Where Is the Legitimacy?

A few days ago the constitutional deadline of “two weeks” expired for the president of the National Authority to appoint a new head of government after Rami Hamdallah's resignation from his post, and until now we have not heard of a name being floated in the alleys of Ramallah. I will not enter now into a discussion about the legitimacy of the constitution and the legitimacy of those who voted for it at the time and put it forward without returning to the people in its entirety ... that is another topic. The strange thing is that those concerned in the Fatah state, from the opposition and the ruling party, and those in the Hamas emirate as well, have not stirred until now. I have the impression that everyone is comfortable with the existing situation. This silence of the dead made me think: why? And who actually has an interest in this existing situation?

On calm examination we find that everyone, without exception, benefits from this political stagnation, and there is no interest for any of the Palestinian political parties to stir the stillness to change the matter.

The Fatah movement is caught in several political misfortunes and has been staggering north and south for years. The staggering and the disintegration of the movement manifested themselves at the last congress, and the situation worsened as a result of the authority crisis and the continuation of the division. The movement's base is divided between internal factional loyalty and the fear of losing power along with influence and dominance. Fatah knows with certainty that the matter of legitimacy is very sensitive. The president's term of office expired a long time ago, and playing with the constitution and attempting to interpret it as they please complicated the matter and reduced the people's trust in the authority and its intentions. In addition, the legislature's term has also expired, and no one can claim to represent the people democratically – the Palestinian people, who have been neutralized for years and were not even asked at important junctures concerning their future and destiny. Not to mention that the leadership of the Fatah movement does not even possess the confidence of its base and the masses of the whole people. Fatah is a political movement with a very shaky organizational structure that includes within it the national bourgeois to the liberal, the religious up to the leftist, and keeping things in order was tied to the existence of a charismatic personality like Abu Ammar. With his assassination began the conflicts and alignments within the movement and led to its loss of power in the last elections. Mahmoud Abbas and those around him do not possess the leadership qualities the movement needs to gather its shreds before entering elections. In the current situation and under the administrative failure and political bankruptcy in all fields, such a step would be liable to miscarry the movement and disintegrate it. The division and the current situation are in the interest of the Fatah movement, and I do not see serious signs within them of changing the matter.

The gentleman brothers in the Hamas movement are also comfortable with the division. For this guarantees them speaking in the capacity of the ruler, even though they know that their government's term – if we considered it a standing legitimacy at all – expired a long time ago. And their earlier attack on Mahmoud Abbas and the end of the legitimacy of his presidency has subsided out of fear of pointing a finger at their own sore spot. The Hamas movement won the last elections by benefiting from two things: the first is a semi-democratic and exclusionary electoral law that the Palestinian situation can no longer bear, given its gross offenses against democratic representation and responsiveness to the voice of the people, and they are convinced that any coming elections will be based on a modern and more democratic electoral law in which the lion's share goes to proportional representation in line with the will of the people as far as it benefits the homeland, and by this they will lose a not insignificant portion of their representation. The other matter that helped the Hamas movement's victory was its justified, at the time, exposure of the poor performance of the Fatah authority and its men and what they did of embezzling public money and destroying the homeland and the cause. Hamas publicized the favoritism that prevailed in the Fatah authority, but it was not able to prove the opposite in its emirate in Gaza, and it went the same way in appointments and participation in power, even in the administration of resistance. The Hamas movement did not use its position to convince the people that its administration of the authority and public affairs differed fundamentally from that in the Fatah authority, and thereby lost a number of its advocates and its support on the Palestinian street. And its political staggering after the Arab revolutions and its Arab and regional alignments showed that the Hamas movement does not strike with the sword of Palestine but with another sword. And this adventure revealed the rift in the movement's ranks that was not remedied at the last congress. The movement's attempts to impose a way of life of their measurements on society in the Strip, and the harmful tactic in the reconciliation file and the conciliatory stalling, repelled many of the people's sons from them, and street support for them declined, and they now bear responsibility for the current situation at the same level that the Fatah movement bears it. And both movements harmed the cause and the interest of the homeland with their stubbornness and their obstructing reconciliation and their clinging to the demolished throne.

Within the current situation, the movement will harvest defeat in any coming elections. The movement's attempts to profit from stalling the reconciliation file and loading the other side with responsibility will come back on it with greater evil and greater loss.

The opposition – although this expression is imprecise – in its colors, from socialist to nationalist to liberal, is also staggering, even though they, within the opposition frameworks and with variations, possess the frank and clear political program to lead the cause out of the bottleneck, but they do not possess the sound political discourse to reach the masses. They are still seen by the majority as elitist. Their disintegration and their inability to rally to build a front or a third pole confronting both the Hamas movement and Fatah – which have both proven their failure – deprived the masses of confidence in the ability of these parties to lead the people out of the national impasse through which the cause has been passing for more than twenty years. The opposition in all its colors fell into the trap of the state and the authority like the Hamas and Fatah movements too; the difference is that the two movements possess material means and international and regional connections through which they can camouflage the ideological impasse that all the Palestinian political movements live. For everyone oscillates between considering the Palestinian people to be in the phase of state-building and the view that it in fact still lies under occupation, that is, we are in the phase of national liberation. Both phases require a political program and a practical daily tactic for the people that differ from the other. And since the opposition in all its colors has adapted in the Fatah state to their power and their game and became part of it, and was tamed in the Hamas emirate and went along with what the Hamas reality there dictates, it has thereby lost the people's trust in its political offer. And the majority of the people prefers in such a situation to vote for the large forces that can govern and to withhold the vote from the small, scattered forces, especially if these in fact bring nothing new and their ability to achieve their program within the prevailing situation is very poor. Even if elections were held in Palestine, most of the opposition forces whose support hovers around the blocking threshold actually fear not crossing that threshold and live in a struggle over political survival or oblivion.

Yes, silence is the sign of consent – everyone in occupied Palestine and outside is silent about the trampling of legitimacy and the people's will underfoot, out of fear of an uncertain future and of a people undecided about its situation and volatile in its moods.

* Director of the Institute for Strategic Studies of the Middle East – Hanover/Germany