Hussein Agha and Ahmad Samih Khalidi have been involved in Palestinian
peace negotiations for three decades, and are senior associate members
of St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and co-authors of “A Framework for a
Palestinian National Security Doctrine.” Agha most recently carried out
backchannel negotiations during the Obama Administration’s failed effort
to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

As President Trump prepares for yet another attempt to resolve the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the ground is shifting under his feet.
While Israel’s willingness to offer an acceptable deal is increasingly
open to question, with nothing to suggest that its terms are likely to
soften with time, the Palestinians are sliding toward the unknown. With
the slow but sure decay of the Palestinian political scene, the
President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen),
represents the last slender chance for a negotiated settlement: he is
the sole remaining national leader of his people with sufficient, if
dwindling, authority to sign and ratify a deal. For President Trump and
his team, as well as for all those seeking to end this century-plus-old
conflict, there should be no doubt about the moment’s urgency. After
Abbas, there will be no other truly weighty representative and
legitimate Palestinian leadership, and no coherent national movement to
sustain it for a long time to come.

Over six days in late November and early December, 2016, Fatah, the
Palestinian national liberation movement, convened its seventh congress
in Ramallah, the de-facto capital of the Palestinian Authority.
Despite the lengthy speeches and festive air, the conference did little
to dispel what had become unmistakable: the slow expiry of a once
vibrant movement. Long on show and short on substance, the meeting
hardly touched on any of the mounting political challenges facing the
Palestinian people. The Congress was no more than a confirmation of the
current order and a reaffirmation of its total and unprecedented control
over Fatah, the P.A., and its ostensible parent, the Palestine
Liberation Organization.

The contemporary Palestinian national movement—founded and led by Yasser
Arafat and embodied by the P.A., Fatah, and the P.L.O. over the past
half century—is reaching its end. As its institutions wither and its
leaders fade away, there is no obvious successor to take its place.

Looking back, the 1993 Oslo Accords marked the Palestinian national
movement’s highest political accomplishment and the beginning of its
slow decline. From then onward, the P.A. has been trapped between its
original revolutionary mission as an agent for liberation and its new
responsibilities as a proto-state, with its attendant civil,
bureaucratic, and security establishments.

For a while, with its historic resistance leader at the helm, the
national movement sought to reconcile its contradictory missions. But,
with Arafat’s death, Fatah lost not only the forefather and leader of
its foundational militant phase but its very raison d’être. Without
“armed struggle,” the national movement had no clear ideology, no
specific discourse, no distinctive experience or character. In the
absence of a genuine and independent state, it was unable to transform
itself into a ruling party, as, for example, the African National
Congress did, in South Africa. It remained incomplete and suspended: a
liberation movement not doing much liberating, locked in a fruitless
negotiating process, and denied the means of government by a combination
of Israeli obduracy and its own inadequacies.

With the passing of Arafat and most of his colleagues, Fatah’s ability
to hold its fractured parts together waned. The social and political
milieu of the West Bank and Gaza—steeped in clannish and personal
influences—highlighted local fiefdoms and deep-rooted tensions. Severed
from its history in the lands of exile, and without a rationale to
supersede its original liberationist impulse, Fatah became mired in
narrow and parochial turf wars. This was, in turn, compounded by its
leaders’ failure to attract new blood. Unlike the experience of exile
that formed a unifying Palestinian bond, that of the territories never
managed to produce viable leaders who could forge a truly
national enterprise out of highly localized components. The powerful pull of
local ties made it almost impossible for a Hebronite to have a genuine
popular base in Ramallah, or for a Gazan to have a credible say in the
West Bank.

With no new leaders, no convincing evidence of validation, no marked
success in government, no progress toward peace, fragile links to its
original setting abroad, and a local environment buffeted by the
crosswinds of petty quarrels and regional antagonisms, Fatah
fundamentally disappeared as a real political agent.

The national movement was built on representation, activism, and
achievement. It faithfully and energetically represented the broadest
spectrum of Palestinian national sentiment, from the most visceral to
the most rational, and it re-created the forgotten Palestinians as
central players in their own drama and as a cause worthy of recognition
across the world—epitomized by Arafat’s address to the U.N. General
Assembly in 1974.

Today, none of these elements of success are evident. The
all-encompassing P.L.O. has lost its representative status; the aging
factions that still sit in its councils have little, if any, extensions
inside or outside Palestine. The spirit of activism and dynamism has
moved outside P.L.O. structures and onto the streets with no clear
organization or political direction. And the P.A./P.L.O.’s achievements
have been largely formalistic if not fake—a more advanced status as
“observer state” at the U.N., but with no tangible improvement to the
situation on the ground.

