Opinion polls and the reality of “force majeure”: Fatah’s battle to protect the national project

author

Abdul Karim Awaida

In the wake of the decision to postpone the legislative elections and the imposition of a “force majeure” reality that prevented them from being held as a result of the occupation’s intransigence and its repressive practices, the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) is at the heart of a heated political and structural debate, in which multiple parties - local, regional and international - continue to invest heavily in questioning the legitimacy of the movement and trying to fragment it and exclude it from the political scene in any way. The dimensions of this targeting no longer touch merely on procedural party competition, but rather go beyond it to touch the depth of the entire Palestinian national project. The question at hand is no longer limited to evaluating the performance of a political organization in a ballot box that was postponed, but rather has become linked to systematic attempts to end the administrative and political model that has been formed over the past three decades and to find malleable alternatives at its expense.

At a time when field challenges are multiplying and economic pressures are accumulating, a central question carries a lot of apprehension in the street: How do the masses read the movement’s performance after long decades of leadership by the National Authority, and on what is their next choice based?

In fact, the scene attracts two different readings: The first adopts a radical criticism that stems from the details of the lived reality and successive crises, and questions bitterly about the usefulness of the national project if it fails to provide the means of life, dignity, education, and work. While the second defends an existential necessity that sees the movement as a historical guardian of the independent national decision and the gains of the national entity, considering that the homeland is not only an administrative luxury, but rather the first condition of protection and the shield that prevents the Palestinian from turning into a refugee with no identity or rights in all corners of the earth.

The critical discourse on the movement’s performance is based on a harsh inventory of the thirty years that followed the Oslo Accords. Analysts and citizens claim a decline in service and field balance - and this is partly true - and an erosion in the popular support as a result of the blockage of the negotiating path and the escalation of settlements - and this is also partly true. This political failure - from the point of view of critics - is accompanied by the impression of a defect in economic management, widening class differences, and a decline in the quality of basic services, as well as an outdated media discourse that does not provide a practical future vision that addresses the aspirations of younger generations. This critical movement also views the events of the division in 2006 and the subsequent military coup carried out by Hamas in Gaza as a structural blow whose administrative consequences the movement has not overcome to this day.

On the other hand, the defending proposal - which I sided with rationally and objectively - believes that trying Fatah according to the criteria for evaluating ruling parties in stable countries carries a great deal of unfairness. Because it ignores an exceptional reality subject to a settler occupation that aims primarily to make life impossible to perpetuate displacement. If it is true that the human being is the primary goal and that there is no value for any organization if the citizen is not its absolute priority, then the real dilemma lies in that neglecting the political entity under the pretext of livelihood failures does not solve the human problem, but rather consigns it to a more cruel fate.

Holding the movement and the “national project” alone responsible for the decline in living conditions absolves the occupation of its greatest responsibility for drying up our economy and blockading us. Yes, there is responsibility for corruption and mismanagement, and this requires holding the corrupt and those who corrupt accountable, but the solution is not to overthrow the national entity or abandon it, but rather to reform it and cleanse it of impurities. The difference is not in acknowledging the pain, but in the direction of treatment: Do we treat the body by repairing it, or do we kill it under the pretext that it is tired?

This defensive vision is based on the historical fact that Fatah was the one that transferred the weight of the struggle of the Palestinian people from the refugee camps to the homeland, and built sovereign institutions that made the Palestinian identity a reality embodied in international forums. The late President Yasser Arafat and his successor, President Mahmoud Abbas, are recorded for firmly confronting all regional and international pressures that sought to confiscate national decision-making, leading to firm organizational decisions to remove leaders who attempted to build parallel centers of power to protect the unity of the movement. Despite the financial blockade and the deduction of tax clearance, the movement, through the Authority’s institutions, continued to bear the financial and service burden for millions of Palestinians, exercising a silent entity role in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, away from media showdown and in light of a complex situation caused by individual factional decisions that confiscated the national decision and threw the Strip into the furnace of a devastating war from which everyone is still suffering until now.

In the context of the campaigns directed against the movement, the decision to postpone the legislative and National Council elections is presented as an excuse to challenge the legitimacy of the official institution, and to make the Fatah movement appear to be evading taking to the streets for fear of the results of the vote. Some people ask, in good faith or with malice aimed at casting doubt: If the leadership and movement were fully aware of the challenges, field obstacles, and Israeli control, why were presidential decrees issued regarding the elections in the first place and then withdrawn by postponement?

The real answer to this debate goes beyond the narrow procedural view; Issuing the decrees was not a political maneuver, but rather a deliberate strategic step aimed at putting the international community and those who pay lip service to democracy and rights before their moral and political obligations and responsibilities. The Palestinian leadership wanted to test this international will: Will translating the bright slogans about “respect for democracy and peaceful circulation” deter it from protecting the occupation, and will this community seriously pressure Israel to create the conditions and allow elections to be held in occupied Jerusalem and all parts of the country?

When this step collided with international disavowal and condoning direct Israeli intransigence in preventing Jerusalem from voting and being nominated, the double standards and systematic negligence of the international community became clear. The historical and political irony here appears at its clearest. How can a people subject to the oppression and crimes of an ongoing settler occupation be asked to hold elections in light of the dismemberment and comprehensive aggression, while the same Western system understands and condones the postponement of elections in other countries such as Ukraine due to the “state of war and martial law”? Although the reality of oppression, criminality, and fragmentation practiced by the occupation against the geography and the Palestinian people far exceeds any other situation of conflict.

Today, as a culmination of these pressures, a psychological and systematic war is emerging that relies on targeted opinion polls that seek to dismantle the movement and make it appear eroded. By creating fake wings, polishing marginal figures who have no presence on the street, and giving them high percentages in these polls, or exaggerating the role of figures who did not exceed the 3% threshold in previous elections and polls, while at the same time greatly reducing the popularity of the Fatah movement. These miserable attempts to undermine the movement and use it to justify postponing the elections and opening satellite channels to challenge President Mahmoud Abbas because of the postponement of the elections will only lead to clashing with the solidity of the Fatah base.

But! The impossibility of holding elections due to force majeure and the objective circumstances resulting from the occupation’s practices should not be understood as a state of institutional paralysis. Rather, it should constitute a strategic turning point from my point of view to rearrange the internal house on two tracks: The first track is internal, and aims to end the division and integrate all factions under the umbrella of the “Palestinian Liberation Organization” with an independent national decision, inspired by the experience of the Algerian revolution from the perspective of the fusion of all its movements under the banner of the “National Liberation Front” to achieve independence.

The second path is external, and it balances pragmatism in dealing with international balances and restrictions and relying on the solid Saudi position, and the legal and diplomatic escalation to pursue the occupation in the International Courts of Justice and Criminal Courts to dismantle the apartheid system, and increasing pressure to transform the words of the international community into actions on the ground.

In conclusion, I believe that the disagreement within the Palestinian street is not over the facts but rather over the evaluation angle. Between those who are held accountable by the scale of daily services, and those who are measured by the scale of political and historical necessity. Mistakes are not an inevitability of failure, but rather part of the process of progress, and the movement demanding today to continue the true “comprehensive reform program” is capable of renewing its legitimacy and making a difference, and I am completely confident of that.

Finally, I say: Independence is not a slogan, Jerusalem is not negotiable, unity is not a luxury, and the homeland is greater than all.

Perhaps the most eloquent expression of this existential moment is what our universal poet Mahmoud Darwish summed up when he said:

“One day we will be who we want... if freedom is to be who we want!”

This article expresses my personal view and in no way expresses an official view