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As we confront the daily horrors of Israel’s devastation of Gaza, it has been difficult to take stock of the wins in the global movement for justice in Palestine. Yet they are real and significant: from successes on the international legal and diplomatic fronts, to the transformation in global public support for Palestinian rights and accountability for Israeli crimes.
This is a moment, Omar Rahman argues, of both “peril and possibility” for Palestinians, who have witnessed unprecedented loss but also maintain unprecedented international backing. But the official Palestinian leadership has never been more weak and fragmented — incapable of taking advantage of the moment.
Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs and a longtime contributor to +972, is the co-editor of a new collection of articles that assess the state of Palestinian politics since the October 7 attacks.
In this episode of The +972 Podcast, Rahman unpacks the Palestinian leadership crisis — what he suggests is no longer “merely a political deficiency but a national emergency.” He traces how Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has monopolized control of Palestinian politics in the West Bank and hollowed out national institutions, undermining the liberation struggle in exchange for a highly constrained form of autonomous governance.
While Hamas has shown itself to be a more dynamic political institution — withstanding repression and Israel’s assassination of much of its leadership — Rahman points to the October 7 attacks as evidence of its political failure: a unilateral and highly consequential decision, entirely detached from a concomitant political strategy.
The absence of an effective leadership, Rahman argues, has had enormous consequences for all Palestinians, who lack a unified national vision and strategy in the face of Israeli genocide. But while he is pessimistic that Palestinian institutions will be revitalized anytime soon, he sees a potential for Palestinians across the land themselves to coalesce — now that the existential threats they all face are clearer than ever.
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