National wandering... when the Palestinian political system becomes part of the crisis

Writer: Younis Al-Amouri

The crisis of the Palestinian political system was not a result of the moment, nor did it arise as a result of an emergency circumstance or as a result of political complications that imposed themselves on the leadership alone. Rather, it is the result of a path that extended for nearly three decades, during which mistakes, concessions, and political and negotiating bets accumulated, and in which the national goals retreated from a project of liberation and independence to daily management of the reality of the occupation, while the leadership continued to adhere to the same path, even after its results began to increasingly contradict the promises on which it was based. We are not talking about a temporary failure that can be overcome by changing some people or modifying some procedures, but rather about a deep crisis that affected the structure and function of the political system, and weakened its ability to represent the Palestinian people, lead their struggle, and determine their national direction. When failure becomes a rule, regression is a policy, and inability is a permanent state, the problem no longer lies in a decision here or a position there, but rather in the system that produces these decisions and positions, and then reproduces itself as if nothing had happened.

The Palestinian leadership bet on a political and negotiating path that was said to lead to an end to the occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, but years passed, and the occupation remained, and settlement expanded, and the land was eroding, and Jerusalem was being subjected to Judaization, while the facts on the ground became more complex, and the chances of achieving the national goals to which that path was marketed as a path declined. However, we did not witness a political review on the scale of this failure, and there was no real accountability for the choices that led us to this result. Rather, adherence to the path continued, as if acknowledging its failure would constitute a personal defeat for its owners, rather than a national necessity imposed by the interest of the people and their cause. The settlement has transformed from a means that was supposed to serve the national project into a reference that governs political thinking, and maintaining the path has sometimes become more important than reviewing its results, even when the facts began to undermine the foundations on which it was based.

It is not permissible here to always seek refuge in the occupation to explain every Palestinian failure or to exempt the leadership from responsibility for its decisions. The occupation is responsible for its occupation, settlement, and crimes, and it is the party that imposes control and prevents the Palestinian people from exercising their right to freedom and independence. However, this fact does not grant Palestinian decision-makers immunity from accountability, nor does it turn their political choices into decisions beyond criticism. The occupation did not take all of its decisions on behalf of the leadership, nor did it force it to deal with a single political path as the irreplaceable option. It did not prevent it from reviewing its policies, rebuilding its institutions, expanding national participation, or holding accountable those who failed to manage public affairs. Holding the occupation accountable is one thing, and turning its existence into a permanent excuse to escape national responsibility is quite another. A people fighting a liberation battle cannot demand that their enemy leave, and then exempt their leadership from accountability for the way they are managing their battle, their rights, and their future.

Perhaps the current scene provides additional evidence of the depth of the crisis, with what it is witnessing of confusion in decisions and decrees, confusion in dealing with political and electoral entitlements, and frequent shifting between dates, conditions and justifications, to the point that the mechanisms that are supposed to regulate political life have become another subject of doubt and confusion. The problem is not only with a specific decree, nor with an electoral date that is advanced or delayed, but rather with a political logic that made the decree an alternative to national consensus and effective institutions, and made the decision issued from above capable of suspending or moving an entitlement without there being a full institutional life that allows for participation, accountability, and oversight. Elections are a right for the people, not a gift offered by the leadership when circumstances permit, and not a card used to relieve pressure or restore legitimacy when needed, and then postponed or restricted whenever they collide with results that decision-makers do not want. If elections are a national entitlement, they cannot be justified by announcing their date alone, but rather require a clear political system, declared rules, institutions capable of guaranteeing them, and a political will that accepts their results and respects people’s right to choose and be held accountable.

What is happening cannot be separated from the larger question related to the nature of the Palestinian political system itself. The Legislative Council has been absent from performing its oversight and legislative role for many years, and the institutional life that is supposed to regulate the relationship between the authorities and allow the accountability of decision-makers is dysfunctional, while calls for reform, renewal of legitimacy, and rebuilding of institutions are repeated, without these calls turning into a real process of change that affects the structure of the system and its operating rules. As for the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is supposed to be the unifying national framework and representative of the Palestinian people and the reference for its liberation project, the questions of representation, effectiveness, renewal, and relationship with authority still exist, while talk is repeated about reforming and rebuilding it without a political resolution that would put it back in its natural position. Thus we live in an unjustifiable paradox: institutions that are supposed to be legitimate but are absent or dysfunctional, decisions made in the name of legitimacy in the absence of institutional life that gives legitimacy its meaning, and a leadership that talks about reviving the national situation while questions accumulate about representation, accountability, the program, and the ability to make decisions.

