Everyone is asking what goal Mahmoud Abbas and his circle were pursuing with the hide-and-seek game of recent months: one moment a senior functionary from the presidential office denies the nascent signals of negotiations, the next the denial is itself denied. What lies behind this pendulum swing between readiness to negotiate and refusal – and where does the road lead if it really has come to an end?
The game with the negotiations
For the Palestinian leadership, negotiations were always more than an instrument for solving the conflict: they were a source of legitimacy, of international standing, of access to money and power. At this point the calculation has shifted: the process itself has become the goal, regardless of its results. Whoever leads the process gets the stage – whether or not anything is actually negotiated.
But the hide-and-seek has its price. Every rumour of secret concessions undermines the trust of one's own population; every denial shows that the leadership does not hold interpretive sovereignty over its own politics. What remains is a leadership that neither negotiates nor fights – but administers.
The end of the road
The negotiation road in its old form is exhausted: without an honest referee, without a unified Palestinian representation, and without an Israeli government willing to accept a Palestinian state, every repetition of the same pattern leads to the same result. “End of the road” therefore does not mean that no negotiations are possible – but that without fundamental renewal there is nothing left to negotiate that concerns the existential question of the Palestinian people.
The next step lies therefore not in Washington but with the Palestinians themselves: a representation with a mandate, a programme that names goals, and a strategy that does not depend on the goodwill of others. Only from this basis can negotiations again be what they should be: a means, not an end in themselves.
