The dialectic based on the idea that the people are the beginning and the end of any political process, no matter how small or large, decisive or inevitable, is a principle proven true in different societies over decades and across vast areas of the globe. Also, we discover that if this dialectic is disrupted for some reason, the inevitable result is that these societies shift from democracy and the people's authority to the domination of a small specific group over the majority, or even that the political system becomes a repressive, dictatorial, single-headed regime imposing its political vision and its implementation by force and demagogy.
This dialectic is clearly embodied in democratic societies where governments, political parties, and their leaders adhere to fixed periods for decisions and the people's opinion.
In these democratic societies, we see harmony among the triangle's sides: leadership, politics, and the people. If this balance is disrupted for some reason, everyone moves and works hard to restore it, considering that one side of this triangle is fixed and cannot be replaced, changed, substituted, or shortened... which is the people.
Thus, the process and journey of restoring balance to the triangle – people, leadership, politics – are reduced to changes that must be made in the remaining two sides: leadership and politics. In other words, the only strategy to restore harmony is either to change the leadership entirely or partially, or to change the political program and political discourse, or both. Since political discourse, in all societies, is linked to leadership and its persons, a real serious change to restore harmony must always come doubly, i.e., by changing the discourse and the persons responsible for conveying the discourse to the people and its institutions.
Delay in restoring harmony to the triangle's sides inevitably leads, regardless of the society in question, to a cooling of the relationship between the triangle's sides and later to a large part of the fixed side – the people – distancing themselves from the other two sides and withdrawing from participation and work. This is called in political sociology: political and voluntary withdrawal of the masses.
This situation: leadership distancing itself from the masses and the masses not understanding the political discourse and program of the leadership, is translated by the masses, as mentioned above, initially by withdrawal and retreat from work, followed by an atmosphere of indifference that clouds the masses and their institutions, ending in division and sometimes cutting the thread that holds the triangle's sides together... in other words, in this case, collapse begins.
When the situation in a society, state (or party or family), reaches a point where the people do not carry or support the leadership's political discourse, and the leadership does not understand how to address the people nor hear the vibrations of their political feelings and national and individual needs, we face two possibilities:
First, the door opens wide to radical forces, especially those carrying populist discourse that appeals to the people's feelings. Second, this situation opens the opportunity for theorists of surrender and acquiescence to 'what is written for us' and satisfaction with crumbs before losing everything.
The state of confusion, instability, and lack of harmony among the triangle's sides can sometimes explode into a popular revolution against the leadership whose outcomes no one can predict in advance.
My theory applies not only to the course of societies and states but also to parties, regardless of their size. It also applies to civil society institutions and can be applied to social relations in small families or larger units.
Moving from theory to reality shows us that what is happening in occupied Palestine is what we have theoretically described above: before being drawn into the Oslo process, there was harmony, despite some occasional shocks, between the Palestinian people with its various components, its leadership, and its general political and struggle discourse. This harmony was the result of persistent struggle culminating in the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization as the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people, adopting its clear political program and succeeding in imposing a new equation of conflict with the occupying enemy based on different rules.
With the entry into the Oslo process, the harmony in the Palestinian triangle was shaken but not destroyed, despite internal and external attempts to destroy this triangle and its achievements. However, efforts to restore harmony by all Palestinian factions were neither serious nor pragmatic but were attempts based on narrow ideological grounds, and all steps taken to restore harmony were subject to factional and personal profit and loss calculations, leading us to the current situation: a frustrated people, incapable leadership, and a vague political program far from objective, subjective, regional, and global reality, with a struggle program whose only strength is shouting and empty rhetoric.
This Palestinian disharmony affects not only the Palestinian Authority and the ruling party but has become the prevailing situation in all Palestinian national parties and movements.
For years, we have observed Palestinian parties and movements, in all their colors, moving towards what I call the 'Unicorn Party,' where the party reduces its political leadership to a specific personality who is the locomotive pulling everyone, the digger carving paths, building relations, drawing directions, determining movements, and also the king before whom the court must bow and declare full, complete, and undisputed loyalty from time to time! This person is also the media and propaganda face of the party and movement... with whom we decorate our offices, newspapers, advertisements, and bedrooms... In short, the ruler by divine right...
The reasons for the lack of harmony in the Palestinian triangle are clear: first, most political leaders have become self-serving, listening only to their own voices, disregarding the desires and wishes of the people and its institutions. Their sole concern is to secure their authoritarian, party, or institutional throne. We face a parasitic political leadership apparatus organically (financially) linked to each other, exploiting their proximity to the top of the authority pyramid to secure their party, popular, or institutional position... This applies to all Palestinian parties and movements, especially those considering themselves part of the democratic left.
Second, the political program and discourse of Palestinian movements and parties have become utopian and partly populist and extortionist.
Politicians, both those in power and those who place themselves in opposition, talk about the two-state solution while watching for more than two decades how this project is being undermined and uprooted by establishing and solidifying a colonial reality... The people ask and wonder: what will come after the politicians' shouting, their grievances, their complaints, and their appeals to their paymasters? The answer from the authority is: maintaining security coordination, the Paris economic agreement, land swaps, daily violations of Palestinian sovereignty, the siege of Gaza, the imprisonment of the people’s prisoners in the occupier’s jails, and the elite’s privileges in movement and ownership... The democratic and liberal opposition, which criticizes all this and calls it by its name: the Palestinian disaster, has not yet dared to take a step that would increase the masses' confidence in it and its political discourse to restore even part of the harmony in the Palestinian triangle... Their deputies cling to their parliamentary membership, even though they remind the people morning and evening of their illegitimacy...
All, opposition and authority alike, boast of their desire to overcome the division within the Palestinian body... but none dare to call things by their real name! The division is not purely Palestinian but imposed on the two parties of the division – Fatah and Hamas – by their funders. Overcoming this division must first be by establishing a new realistic political program agreed upon by all, from which a real struggle program responsive to the stage’s requirements is derived, away from the influence of external players who have long and extensively meddled in Palestinian affairs... The geopolitical reality in Palestine, the region, and the world now requires a political program based on new foundations different from those set about half a century ago... This new political program cannot be achieved or reached with such leadership.
Restoring harmony to the Palestinian triangle begins with the dual renewal and modernization of political discourse and the renewal of the political elite and the development of its cadres, not only in the authority and its party but also in the factions and movements claiming democracy... Yes, the Palestinian political discourse has been surpassed by the reality we live and observe daily... and the Palestinian leadership carrying this discourse has also been surpassed by its distance from the heartbeat and concerns of the people... The Palestinian people have been, are, and will remain the fixed, steadfast, and giving side in the triangle of Palestinian national harmony.
