Palestinians need new leaders and a new strategy

Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Party, which dominates the PA government in Ramallah.

A unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah was signed in Cairo in October. It set an election date, and allowed for thousands of PA officials to return to Gaza to man border crossings and populate various ministries and government offices.

The nearly two million Palestinians in the besieged Strip, however, have not yet savored the fruit of that unity in their everyday lives.

Although the reconciliation agreement was motivated by political expediency for both factions, the need for real unity among Palestinians is more urgent now than ever before, and not only because of the US decision on Jerusalem.

The Israeli Knesset has passed, or is in the process of passing, various bills that seal the fate of Palestinians, regardless of their geographical location or political affiliation. One is the Jewish Nation-State Bill, which defines Israel as the “nation home of the Jewish people,” thus rendering millions of indigenous Palestinian Arabs outcasts in their own homeland.

The “Greater Jerusalem Bill” was temporarily shelved, despite the fact that it has the support of a majority in the Knesset. The Bill calls for the expansion of Jerusalem’s boundaries to include major illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, thus illegally annexing massive swaths of Palestinian land and reducing the Palestinian population in Jerusalem to an even smaller minority.

The Palestinian leadership must understand that the challenges at hand are far greater than their selfish need for political validation and financial support. There is an urgent need for the revitalizing of all institutions of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The new strategy should place Palestinians first, and must harness the energies of the Palestinian people at home or in “shatat” — the diaspora.

This cannot be achieved through paying lip service to Palestinian unity, but through a dynamic campaign aimed at reexamining the failures of the past 25 years — since the “peace process” went into motion — and holding to account those responsible for these failures.

A new dynamic leadership must emerge that views the Palestinian struggle and popular resistance not through factional or ideological prisms, but through a compassionate allegiance with, and respect for, the Palestinian people, not only those in Palestine but also those languishing in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and throughout the region and the world.

Through this new leadership, a whole new social contract would have to be articulated, with new a vocabulary and a true commitment to specific goals and aspirations. Various Palestinian “leaderships” have been playing different tunes for too long, each focused on their personal gains, without paying heed to the fact that the majority of Palestinians have suffered tremendously as a result of this disunity and confusion.

For a Palestinian leadership to be taken seriously, it must truly represent its people and speak on their behalf with the kind of determination that reflects the everyday act of resistance that fuels the Palestinian struggle.

Indeed, 2018 promises to be a decisive year for the future of all Palestinians, and it will be a difficult one. Not only did the US pull out of the “peace process,” but it can also be expected to do its utmost to jeopardize any Palestinian initiative aimed at holding Israel accountable for its 50-year-old illegal military occupation.

If the Palestinian leadership fails to transition itself into a new role, it is likely to find itself in direct confrontation with the Palestinian people, who are ready to move on into a whole new type of struggle — one that is not beholden to the farce of a “two-state solution,” which was never truly on the agenda to begin with.

QRamzy Baroud is a journalist and author, and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His forthcoming book is “The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story.” Twitter: @RamzyBaroud