Reclaiming Strategic Purpose in Palestinian Politics

Abstract

The current paralysis of Palestinian politics is the product of not simply failed leadership, but also an institutional order forged since Oslo. Israel’s destruction in Gaza and accelerated colonisation in the West Bank has produced factions that preserve themselves rather than protect their people. Hamas’s October 2023 attack restored Palestinian visibility yet left Hamas militarily degraded, politically cornered and stripped of governing capacity. The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) administrative stagnation persisted, tethered to donor finance and hobbled by Israeli constraints. Proposals to revive the Palestine Liberation Organization through elections and expanded membership risk reproducing dysfunction as long as the PA monopolises governance and controls the fiscal levers on which any reconstituted organisation would depend. Renewal requires authority to be sourced beyond factions, drawing on civil society, younger organisers, diaspora networks and technocratic bodies. Palestinian liberation turns on rebuilding legitimate authority that can deliver protection, representation and a strategic horizon under conditions of continuing dispossession.