What makes this irony even more crude is that the question (what is to be done?) has become a repeated refrain in meetings, dialogues, and political meetings, as if the national situation discovers every time that it is in crisis, and then returns to the starting point in search of a new answer to the same question. What can be done to revive the national situation? What can be done to restore unity? What can be done to confront the occupation and settlement? What can be done to restore institutions, legitimacy and representation? These are legitimate questions in themselves, but their repetition throughout these years, without the political will to move them from deliberation to action, makes them part of the problem and not a gateway to the solution. Questions have sometimes become a substitute for decision, dialogue a substitute for accountability, committees a substitute for change, and statements a substitute for practice. Everyone meets to diagnose the crisis and agree on its seriousness, then the meeting is adjourned for each party to return to its accounts and positions, and the people are left alone facing the consequences of this repeated inability.

This crisis cannot be addressed by summoning the factions to a new dialogue to add to the archive of dialogues, agreements, and statements, if the dialogue itself does not affect the rules of the regime, does not define the responsibilities of the parties, and does not establish binding mechanisms for implementation and accountability. The factions are not outside the crisis simply because they oppose the leadership, and it is not enough for them to raise the slogan of reform to become part of the solution. There is a responsibility that falls on everyone, in different degrees and forms, for the continuation of the state of division, for disrupting the rebuilding of the national system, and for dealing with political entitlements according to the logic of organizational calculations and factional interests. Unless the opposition turns from repeated objection to a clear political position on the nature of the system, program, representation and legitimacy, it will continue, no matter how loud its rhetoric, to revolve in the same orbit, and participate from where it does not want to keep the crisis open. Reform that does not change the rules of producing the crisis is not reform, but rather a rearrangement of its positions, and unity that does not restore respect to the national partnership is nothing but a truce between parties that fear the cost of continuing the conflict more than they fear the loss of the national project.

The deeper problem is that talk about rearranging the internal home has often become an end in itself, as if the Palestinian people are experiencing a crisis of order, not a crisis of national liberation, occupation, settlement, displacement, and dismantling of geography, politics, and society. Putting the house in order has become a ready-made title for postponing entitlements, while the house itself remains without agreed-upon political rules, without comprehensive and effective representation, and without real accountability for the path that brought the issue to this impasse. We have the right to ask: Which house do we want to arrange? Who has the right to arrange its rooms, determine its functions, and distribute its keys? Is what is required to redistribute seats and positions among the existing powers, or to rebuild the national system based on the will, rights, and goals of the people? The people are not a permanent hostage to the internal arrangement, and they cannot remain suspended between the differences and interests of the powers, waiting for them to agree on managing their crisis, while the facts on the ground change at the expense of their existence, rights, and future.

What the Palestinians need today is not more slogans about reform, renewing legitimacy, and reviving the national situation, but rather a frank political confrontation with the outcome of the previous stage, and with the foundations that produced this deficit. After nearly three decades, it is no longer acceptable for the crisis to be treated as an administrative defect that can be fixed with some amendments, or a misunderstanding between leadership and factions, or an inevitable result of the complexities of reality. It has become necessary to undermine the political foundations that reproduce the crisis, end the logic of monopolizing decision-making, postpone accountability, disrupt representation, transform reform into a permanent promise, and re-establish the national system on the basis of true partnership, popular legitimacy, accountability, and a clear national program. This does not mean demolishing national institutions or leaving the people without frameworks to represent them. Rather, it means liberating these institutions from the functions and practices that emptied them of their role, and rebuilding them to become tools of national action, accountability, and participation, not formal facades that derive their legitimacy from their names and history while their ability to perform their functions declines.

But the re-establishment of the national system cannot be completed without resolving the question that has been absent from many discussions about the crisis: What is the nature of the stage that the Palestinian people are experiencing, and what is the national project that is supposed to lead their struggle through it? Are we in the stage of building an independent state that has sovereignty and the conditions for stability, or are we still in a stage of national liberation under occupation, in which the land is exposed to settler colonialism, and in which the foundations of the establishment of the state are being undermined, while our institutions and political discourses often deal as if the issue is related to managing a stable entity and completing the construction of its institutions? The contradiction between a reality that imposes national liberation entitlements, and a regime that practices politics with the logic of managing the fait accompli, is not an intellectual detail or a disagreement in terminology, but rather it is one of the roots of the confusion we are experiencing. We cannot raise the rhetoric of liberation when we address the public, and then practice politics on the basis that the priority is to preserve an existing structure that has lost much of its ability to achieve the goals for which it was created.

