In the final weeks of March, rockets were fired for the first time at Tel Aviv, launched from the Gaza Strip. This event astonished some in occupied Palestine and across the Arab world, while angering others. It was remarkable because it marked the first time that guided rockets from Gaza reached the very heart of the occupying state—its vibrant capital, economic, cultural, and life center.
Supporters of the attack viewed it as a breakthrough in breaking the deterrence equation and as a source of energy to boost morale and resilience among the Palestinian masses. Conversely, others dismissed it as mere posturing and an attempt to suppress the youth movement “We Want to Live,” which exposed Hamas’s political resistance tactics and its efforts to impose authority by force.
Despite the implicit consensus between supporters and opponents of the rocket fire that the occupation remains the primary enemy of the Palestinian people and that the ultimate goal is to defeat the occupation and secure the right to self-determination, the most pressing question we must ask—beyond the mutual accusations of betrayal exchanged between followers of Fatah and Hamas—is this: To those who applauded and praised this “achievement,” and to those who interpreted it as direct support for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in his campaign for the 21st Knesset elections, what is the strategy of the Palestinian people and its political factions, in all their diversity and ideologies, to confront the occupation and its manifestations on the ground?
What is the strategy of the Palestinian people and its political factions, across their various colors and ideologies, in confronting the occupation and its repercussions on the ground?
First, it is important to emphasize that any political event—whether resistant or negotiative—must be evaluated according to the foundational principle upon which it is based. In the Palestinian case, as with any people resisting occupation to preserve their dignity and reclaim their right to self-determination, the assessment depends on the objectives embedded within the strategies of resistance, steadfastness, strategic political action, and the interplay between them—if such strategies exist at all.
A brief review of the modern history of the Palestinian people leads to the following analytical insights:
Firstly, after the end of the Oslo transitional phase in 1999, the Palestinian Authority realized it had made a grave strategic error. It became hostage to agreements it had signed in good faith without consulting the Palestinian people or seeking their input on their fate and future. This ensnared the entire Palestinian population. Since 1967, the leadership and people in occupied Palestine became dependent on the material handouts from donor countries. This dependency, coupled with the marginalization of the PLO and the erosion of popular support for the official political line after Fatah shelved all its struggle strategies except negotiations as the sole, isolated option, led Fatah down a destructive and dangerous path from which it has yet to recover. Within the Authority and its party, a battle for survival and the preservation of privileges began, dominating its political discourse. The assassination of President Arafat plunged the Palestinian situation into a profound crisis.
Fatah, in particular, has been mired in a complex leadership, political, and struggle-related crisis from which it has not extricated itself to this day. President Mahmoud Abbas has failed to restore Fatah’s dignity and leadership stature, nor has he attempted to propose a new strategy to overcome the crisis. Instead, he insisted that there is no alternative to negotiations except more negotiations—an approach that has only deepened the crisis.
Under President Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah movement has shifted from a movement led by clear charisma, leaving no loose ends and presenting a nearly unified political stance, into a political mall composed of competing political and resistance factions, united only by the shared privileges granted by the manager of this political mall: President Mahmoud Abbas.
Fatah, the ruling party in Ramallah, lacks both a political strategy and a resistance strategy. What remains for it are mere tactics, the privileges of its position in power, and a struggle for survival without fracturing into factions and branches.
In this context, Fatah has begun to participate in and support Palestinian resistance in both its armed and peaceful forms, driven by internal competition within Palestinian society and a nostalgic attachment to struggle, rather than as a strategy that supports the negotiation approach. The majority within Fatah now view negotiations as futile, yet they also believe that abandoning them would cost the movement its last asset: material privileges and its monopoly over official Palestinian decision-making.
Secondly, the Palestinian democratic left factions—comprising the Popular Front, the Democratic Front, the People’s Party, the Initiative, and FIDA—remain distant from positioning themselves and their policies as a viable alternative to the conservative Palestinian currents: the nationalist Fatah and the Islamist Hamas movements.
