Afrasianet - Dr. Mohsen Mohammed Saleh - A "red card" will be raised in your face if you try hard to work on reforming or rebuilding the PLO, and the "saddans" who possess the "legitimacy" will accuse you of conspiring and remove you from the national ranks, if you make any collective effort to advance the reform of the PLO.
There is a strange insistence on the part of the organization's leadership to keep it a soulless body in the "recovery room," and to invoke it only when needed to cover up the leadership's behavior or to ratify its decisions. There are no functioning institutions, no functioning circles, no representation of the people and their concerns, no assimilation of the enormous competencies and capabilities of the Palestinian people, with almost complete exclusion of Palestinians abroad.
This is happening at a stage that is the harshest and most difficult in the history of the Palestinian people, where it is targeted by cancellation and cancellation, where the most heinous massacres and bloodshed take place and the Zionist enemy does not keep stone upon stone in the Gaza Strip, where the Jews of Al-Aqsa, Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the escalation of annexation and displacement plans, including the closure of the file of the Palestinian Authority itself, while the "chronic" official leadership lives outside the movement of life and outside the movement of history.
For nearly twenty years, the author of these lines has participated, along with hundreds and thousands of Palestinian figures, personalities and national forces, to push forward the rearrangement of the Palestinian house on the basis of integrity, transparency and real popular representation; hundreds of conferences and panel discussions have been held, and dozens of petitions have been signed, but the results so far have not exceeded "zero"!
The problem was never in ideas, mechanisms, or popular environments, but the knot ultimately stood at the leadership of the organization (which is the leadership of the Ramallah Authority and the leadership of Fatah). The complex of lack of real will for reform.
In the following lines, we will try to summarize the most prominent problems of this leadership "Palestinian legitimacy":
1- The problem of identification between the leadership and the organization:
This is an artificial symmetry, deliberately confusing the PLO with its political and moral standing, roles, tasks, and institutions, and its leadership, which is a temporary state under criticism, accountability, and the possibility of change.
In the manner of King Louis XIV, who ruled nearly four hundred years ago and was a symbol of absolutism, as he put it, "I am the state and the state is me", criticism of leadership becomes like challenging the organization itself. Those who control the PLO give themselves a status that neither the PLO regulations themselves nor the will of the Palestinian people themselves give them, making any reform process complex and elusive.
The legitimacy of an organization does not necessarily mean the legitimacy of leadership, especially when that leadership exceeds its legal duration, exceeds regulations, and ignores the popular will.
2- The problem of considering targeting by reform as targeting by cancellation:
The PLO leadership is very sensitive to any sincere Palestinian collective effort that seeks to activate, reform and rebuild the PLO, or exposes the weaknesses, shortcomings and deficits of the PLO and its institutions and departments, and thus calls for fair and transparent elections or a national consensus that truly reflects the size of the active forces on the ground and effectively accommodates Palestinians inside and outside the country.
No matter how patriotic this effort may be and on which loyal Palestinian figures, symbols, and gatherings are based, the leadership and its proxies will consider this a conspiracy against the PLO and its status and legitimacy.
In the eyes of such a leadership, honest and sincere people who want the PLO to regain its power, prestige and vigor are placed in the same way with the Zionists and the Americans who want to write off the PLO and abolish it and close the Palestinian file. In fact, keeping the Organization in its deplorable, marginalized and ineffective state is the greatest service to the enemies of Palestine and its cause.
Therefore, the organization's leadership did not hesitate to attack the media, and to direct accusations against the Popular Conference of Palestinians Abroad - the Palestinian Popular Congress 14 million - and the Palestinian National Congress (held in Doha)... And others, because these movements reveal the size of the gaps and the extent of the leadership's negligence against its people, and threaten its status and self-gains.
3- The legality of the deactivation and not the legality of the activation:
The organization's leadership (which is Fatah's) disrupts the work of the organization's departments and institutions, loses them any effectiveness, and makes the organization an item in the budget of the Ramallah Authority, which is under occupation.
It monopolizes the domination of Palestinian unions, unions and communities abroad, keeps them in a state of "clinical death", prevents their reformation, activation and absorption of all Palestinian components, and unleashes their enormous energies in the service of the Palestinian cause. This applies to dozens of federations and syndicates abroad, such as doctors, engineers, teachers, students, lawyers... and others.
If any party attempts to activate or form union frameworks, it will immediately be accused of "illegality" and other ready-made "canned" charges.
4- The legitimacy of the faction, not the legitimacy of representation:
There is a stubborn insistence on the monopoly of one Palestinian faction (Fatah) to dominate the organization. Despite the presence of strong, effective and popular factions in the Palestinian arena, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the PLO leadership closes the door to any real assimilation process for these factions that reflects their popular weight.
Despite much talk about national unity, ending division, and enforcing the Cairo Agreement, evading elections – as happened in 2021, and setting conditions and complications that are not related to the organization's regulatory controls – remains a deliberate and approved behavior of this leadership.
5- Legitimacy of acquisition and monopoly of decision:
The current leadership controls the organization de facto, disrupts any elections that reflect the true weights of the Palestinian forces, and ignores the interim leadership framework.