Arafat’s management was an integral element of the dynamism of the
Palestinian national movement, and the transition from Arafat to Abbas
passed smoothly because it was recognized as a continuation of the
founding days of the national movement. Abbas may have needed formal
elections to consolidate his position and gain acceptance in the international community, but, without his previous revolutionary credentials and
association with Arafat, Abbas’s legitimacy would have been questioned
from the start.

Abbas did not want, and could never occupy, Arafat’s place. His standing
with his own people was deeply damaged by his persistent and infertile
engagement with the peace process, his unwavering opposition to forceful
struggle, and his fulsome dedication to security coöperation with
Israel. As his tenure extended beyond his initial electoral mandate, the
Palestinian political system developed many of the characteristics of a
one-man Presidential regime, but without the élan of a popular leader.
Later years witnessed a growing tendency toward unmitigated
centralization, rule by decree, and the concentration of power. Other
instruments of government were muted, and a determined effort was made
to control what remains of Fatah’s decaying structures and to silence
genuine political dissent. What used to be a vibrant if fractious
political debate, nourished, tolerated, and often exploited by the
leadership, has turned into a dull and dismal discourse, steered by
political directives, and driven by fear of suppression and the loss of
position inside an ever-swelling bureaucracy. A distinction between
“President” and “leader” has emerged, and not necessarily in a manner
that serves either.

Abbas’s years as President have not been without their share of
achievements. His peace policy provided the P.A. with a formidable
firewall against the kind of international pressure associated with the
Palestinian national movement’s past violence, and added to a growing
sense of unease at Israel’s occupation. For some, this by itself is a
major national achievement. The P.A. has been sustained as a would-be
state, and, since 1994, many of the day-to-day governing affairs of
municipal, health, education, and other functions have been in
Palestinian hands for the first time.

Abbas’s dedication to negotiations, diplomacy, and non-violence has
shifted the burden onto the other side. While the current Israeli
leadership’s peace credentials are widely disputed, Abbas’s
international image as a man of peace remains largely intact. At the
same time, he has managed to hold on to the historical and fundamental
Palestinian demands; he has not wavered from the P.L.O.’s goals for a
state along the 1967 borders, with its capital in East Jerusalem, and a
just resolution to the refugee problem. He put an end to the chaos of
the second intifada. He has continued engaging with a broad range of
Israeli opinions, and has assiduously sought to cultivate what remains
of the Israeli peace camp and to engage with Jewish leaders and
communities abroad. Perhaps most important, he has succeeded in
insulating the Palestinian people from much of the violence and
destruction of the “Arab Spring” and from the growth of Salafi and
jihadist movements in the West Bank.

All in all, Abbas’s era has enhanced the Palestinians’ moral standing
and lent traction to their cause and narrative. But these achievements
are in danger of being overshadowed by new circumstances and challenges.
Abbas may have helped to underpin the legitimacy of the Palestinian
cause, particularly in the West, but his approach has failed to
demonstrate sufficient payoff in peace negotiations, changing the
unacceptable status quo, or in attracting popular support to revive the
movement’s declining fortunes. The thirteen years of his rule have
produced no significant change in Israel’s stance; in fact, Israel’s
terms for a final-status resolution on such issues as Jerusalem,
security, and the extent of Palestinian sovereignty have notably
hardened.

Furthermore, the Palestinians’ readiness to take the negotiating path to
its logical conclusions was restrained by a perception that they were
winning the moral and psychological high ground. The paradoxical effect
was to make it harder to progress toward an agreement with Israel
because it seemed that other influential parties might do the job.

The past decade has also witnessed a series of seemingly inconsistent and
not well thought-out Palestinian diplomatic moves, including the
welcoming of, and then backtracking on, the Goldstone Report, in 2011; on
the 2008 Gaza war; the unconvincing threats by senior Palestinian
officials to dismantle the P.A.; the overselling of the bid to create
international facts by joining various U.N. bodies; the pursuit of
desperate and futile initiatives such as the proposals, in 2016, by the
former French President François Hollande for an international
conference; and the failure to make diplomatic progress even in the
shadow of a relatively friendly U.S. Administration. As a result, the
entire notion of peace negotiations has been discredited and consigned
to outright condemnation, deep disbelief, and profound apathy among
Palestinians, further weakening the national movement’s political
credibility and standing.

