Afrasianet - Elhami Al Meligi - How did the organization that won Arab and international recognition for the Palestinians and protected their identity from erasure turn into a flabby, ineffective framework whose ability to express the entire Palestinian people is questionable?
On May 28, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) will come back to mind not only as a founding anniversary, but as a hurting question at the heart of the Palestinian predicament: Where has the institution that bore the name Palestine gone to the world? How did the organization, which won Arab and international recognition for the Palestinians and protected the identity from deletion, turn into a flabby, ineffective framework, and questionable in its ability to express the entire Palestinian people?
The crisis is no longer that the world does not know the address of the Palestinians. The crisis is deeper: Is this title still able to represent them? Is historical legitimacy sufficient when living legitimacy is absent? And who is speaking on behalf of the Palestinians today: the PLO, the PA, the factions, the division, or the vacuum?
This is not an occasion to nostalgia for the beginnings, nor to deliver a speech in the presence of a major national institution. It is a moment of accountability: Is the PLO still a home of the people, or is it in danger of becoming a historical banner over an institution that has lost much of its spirit, presence, and popular legitimacy?
The organization was established at a time when it was necessary to transform the Palestinian from a homeland owner to a refugee without a cause, and from a people with political rights to scattered communities in exile and camps. Hence its first greatness: it restored the Palestinian to his political name, moved Palestine from the margins of the Nakba to the center of the Arab and international conflict, and made the Palestinian national identity an indestructible reality.
When the Arab Summit in Rabat in 1974 recognized the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, it was not a protocol decision, but a declaration that the Palestinians were no longer attached to any capital, nor a card in the hands of any regime. Then came the UN recognition and granting the PLO observer status in the UN General Assembly to confirm that Palestine, despite the occupation and uprooting, has returned to the international stage through its inclusive national address.
But the recognition that was once a victory is now being tested. The institution that was born to bring the Palestinians together, at the most dangerous moment since the Nakba, seems unable to embrace their full potential, produce a unified national resolution, and turn their enormous sacrifices into an inclusive political strategy.
When the regulatory authority swallowed
The great erosion began with the moment whose dangers were not read as they should: Oslo. The problem was not in the agreement alone, with all its imbalances, nor in turning the occupation into a negotiating partner that owns the land, the crossings, security and the economy. The most dangerous thing is that the Palestinian Authority, which was supposed to be a limited transitional tool, gradually took the place of the PLO, until the original branch was swallowed up and became a reference tool.
The PLO was the address of the entire Palestinian people: in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, the camps of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the vast diaspora. The PA, by virtue of its composition and function, is a limited administrative entity within a part of the occupied territory, conditioned by agreements and restrictions, and governed by an imbalanced balance of power with the occupation. When decision, funding, and day-to-day function moved from the PLO to the PA, the real contraction of Palestinian representation began.
The organization is no longer a living institution that produces national decisions. It has often become a political cover for a crisis authority. The National Council has declined, the Executive Committee has faded, the diaspora has disappeared, the circle of decision-making has narrowed, and administrative and security calculations have advanced at the expense of the national inclusive project.
Herein lies the crux of the crisis: international recognition remains, but living legitimacy is eroding. Legitimacy is not a document that is raised in forums, but rather a daily relationship between a people and its institutions. If this relationship is weakened, recognition becomes a soulless structure, a big name above a small reality.
Spinal Crisis
It is impossible to talk about the PLO without Fatah. The movement that rebuilt the PLO and imposed the independence of the Palestinian decision was the backbone of the national institution, the corridor of the rise of the Palestinian fedayeen, and a space where generations, currents and experiences met, despite all the differences and contradictions.
But Fatah today is not the opening of the beginnings. This is not a condemnation of a movement that has sacrificed thousands of martyrs, led pivotal stages of the Palestinian struggle, and paid a heavy price in exile, siege and assassinations. This is a harsh political observation: the movement, which used to give birth to its leaders from the camp, the front, the prison and the square, today looks like an organization that is aging within an authority, not as a liberation movement that is renewed within a people.
The diminutive picture of Fatah's recent conference revealed not only an organizational crisis, but also a crisis of meaning. When the conference of a movement that was once a factory of national symbols turns into an occasion to establish internal balances, arrange a succession and contain wings, the question becomes legitimate: Can a movement in this situation lead a Palestinian home? Can the PLO regain its spirit if its backbone suffers from stagnation, aging and under-representation of the new generations?
The problem is not only in the names, but in the political logic. When elections are absent, conferences are delayed, electoral districts are narrowed, and historical legitimacy becomes a substitute for popular legitimacy, the movement begins to consume its assets instead of renewing it. Fatah, if it wants to remain a central force, cannot live forever on the memory of the first bullets. The past does not save the present if it does not open a path to the future.
Open Acting Wound
The Palestinian division then deepened the wound to the point of bleeding. Since the split between Fatah and Hamas, the crisis is no longer just a crisis of a political program, but a crisis of an inclusive institution. How can an organization claim to represent the entire Palestinian people when there are balanced forces outside its structure? How can we talk about a unified national decision while Gaza, the West Bank and the Diaspora live under different, and sometimes contradictory, political, security and social conditions?
But acknowledging this fact does not mean toppling the organization or jumping on top of it. The alternative to reforming the organization is not necessarily a more democratic framework, but it may be a vacuum, a chaos of representation, conflicting headlines, or regional and international tutelages looking for Palestinians to the size of their settlements.
