Dada El-Kurd

He basically said that both Hamas and Fatah share the blame for the division in the Palestinian body politic and the fact that there was a lack of mechanism for collective Palestinian decision-making and no functioning national institutions.

He blamed both sides.

And he accused both sides of not actually being serious about any of the dialogue sessions that were held between the two parties in the past, in Cairo, Beirut, and Beijing.

But he agreed with the Fatah spokesperson that October 7th has not been allowed to be assessed properly.

and that Palestinians never got to decide if the consequences justified whatever October 7th was trying to do.

And he blamed Hamas for that.

So agreeing with the other panelists that the right to resist is legitimate, he also acknowledged that disarmament was an internationally demanded condition.

So he posed the question, how would Palestinians navigate this?

And from his perspective, Hamas should be more flexible on the weapons and disarmament issue, especially given the degree of people suffering and the need for reconstruction in Gaza.

I summarize all of this for you because this debate held in Gaza among people who had directly lived through the last two years of genocide should demonstrate that there is no national consensus and that it's not because Palestinians don't know how to resolve these issues.

It's because they haven't been given the space to do so.

There has been a lot of discussion about how to unify these different parties.

about reviving the Palestine Liberation Organization, making it more inclusive and democratic and therefore more legitimate as an actor so that it could make decisions the Palestinian people would accept.

And so that not one faction can do what it wants, can engage in tactics without considering the consequences.

But none of these attempts, and there have been plenty like the Palestinian National Conference, have really been incorporated into discussions of post-conflict processes or management by the international community.

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised when the idea we're going with is the, quote, board of peace, basically functioning as a colonial oversight board and a club for authoritarian regimes.

But I digress.

I think it's also important to make two points here.

First, that polling of the Palestinian people by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research shows that most Palestinians are not supportive of either party, neither Fatah or Hamas.

There is a degree of malaise and cynicism where both parties are seen as a part of an unacceptable status quo.