The growing public criticism of security coöperation might best
encapsulate the P.A.’s dilemma. Security coöperation is meant to serve
the national interest by preventing armed activities that threaten to
elicit a disproportionate Israeli response. Yet coöperation ends up
serving Israel by sustaining the occupation’s low cost and helping to
perpetuate it. The primary function of any authority is to provide
security to the people it represents. P.A. security forces can do very
little to defend their own people both in the territories and abroad,
where at least half of the estimated total of twelve million
Palestinians reside, in the face of third-party threats, individual
Israeli assaults, settler violence, or the organized actions of the
Israel Defense Forces. Palestinians are consequently left vulnerable to
overwhelming Israeli power and the hardening fist of their own security
forces at the same time. Insofar as security coöperation is seen as an
auxiliary function to the occupation, it has added to a sense of
helplessness and loss of agency and has focussed popular anger and
frustration away from the struggle for freedom and independence. Whether
the Palestinians would be better served in raw contact with the
occupation without the mediating influence of the P.A. is open to
question, but the cumulative corrosive impact of the P.A.’s role as
shield and security subcontractor to the occupation is
undeniable—especially with no accompanying political returns.

The Palestinian loss of faith in a negotiated settlement reflects a loss
of faith in the agencies that have sought to pursue it. To the extent
that Fatah, the P.A., and the P.L.O. have been dedicated to a two-state
solution, their failures—from liberation to governance to
peacemaking—have lessened public support for the desirability or
viability of the goal itself. Besides the bloated P.A. bureaucracy,
almost all sectors of the Palestinian people have been alienated from
the methods and practices of their representative bodies, and have
largely lost any real sense of investment in their diplomacy. What was
once seen as a national unifying program is now viewed with deep
skepticism and indifference.

Of course, not all change has come from within. There is no doubt that
the regional and international environment has shifted in unfavorable
ways. A “Third World” moment—in which the Palestinian national struggle
found a natural home within the liberationist and anti-colonial
movements of Algeria and Vietnam, and was embraced by emerging Asian
powers as part of their new sense of independence—no longer exists. The
recent era has seen a move in the opposite direction; there may be
greater understanding for the Palestinian cause in the West, but many of
the Palestinians’ former Third World allies have chosen economic self-interest
in place of ideological commitment. India’s wavering support for the
Palestinians at the U.N. and China’s growing trade and military ties with Israel are examples.

The Arab environment has also clearly changed. Fatah was originally as
much an assertion of Palestinian “independence of will” in the face of
Arab hegemony as it was a revolt against Israel’s plunder of the
homeland. Despite many political conflicts and bloody confrontations
with numerous Arab states such as Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, the P.L.O.
continued to draw political and financial support from its hinterland,
from the Gulf States, and from a popular base that was deeply sympathetic
to the Palestinian struggle. Fatah and the P.L.O. may have been largely
dependent on Arab aid, but the multiplicity of sources and the constant
rivalries among the Arabs themselves accorded the movement a wide margin
of freedom. If one source of funding and support was severed, another
was more than likely to appear. And, despite a high degree of financial
dependency, the movement maintained political freedom of action: the
P.L.O.’s dramatic support for a two-state solution in 1988 and the 1993
Oslo Accords were “independent” Palestinian decisions made without wider Arab
consent, regardless of their wisdom at the time or since.

In the regional turmoil and violence of recent years, the Palestinians
largely lost the skill of maneuvering among the Arab parties and their
conflicting interests, and have become more dependent on other external
support. As Arab financial aid shrinks, a new bloc of Arab states,
comprising Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates,
has a growing hold over the Arabs’ say on Palestine, further narrowing
P.L.O. independence. Equally, the P.A. has become more and more reliant
on the flow of funds from the U.S. and the European Union, and on
Israel’s good will in dealing with the daily needs of the Palestinian
population in the territories. Once a useful tool for maximizing freedom
of action, multiple sources of outside support are now a means of
leverage to further constrain Palestinian decision-making.

The post-Abbas era will launch an uncharted and unpredictable course.
The founding fathers’ historical legacy and imprint of legitimacy is
disappearing. The Palestinian refugees and the broader community in
exile have no real agency, means of expression, or instruments to reflect
their will. Fatah’s ongoing conflict with Hamas, the unrest in Gaza and
the West Bank, and the institutional failures of the P.A. all point to
an increasingly narrow and more tenuous form of leadership, one that is
based more on formal elections, and, consequently and paradoxically, on
less solid and genuinely representative grounds.