What is required, then, is not to demolish the organization, but to liberate it from inertia, kidnapping and marginalization. Not to abolish its historical legitimacy, but to connect it to a new popular legitimacy. Not to erase its legacy, but to rebuild it so that it becomes a home for all Palestinians, not an address for a group, no annexation to power, and no cover for political deficit.
The occupation wants a weak organization. The United States wants a controllable Palestinian address. Some of the region wants Palestinians without an independent decision-making center. The internal division gives everyone a golden chance. The weaker the overall organization, the more the issue disintegrates into files: Gaza is a humanitarian and security file, the West Bank is a coordination and control file, Jerusalem is a postponed file, the diaspora is a forgotten file, and the prisoners are a negotiating file. As for Palestine, as the cause of one people, one right and one destiny, it is gradually absent from the table.
Who's responsible?
The responsibility does not lie with one party. The official Palestinian leadership bears responsibility for freezing institutions, curtailing participation, and subjecting the organization to the logic of authority. Fatah bears responsibility for its failure to renew itself and protect its historic role from erosion.
The other factions bear the responsibility of sometimes sufficing with criticism from outside the organization without imposing a practical project to rebuild it. The division between Fatah and Hamas bears the responsibility of tearing the Palestinian body apart and weakening its decision.
But the responsibility is not only Palestinian. The occupation has worked for a long time to defeat every attempt to build an independent national institution. The United States has dealt with the PLO and the PA from the perspective of security and settlement, not from the perspective of the Palestinian people's right to self-determination. Some Arab regimes, at various stages, have sought containment, employment and pressure, either in search of an organization of its own calculations, or for a weak authority that is easier than an independent liberation movement.
However, the internal factor remains crucial. The Palestinians cannot control the intentions of the occupation, nor the geometry of Washington, nor the calculations of the region. But they can rebuild their political home if they have the will. The people, who have preserved their identity despite the Nakba, the massacres and the exiles, can save their national institution if this institution stops fearing its people.
Restoring the organization does not beautify it
The restoration of the PLO is not an emotive slogan, but rather a clear political and institutional project. It begins with the rebuilding of the Palestinian National Council as the inclusive parliament of Palestinians at home and in the diaspora. Where elections can be held, and where this is not possible due to occupation or refugee conditions, transparent compromise formulas can be adopted that do not abolish representation or turn it into closed quotas.
It begins with the integration of the major powers, especially Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other non-PLO forces, into an inclusive national structure, not by the logic of dominance or exclusion, but by the logic of partnership and commitment to an agreed national program. The Palestinians do not have the luxury of multiple legitimizations, nor do they have the luxury of leaving the PLO to those in it, nor the luxury of building competing alternatives that open the door to further fragmentation.
It also begins with the serious separation between the PLO and the PA. The PLO must be a supreme reference for the entire Palestinian people, not a diplomatic façade for narrow decisions, nor an administrative appendage to an authority governed by the constraints of the occupation.
All of this is meaningless without renewing its opening. There is no salvation for the Organization if its backbone remains a prisoner of old age, internal conflicts and the logic of political inheritance. Fatah needs an internal democratic revolution that restores the credibility of the cadre, the prisoners, the youth, the women, the diaspora, and the activists who have not become employees of the power structure. No one is asking Fatah to deny its history, but to be worthy of it.
Above all, the Palestinians need to redefine their national program. The occupation is no longer content with managing the conflict, but seeks to resolve it through annexation, settlements and open war. Therefore, it is not enough to repeat old vocabulary without content. What is needed is a program that combines the right of resistance in all its legitimate forms, political, diplomatic and legal action, protecting the unity of the Palestinian people, restoring the right of return, defending Jerusalem, and confronting liquidation projects, whether they come under humanitarian, economic or security considerations.
So that the house does not become a sign
The PLO paid a heavy price to extract the name of Palestine from the attempts to erase it. It has provided martyrs, leaders, intellectuals, and militants, and fought battles in politics, weapons, diplomacy, and exile. It has also made serious mistakes, some imposed by the balance of power, some by the illusions of compromise, and some of which resulted from a leadership structure that closed the doors of accountability and renewal.
But the PLO, after all, remains one of the most important achievements of the Palestinian people in its modern history. It does not belong to a faction, nor to a president, nor to an executive committee, nor to an authority. It belongs to the entire Palestinian people. Hence, letting it wither is not an administrative mistake, but a neglect of one of the most dangerous weapons of the Palestinians: the unity of national representation.
On its founding anniversary, the PLO does not need praise, but a rescue shock. You need someone who says that legitimacy is not inherited, it is not frozen, and it is not managed by memory. It needs someone to bring it back from the offices of power to the refugee camps, from the statements of events to the arenas of action, from rigid international recognition to living popular representation.
The question is no more: Is the PLO finished? The most serious question is: Do the Palestinians have the political courage to return it to its people before it turns from a mosque into a historic banner? Does Fatah, along with the rest of the factions, realize that saving the PLO is not a service to one party against another, but rather a condition for the Palestinian cause itself to remain as the cause of one people, and not as files scattered on the tables of others?
The battle for Palestine today is not only with the occupation, but also with dismantling. The occupation does not only want to defeat the Palestinians militarily, but also wants to dismantle their collective address and turn them into distant islands: Gaza alone, the West Bank alone, Jerusalem alone, and the diaspora out of reckoning. Therefore, the restoration of the PLO, not its beautification, becomes part of the liberation battle itself.
If the organization regains its spirit, it can return to a home of the great Palestinian meaning. If it remains captive to stagnation, division and old age, the most dangerous thing that will happen is not for the world to ask: Who represents the Palestinians?.
