The Palestinian National Project after the Gaza genocide
Collage of films on Palestine nominated for Academy Awards 2026 – ‘All That’s Left of You’, ‘Palestine 36’ and ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’
Azmi Bishara’s keynote lecture, translated, in The New Arab on 27 January 2026:
I recall that in 2013 the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies held a conference entitled “The Palestine Question… The Future of the Palestinian National Project”, and in 2015 another entitled “An Academic Seminar on the Future of the Palestinian National Project”. Since then, discussions under this heading have recurred within the Center’s environment and academic network. In truth, it is difficult to imagine circumstances more adverse than our present ones in which to discuss this subject and to say something that might open a window of hope onto a horizon that appears closed. Perhaps the convening of the annual Palestine Forum after a war of annihilation—continuing at a lower intensity and morphing into an attempt at the political liquidation of the “Palestinian national project”—provides an occasion for a cautious return to this discussion, amid the major transformations experienced by the Palestinian people and their political forces after that war and the creeping annexation of the West Bank.
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Armed struggle within the Palestinian National Project
When the attention of the elite displaced from their homes in 1948 focused on the priority of preserving the Palestinian people and their national identity, the outcome was the establishment of an organisation representing the national entity of the Palestinian people against the backdrop of their dispersal across different countries; the Egyptian administration of the Gaza Strip; Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank; and the presence of some 150,000 Palestinians who remained within the borders of 1948 Palestine, where Israeli citizenship was the price of their staying.
The creation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation came after a decade and a half of futile demands for the implementation of the right of return enshrined in UN General Assembly Resolution 194. It affirmed a single Palestinian entity in the context of the Arab–Israeli conflict, at a time when no Arab lands other than Palestine were occupied, and when modernising Arab regimes were locked in struggle with the remnants of colonial domination in our region. This was during the height of the Cold War between two global systems whose competing alliances in the Arab world deepened rifts among ruling regimes.
Even in those circumstances, the Palestine question enjoyed an Arab political and cultural consensus that transcended these conflicts—at least at the level of political discourse—to the point of competitive displays of commitment to the liberation of Palestine and mutual accusations of betrayal. Yet the military defeat suffered by the three Arab states directly involved in the 1967 war, which resulted in the occupation of what remained of Palestine as well as lands belonging to other Arab states, imposed new political standardbearers for the Palestinian national project: the armed struggle factions, which came to dominate the PLO. The organisation’s political programme did not in fact change, but Palestinian armed struggle became, in the vision of the new leadership, the sole path to realising that programme. This assertion was enshrined in the National Charter. The continuation of armed struggle in the aftermath of defeat became the source of the factions’ legitimacy in taking control of the organisation.
There is no doubt that those who raised the banner of armed struggle and practised it genuinely believed it to be the only path to liberating Palestine, influenced by national liberation movements in Asia, Africa—especially Algeria and Vietnam—and Latin America. While acknowledging the conviction and sincerity of those who embraced this option, two fundamental factors that shaped it must not be overlooked.