A leader elected on and by the West Bank, without continuity with the
fading national movement, may not be openly rejected by the fractured
components of the Palestinian people, but will, in the best of
circumstances, have only limited national appeal and authority. Unlike a
leader chosen by widespread acclaim, a narrowly elected leader, or one
selected as a compromise among the different factions, cannot claim to
represent those who lie outside his or her constituency, or to speak on
their behalf. It is doubtful that such a leader will be able to rely on
majority support or rally it, if and when decisions of national import
are at stake. Abbas’s power derives from the fact that those who may
otherwise criticize or reject a deal will abide by his terms. His
signature not only imparts legitimacy to an agreement but absolves
opponents from any responsibility for the concessions it may entail.
Despite his limitations, Abbas may be the last Palestinian leader with
the moral authority and political legitimacy to speak and act on behalf
of the entire nation on vital existential issues such as a final
agreement with Israel.

If the incoming Palestinian leadership is likely to be less
representative than its predecessors, the degree to which it has a
mandate to conclude and sustain a future agreement with Israel may be
open to question. This will necessarily affect Israel’s own willingness
to agree to a deal—already evident in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s
repeated insistence that Israel will “never” cede security control over
the West Bank. It will also affect the role and posture of third
parties, such as the U.S., in facilitating or pushing for a deal, and
its possible content will be less likely to approximate Palestinian
terms for a settlement. The recent spate of well-attended popular
meetings hosted by Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and even France and Holland may
inaugurate a new phase in which the P.L.O. faces growing pressure to
defend its credentials as the “sole and legitimate representative” of
the Palestinian people, with further limitations on its margin of
maneuvers at home and abroad.

Twenty-four years after Oslo, the security establishment is perhaps the
most enduring and powerful institution spawned by the P.A. Nourished and
fortified by Israel, the U.S., and major European and Arab parties as
part of the post-second-intifada reform process and designed to control
violence and internal dissent, P.A. security forces have become the most
efficient, visible, and functional arm of Palestinian governance. In the
absence of countervailing legal and political institutions, organized
popular movements, or capable representative bodies, there will be a
strong temptation for the security forces to fill the vacuum of a frail
national leadership, if only to avoid a comprehensive institutional
collapse.

Even as Fatah has fallen apart, its popular base has remained in
suspension instead of being pulled or driven toward other alternatives.
More nationalist than Islamist in their political inclinations and
outlook, the Palestinians have not been significantly drawn to Hamas.
Hamas’s initial challenge emerged from its adoption of armed struggle at
the moment when Fatah and the other factions had begun to discard
it. But Hamas’s militant experiment has been no more successful than
Fatah’s. Gaza’s history of resistance may have helped to convince Israel
to evacuate the Strip, in 2005, but the subsequent suffering has not
served as a model or source of inspiration for the rest of the
Palestinians. Similarly, Hamas’s decade-long governance of Gaza has been
marred by the same charges of corruption, incompetence, and
heavy-handedness as its P.A. counterpart in Ramallah, but with the
additional burdens of broad isolation and constant Israeli siege. On
matters of armed struggle, diplomacy, and governance, those looking to
Hamas as a replacement for Fatah would find it difficult to argue that
the former has delivered where the latter has failed.

In its previous incarnation, Fatah succeeded in accommodating those of
an Islamist bent by dissipating their influence within a wider national
rubric. By incorporating a strong leftist current, it counteracted
and neutralized Islamist tendencies. As Fatah took command of the P.L.O., it
left a space for others to speak, act, and be heard. At present, a
P.L.O. that included both Hamas and Fatah would be neither truly
national nor genuinely Islamist but a forced arrangement between
contradictory and competing forces pulling in different strategic
directions. Besides the vexed question of leadership, it would be hard
to sustain such a mixed and conflicted entity.

If the national movement’s initial phase arose from exile, and the
second was focussed on the territories occupied in the Six-Day War, a
budding third phase seems to be emerging from the combined effect of the
diminishing prospects for a negotiated two-state settlement, and the
increasingly blurred borders between Arabs and Jews in the territory.
Israeli settlements may have all but erased the 1967 borders in one
direction, but fifty years of occupation have helped to erase the border
in the opposite direction as well. After decades of fraught relations
between the Palestinians and Israel’s Palestinian citizens, the past few
years have seen growing interaction between the political and
intellectual élites across the borders.

The broader Palestinian public has slowly begun to recognize the
national role and place of its brethren in Israel, and to seek means by
which the tattered fabric of Palestinian identity may be mended. With
the expiration of the national movement “outside” the West Bank and Gaza
and with little prospect of self-regeneration from “inside,” Israel’s
Palestinian citizens have inherited a new share of the struggle. They
have proved to be politically resilient and flexible and have
demonstrated a vitality and dynamism that may even point to something of
a nationalist revival. In light of the sensitive conditions under which
they operate, their comparatively small critical mass, their continuing
isolation, and their tenuous connections with the other sectors of the
Palestinian people, it may be too fanciful to believe that they could
supplant the old national movement or assume its broader mantle or its
more immediate functions. Yet, despite their personal and political
differences, their bold leaders and their growing understanding of
Israel’s democratic portico may position them to articulate with
increasing confidence the traditional themes of Palestinian national
aspirations and struggle. This would be a remarkable transformation.