Throughout the Palestinian people’s historic struggle for self-determination under international law and legitimacy resolutions, these leftist factions periodically offered realistic strategies to advance and recalibrate the Palestinian resistance. For example, in 1974, the Democratic Front presented the interim program known as the Ten-Point Program, which transformed the Palestinian struggle from armed resistance without a clear political framework into a legitimate resistance project with a defined political program. This program received overwhelming international support and led to recognition of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
Similarly, in 1987, PLO factions in the territories occupied in 1967—led by the Popular Front, the People’s Party (formerly the Communist Party), and the Democratic Front—organized the popular uprising that began in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. This uprising became a widespread intifada against the occupation, garnering international support and global popular sympathy. Furthermore, these factions proposed the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which was adopted by the Palestinian National Council on November 15, 1988, initiating the process of international recognition of the State of Palestine.
However, the Palestinian left lost its strategic compass during the struggle to overturn the Oslo Accords. Despite the Democratic and Popular Fronts’ accurate reading of the agreements and the dangers they posed to the Palestinian cause and people’s future, their unconditional alliance with Hamas—an organization that had betrayed them in its charter—led them into a vortex of fruitless ideological debates.
While the leftist factions sincerely highlighted the risks of the Oslo Accords, Hamas used the alliance of the ten factions as a platform to boost its popularity and advance its project of building an alternative to the PLO. By the time the leftist factions emerged from this vortex, the Second Intifada had already begun, falling into the trap of bombings and suicide attacks initiated by Hamas and later joined by Fatah, all without a clear strategic political program. This period saw escalating armed competition and the adoption of militant posturing.
The convoys of martyrs symbolize the internal factional strife and the struggle to maintain influence among the Palestinian masses both inside and outside the territories. The Palestinian left entered a losing competition for both objective and subjective reasons, losing its influence within the Palestinian arena, culminating in the devastating defeat these factions suffered in the 2006 parliamentary elections.
At this critical juncture, the leftist factions missed the opportunity to seriously address their internal organizational challenges and to rebuild themselves and their strategies on new foundations. Instead, they left the situation unchanged, with leaderships that had failed disastrously in the recent period remaining at the top of the organizational hierarchy. This exacerbated their internal crisis and led to the loss of many cadres who no longer believe in the democratic slogans these leaders espouse and use to adorn their political discourse.
The Palestinian left transformed from being a partner in Palestinian decision-making and a drafter of realistic strategies before Oslo into a follower of the conservative currents of Fatah and Hamas, orbiting around them to secure certain privileges that would entrench the dominance of some veteran leaders. This dominance of the senior leadership—referred to colloquially as the "old guard"—pushed many other leftist cadres out of their organizations, with their numbers now far exceeding those still affiliated with leftist groups. Moreover, the policy of dominance and authoritarianism by the veteran leadership in the left lost its credibility before the masses.
One who lacks something cannot give it. Whoever fails to establish democracy and pluralism within their own organization will find it difficult to promote such a strategy at the broader level of the Palestinian people.
I call the current strategy of the left the "hamster wheel" strategy—like the domestic animal that runs for hours inside a wheel believing it is moving forward. The left moves in place to avoid being buried by the sands and fading away, yet it does not take a single step forward. Under the veteran leadership, the Palestinian left has shifted from being a strategic inspirer to a political current whose only tools are condemnation, denunciation, and issuing statements.
The crisis of the left is clearly evident in the negotiations to form the new government headed by Dr. Shtayyeh. The left, which before the dissolution of Dr. Hamdallah’s government formed the Palestinian Democratic Gathering—a bold step seen by some as the beginning of the left presenting itself as an alternative to the conservative currents—is conducting government formation talks alone, with each faction negotiating separately. This paradox is incomprehensible to anyone with even a basic understanding of political strategy and negotiation.
Thirdly, Hamas attempted during the Palestinian Authority crisis to exploit the political paralysis caused by the establishment of the Authority, the sidelining of the PLO, and the emptying of its institutions of their national content, in order to seize leadership from Fatah. These attempts, which took place in Damascus and Doha, were thwarted by the awakening of the Palestinian left factions and their steadfast adherence to the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Since its founding by the global Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas has never seriously considered joining the PLO. It pursued three different strategies: either to seize the PLO from within and Islamize it according to its charter; or to establish an alternative framework with some PLO factions—this was one reason for its joining the camp of the ten factions opposing the Oslo Agreement and Fatah’s approach; or to build a parallel framework to the PLO and compete with it in all fields, especially resistance. The second Intifada was a gift to Hamas and its strategy of militarizing resistance against the occupation without a clear political program. Unfortunately, both Fatah and the left factions joined this destructive military path, causing the Palestinian people to lose international support, which was paid for dearly with thousands of martyrs, wounded, and prisoners. Everyone fell into the trap of internal military competition without a clear political strategy.
