among them the Palestine Liberation Organization, as the legal and unifying representative of the Palestinian people, and defining the relationship between the Authority and the national project to ensure that the Authority remains a tool serving the project, not a substitute for it. Moreover, re-establishing requires formulating a comprehensive national strategy in which all tools of national action integrate, so that political action is not a substitute for resistance, nor is resistance a substitute for political action. Instead, they become part of a unified vision where popular resistance, legal and diplomatic action, boycott movements, enhancing national resilience, activating the role of Palestinians in the diaspora, and all other legitimate means recognized by international law operate within a unified strategy governed by a collective national decision, aiming to raise the cost of occupation politically, legally, and morally, reaching the point of enabling the Palestinian people to exercise their right to freedom and self-determination. The past decades have demonstrated that the occupation does not benefit solely from its military superiority but also benefits from the division of Palestinians, the stagnation of their institutions, and the absence of review within their political system. It has also proven that any national project that loses its capacity for renewal, or disables its elements of strength, or confines itself to a single option, becomes more vulnerable to exhaustion, no matter how just its cause. Therefore, the crisis of the official Palestinian leadership is not an inevitable fate but a result of options and policies that can be reviewed and corrected if national will and political courage are available to transition from crisis management to reconstructing the national project on more solid foundations capable of confronting the challenges of the stage.