After Gaza, who represents Palestine?

More than a thousand days of war on Gaza have destroyed far more than cities, hospitals and refugee camps. They have also exposed the exhaustion of a political framework built more than three decades ago under the Oslo Accords.

As the Palestinian people endure perhaps the most dramatic moment in their history since the Nakba of 1948, their national institutions remain fragmented, outdated and increasingly incapable of reflecting the political diversity of Palestinian society and the forces leading the struggle against occupation.

The Palestinian Authority, originally conceived as a transitional administration on the path toward an independent Palestinian state, has gradually become an end in itself.

Thirty years after Oslo, there is still no Palestinian state. Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank has accelerated, East Jerusalem continues to face de facto annexation, and Gaza has endured successive wars and a devastating blockade. A political process that was meant to deliver independence has instead evolved into the management of an ever more entrenched occupation.

Within this context, Mahmoud Abbas has become the principal symbol of institutional stagnation. President of the Palestinian Authority since 2005, he has remained in office without renewing his mandate through presidential elections.

The Palestinian Legislative Council remains effectively paralysed, elections have been repeatedly postponed, and criticism has mounted—both within Palestinian society and among international observers—over corruption, patronage, nepotism and the absence of meaningful political reform.

The result is a growing crisis of legitimacy affecting the institutions created under the Oslo framework.

Yet reducing this crisis to the figure of Abbas alone would oversimplify a much deeper problem. The central question is no longer merely who leads the Palestinian Authority.

Rather, an increasingly important debate among Palestinian intellectuals, political organisations and civil society concerns the reconstruction of the Palestinian national movement itself and the redefinition of the institutions entrusted with representing it.

Within this debate, one political fact cannot be ignored.

Hamas won the last Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, securing a parliamentary majority that has never again been tested through the ballot box.

Since then, it has consolidated its position as one of the principal actors in Palestinian politics—not only through its social and political organisation, but also through its role in the resistance, ceasefire negotiations, prisoner exchanges and the administration of Gaza.

Regardless of the differing views surrounding the movement, excluding Hamas from any future institutional arrangement is unlikely to produce a more representative Palestinian political system.

The same reasoning applies to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Although it has historically remained outside electoral politics, its political and military influence in the occupied Palestinian territories, particularly in the West Bank, has become an undeniable component of contemporary Palestinian political reality. Ignoring this influence means overlooking a significant part of the internal dynamics of Palestinian resistance.

Fatah itself faces similar challenges. Internal divisions, the marginalisation of historic leaders and the concentration of decision-making within the current leadership have weakened the movement that for decades led the Palestinian national struggle.

Here too, many Palestinian voices have called for a process of renewal capable of restoring the movement’s representativeness and strengthening its contribution to a shared national project.

Against this backdrop, it is difficult to imagine that merely organising elections—without first reaching a broader political consensus—will be sufficient to overcome the current crisis of legitimacy.

A growing number of Palestinian analysts and political figures argue that institutional reconstruction requires comprehensive reform of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the inclusion of the principal political forces that remain outside its structures, and the reintegration of the Palestinian diaspora into national decision-making.

Palestine today faces more than a dispute between rival factions. It is confronting a profound crisis of political representation.

The war on Gaza has demonstrated that the political paradigm established by Oslo is no longer capable of addressing the realities of the present.

The question emerging from the ruins of Gaza is no longer simply about the future of the Palestinian Authority or the succession of Mahmoud Abbas.

Rather, it is this: how can a political representation be rebuilt that is capable of uniting a people dispersed across Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem, refugee camps and the global Palestinian diaspora?

The answer to that question may determine not only the future of Palestinian institutions, but the future of the Palestinian national cause itself.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.