Hamas lacks a political strategy for the Palestinian people and a coherent struggle strategy. What it possesses is military arrogance aimed at achieving its primary goal: leadership of the Palestinian cause. Hamas continues to wield the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, and its first political program, presented in May 2017 in Doha, is merely a tactic to preserve itself after its recklessness in regional politics during the so-called Arab Spring and following its military coup against presidential legitimacy in Palestine.
Hamas, as described by the movement’s ideological planner Dr. Ahmed Youssef, is relatively new to politics and its complexities, having previously paid little attention to this aspect of activist work. This shortcoming is clearly evident in Hamas’s alliance policies at the regional level and its procrastination in overcoming the destructive Palestinian division.
For years, Hamas has employed a strategy I call the "swing" or "inside-outside" strategy in dealing with the Palestinian cause. In this approach, Hamas oscillates between populist, arrogant, and heroic rhetoric directed at its supporters and members within Palestine and abroad,
and a pragmatic, moderate discourse aimed at the West, Israel, and their sponsoring states such as Turkey and Qatar. Hamas also vacillates in its tactics of struggle and resistance: it boasts of having liberated the Gaza Strip from Israeli occupation while denying the sacrifices made by others who preceded it by decades of struggle against the occupation. It openly acknowledges that Gaza is besieged—a fact known far and wide—yet it does not clarify how the rockets now reaching Tel Aviv will break this siege. Meanwhile, its intellectuals and strategists admit that these rockets only strengthen cohesion and solidarity within Israeli society, which is rapidly shifting toward an extreme, racist right-wing. Hamas also fails to explain how it reassures the Egyptian side security-wise, which keeps the Rafah crossing closed and exacerbates the humanitarian crisis for Gaza’s residents.
The geostrategic situation in Gaza has changed significantly since the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, but Hamas has not adapted its struggle methods to this new reality.
It lacks a realistic strategy for resistance and relies solely on populism and inconsistent rhetoric.
In summary, Palestinian factions—both Islamic and nationalist—have become focused solely on managing the conflict with the occupation and preserving their own privileges and those of their elites. They lack a coherent militant and political strategy to resolve the conflict or to advance to a new phase of confrontation.
Since Oslo, Israel has transformed completely, revising its strategies and tactics regarding the Palestinian and regional files. In contrast, Palestinian discourse has largely remained populist and devoid of substance, stagnating since the 1988 declaration of independence and the collapse of the Oslo Accords in 1999. Everyone has grown accustomed to the division and its consequences instead of developing a national strategy to overcome this crisis. Fatah’s approach of building state institutions under occupation has reached a dead end, especially following the declaration of "Unified Jerusalem" as the capital of the occupying state and its ongoing efforts to impose a new reality in Area C of the West Bank to facilitate future extension of Israeli sovereignty over these areas.
The regional situation has been completely reshaped following the war in Syria. We now face a renewed Middle East polarized between two blocs: an American-Saudi-Israeli alliance and a resistance alliance supported by Russia and China. The global order, long dominated by the United States since the collapse of the socialist bloc, has shifted toward a new multipolar system.
The emerging multipolar global order contrasts sharply with the Palestinian political system, which continues to place its hopes in declining regional powers and weakened global actors. It remains steadfast in managing the conflict with the occupation according to agendas set by these faltering forces.
The so-called peacock strategy and the tactic of burying one’s head in the sand, employed by Palestinian factions, only deepen the crisis across all dimensions. Palestinian politics, in all its forms, remains purely reactive and falls far short of constituting a genuine strategy for self-determination and the liberation from occupation.
Hamas’s reliance on rocket tactics without a clear and realistic political program amounts to little more than noise and disorder. Meanwhile, Fatah’s negotiation approach, lacking a complementary struggle strategy adapted to the new geostrategic realities, risks remaining mere rhetoric and a squandered opportunity.