Hence, resistance emerges as an element that should not be absent from any serious discussion about rebuilding the national project. Resistance is not a detail that can be left until after the internal house is in order, nor is it a factional affair separate from the nature and function of the political system. Rather, it is part of the national liberation equation whose location, goals, and relationship with the rest of the tools of struggle must be determined by the national project. If we are still living under occupation, and if settler colonialism imposes facts by force and works to undermine Palestinian existence and rights, then the national project cannot build its strategy on the assumption that the stage of liberation has ended, or that negotiations alone can produce freedom and independence, or that preserving existing institutions is a goal that takes precedence over the goal that those institutions are supposed to serve. Institutions are not the project, the authority is not the homeland, and negotiation is not a substitute for the people’s right to resist occupation. Likewise, any political path cannot gain its legitimacy from its name or the length of its continuity, but rather from its ability to serve and achieve national goals.

Resistance here is not a slogan raised in the face of a faltering political path and then left without vision or responsibility. It is not the exclusive property of a faction or movement, nor is it synonymous with a single form of national action. It is a right of the people under occupation, and an open national choice whose tools and methods are varied according to the circumstances and requirements of the conflict, and includes forms of popular, political, legal, diplomatic, and other forms of struggle that serve the goal of liberation. It is not permissible for this right to turn into a regulatory monopoly, nor is it permissible to reduce the national project to a single tool or claim that a particular option replaces the construction of a comprehensive national strategy. The issue is not an abstract comparison between competing slogans, but rather having a project that defines what we want to achieve, how we confront the occupation, how we protect the people, their existence and their rights, how we employ the various tools of struggle in a clear national context, and how we ensure that the major choices are the subject of national responsibility, participation and accountability, not individual decisions imposed on everyone and then the people are left alone to face their results.

Opening resistance options does not mean exempting any force from criticism and accountability, nor does it mean that the decisions of any faction become above the national debate, just as criticism of the factions’ decisions should not be turned into an excuse to give up the people’s right to resist the occupation or limit their options to a political path that has proven incapable of achieving its goals. What is required is to end this false dualism that places the Palestinians between accepting the management of the existing reality as if it were a fate that cannot be changed, or leaving the national project hostage to choices that are not organized into a comprehensive strategy. The resistance needs a national project that defines its goals, and the national project needs a will for liberation that does not surrender to the limits of the fait accompli, and the political system needs real legitimacy that emanates from the people and is subject to their accountability, not legitimacy that is called upon when needed and suspended when its requirements impose a change that the leadership does not desire. Without that, we will continue to move from one crisis to another, disagreeing over means while avoiding questions about goals, and spending time arranging institutions while the ground on which the state is supposed to be built erodes.

Therefore, undermining the foundations of the existing political system cannot be merely a call to change its form or replace its leaders. Rather, it should be linked to redefining its national function, determining the nature of the stage through which it leads the people, reconsidering resistance as a right and an open option within a comprehensive national liberation strategy, and rebuilding the PLO on the basis of effective representation, partnership, and accountability, and subjecting authority and its functions to national goals, not the other way around. The question is not who rules this regime, but rather what this regime does, for whom it works, what project it serves, and whether it is capable of leading a people under occupation towards freedom and independence, or whether it has become part of the crisis that it is supposed to address. The answer cannot be by changing faces alone, or by redistributing positions among the same forces, or by launching a new round of promises that do not find their way into implementation.

After three decades of wandering, it is no longer acceptable for the Palestinian people to be asked to wait for an indefinite period, or to be convinced that the crisis requires more time, that the revival of the national situation is postponed until the house is in order, that the renewal of legitimacy awaits the appropriate conditions, and that the national project can remain without decisive answers regarding liberation, resistance, representation, and resolution. The people have paid high prices for their land, their rights, their lives, and their future, and they must not continue to be treated as a subject of decisions rather than a partner in making them, or as an audience to be summoned when the powers need new legitimacy. There is no sanctity for a political structure, there is no immunity for a path that has failed, there is no eternal legitimacy for a leadership, there is no meaning for institutions that do not perform their role, and there is no benefit for a national project that does not clearly define the nature of the stage, the tools for confronting it, and its goals.

Either a radical review that rebuilds the national system on the basis of the will of the people and the requirements of liberation, opens options for resistance within a comprehensive and responsible project, and restores institutions, legitimacy, and representation to their meaning and function, or continues the same cycle... decrees that follow one another, dates that change, institutions that are absent, leaders that are explained, factions that exchange accusations, and meetings that re-ask the question (what is to be done?) without having the courage to answer it, and a people who pay the price, and an occupation that continues to impose The facts on the ground. Then the crisis will not be just a failure in managing the system, but rather the result of a system that is more accustomed to managing the maze than it has the will to get out of it.