Israeli right-wing politicians have often argued that the roots of the
current conflict far predate 1967. The assertion that the origins of the
conflict stretch back considerably further is not controversial or
contestable. Oslo sought to trade 1967 against 1948—that is, to obscure
the historical roots of the conflict in return for a political
settlement that offered a partial redress that focussed solely on
post-1967 realities. Current circumstances have begun to undo this
suppression. Oslo could not bypass history, and its limitations have
only highlighted the difficulty of ignoring the deeper roots of the
struggle over Palestine.

This has become manifest in Israel’s gradual shift rightward, as well as
in the growing encroachment of the national religious movement upon the
levers of power and public discourse, the increasing influence and
militancy of settler and fringe movements, and the sharpening tensions
between the Jewish and Arab populations as marked by the rhetoric of
both leaderships.

A similar process is tangible on the Palestinian side, in the growing
backing for the right of return, and in moves to document and
memorialize the nakba and the 1948 dispossession. The Israeli demand for
recognition of Israel as a Jewish state has solicited countermoves to
reassert the Arab character of the land and reinforce the Palestinian
historical narrative. Regardless of its distant and scattered parts, the
experience of exile has not faded away. The Palestinians in exile may no
longer have as confident and recognized a voice as that of the P.L.O. in
its heyday, but the younger generation has shown no signs of historical
amnesia or disengagement. The growing despair at the ineffectiveness of
the peace process has reanimated their disparate parts and captured
their imagination. While the near diaspora may be under siege and
unprecedented pressure, particularly in Syria and Lebanon, many groups
strewn across farther shores call for justice. The growing visibility
and international sympathy for the Palestinian cause, and the slow
erosion of Israel’s political and moral standing, particularly in the
West, have created a new, more open and welcoming environment for
Palestinian activism, as apparent from the spreading support for the
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (B.D.S.) movement and various
activist groups off and on campus.

The historic Palestinian national movement may have shattered and its
successor may be neither discernible nor imminent. But the Palestinians
will not simply disappear. The region may be engulfed in flames, and for
the moment, at least, seemingly otherwise engaged, but Palestinian claims
to justice and freedom have embedded themselves in the conscience of
much of the world, just as Israel’s practices have eaten away at its
avowed values.

The idea of one overarching, comprehensive, negotiated resolution that
incorporates all the fundamental elements of the conflict may have
slipped out of reach. What used to be called “the Palestine problem”
might now be better redefined and restructured as a series of challenges,
each requiring its own form of redress: the disappearing prospects for
the original national project of self-determination, statehood, and
return; the peoples’ alienation from their formal representatives; the
realities of the Gaza–West Bank split; the continuing trials and
tribulations of the diaspora; and the daily struggle for freedom from
occupation and equal rights in Israel.

The future remains deeply uncertain. The two-state solution may win some
belated and final reprieve as its prospects dwindle. Palestinian
national aspirations may be brought back into the wider Arab fold, as
they were before the current movement was established. Yet other
possibilities abound. The Palestinians in Israel may be tempted to take
the lead. The diaspora may yet explode in some radical and ill-defined
manner. The malign energies of jihadism may be redirected toward a
Muslim­-Jewish religious war, with Jerusalem as its focus. The conflict
may be dragged back to its historical origins as a struggle over and
across the entire Holy Land, reopening old wounds, inflicting new ones,
and redefining how and if the conflict will be resolved.

The spark of patriotism may still coexist along with loathing of the
occupation and a desire for a free and normal life. But a national
movement requires genuine mass engagement in a political vision and a
working project that cuts across boundaries of region, clan, and class,
and a defined and acknowledged leadership with the legitimacy and
representative standing that empowers it to act in its people’s name.
This no longer holds for Fatah, the P.A., or the P.L.O.

Be that as it may, the Palestinians may need to acknowledge that
yesteryear’s conventional nationalism and “national liberation” are no
longer the best currency for political mobilization and expression in
today’s world, and that they need to adapt their struggle and
aspirations to new global realities. The bonds that link the Palestinian
people together remain strong and hardy, but old-style nationalism and
its worn-out ways may no longer be the vehicle for their empowerment.
Because nationalism itself has changed, Palestinians need to search for
new means of expressing their political identity and hopes in ways that
do not and cannot replicate the past.