Despite knowing – according to all opinion polls – that it does not represent the Palestinian majority at home and abroad, it insists on exercising all the supreme sovereign and constitutional powers, even those that affect the supreme interests of the Palestinian people.
6- The legitimacy of Oslo and not the legitimacy of the National Pact:
The entry of the PLO is no longer linked to commitment to the Palestinian National Charter or to Palestinian constants, because it was the PLO leadership itself that sponsored the suspension of the charter and the cancellation of its provisions that contradict the settlement process, and because it ceded most of Palestine to the enemy, as well as the right of the Palestinian people to armed resistance, and even committed to coordinating with the enemy and chasing the resistance.
Moreover, it conditioned whoever enters the PLO to agree to its commitments towards the enemy, and made the disastrous Oslo Accords rule over the principles and rules on which the PLO was founded!
Removing the PLO from the Oslo quagmire and restoring it to its natural role for which it was created has become the accusation; playing opposite roles has become the mantra of "national action" for this leadership.
7- Legality of extension and perpetuation:
With the closure of the doors to the participation of effective and balanced forces in the Palestinian arena, and with the disruption of the work of the Palestinian National Council, which has not convened for 34 years (since 1991) only three times, under the Israeli occupation, it took on a procedural and functional nature (1996, 2009, and 2018), leaving the way for the organization's leadership to extend itself and arrange to fill the gaps when needed, without any effective environment that allows for a real transfer of power, or injects young blood into the Palestinian executive and legislative leadership.
8- The legitimacy of external crutches in the face of the popular will:
While evading any electoral elections that express the free will of the Palestinian people, the PLO leadership exercises its legitimacy based on official Arab and international recognition, as well as Israeli recognition, and on the hostility or antagonism of these environments to the line of resistance and the currents of "political Islam".
It takes advantage of this "advantage" in dealing with the Palestinian balance and in the face of the popular will. Of course, the price is enormous in exchange for maintaining such "satisfaction" and such "legitimacy"! Because it is a legitimacy designed on the sizes of typographers, opponents and enemies; it has been adapted to their standards.
9- Legitimacy under occupation:
It is a legitimacy exercised under the roof of the occupation and under the eyes of the occupation; the executive leadership holds its meetings under occupation, as well as the Palestinian Central Council and the Palestinian National Council.
How can the "independent Palestinian national decision" be maintained? How are more than half of the Palestinian people living abroad represented? How can the "liberation" project be managed under the eyes of those who work day and night to uproot and oppress the Palestinian people, confiscate their land and holy sites and displace them?!
Before Oslo, the PLO knew the dangers of the pressure of the occupation, so it held all its meetings abroad, and made the representation of the Palestinian interior in the Palestinian National Council about 180 members, but they are not named and their attendance is not required, and they are not counted in the quorum, because they are under occupation.
10- From legitimacy to resistance to resistance:
If the PLO was established to liberate Palestine from its river to its sea through armed struggle, and if Fatah won the leadership of the organization as a result of its resistance performance, the legitimacy of the post-Oslo leadership shifted to "resistance to resistance", preventing armed action, and coordinating with the enemy in chasing and suppressing the resisters, even in the atmosphere of massacres and destruction in Gaza, and the atmosphere of Judaization, displacement and humiliation of the authority and its weakening in the West Bank.
As we face a decisive historical circumstance, our wounds are bleeding everywhere, and we face the challenges of annexation, displacement and cancellation, we need a missionary leadership with high dynamism capable of activating the Palestinian people and their institutions, and activating the nation and the free world to confront the Zionist project.
On the ground, however, we have been grieving (for years) an out-of-history leadership that continues to live in the illusions of Oslo even after the occupation overtook it and put the Ramallah authority itself in jeopardy. At the same time, more than 85% of the Palestinian population (West Bank and Gaza Strip) demand that Mahmoud Abbas resign, according to opinion polls.
In such circumstances, the leadership of the organization and the authority manage the most dangerous things with a mentality of "failure management", the mentality of activating the performance of the "dead horse", losing the vision and compass, remaining a gateway to normalization, and providing justification to enemies and opponents that we are a people who do not deserve to govern themselves.
If the leadership of the Organization fears for "legitimacy", it must fear it from its enemy, not its people. In no case should it coordinate with enemies and adversaries, ignore its people and their will, and then lament "legitimacy".
The Palestinian people and their living forces have almost despaired of this leadership.. and no longer feel that there is a benefit in continuing to knock on closed doors in the face, while the accusations leveled by this leadership against the forces of reform and change have become false accusations that have become outdated.
Pressuring this leadership and forcing it to make way for the rebuilding of the Organization on sound foundations based on constants was and remains a national duty. If it does not, there is no luxury in the time to wait, it must be overcome and overcome the "scarecrow of legitimacy", and it is necessary to seek to develop tools that pressure it to get off the tree, such as creating the broadest comprehensive national alliance, seeking to create a temporary transitional leadership framework, and activating popular representation institutions such as unions, federations, communities, and others.