Part 6: Palestinian youth revolt – Any role for political parties?
In order to address the overarching issue of why the historical political parties have not been able to catalyze current youth frustration so far we need to consider the way Palestinian politics have been transformed, primarily the shift in the PLO political discourse and strategy from a liberation struggle to state-building. This deprived the struggle of its foundational principles and slowly undermined its strategies: A neo-colonial normalization with the occupier replaced the original anti-colonial framework that shaped the struggle. As a result, the national movement was paralyzed in terms of its capacity for grassroots mobilization.
The neo-colonial relationship between the colonizer and the colonized isolated the Palestinian leadership from its popular constituencies and the struggle stalled. The crisis between Hamas and Fatah is one demonstration of the complex colonial condition imposed on Palestinians and the inability of Palestinian parties to give priority to the will of their people over the neoliberal interests. Although its most acute manifestation is the Fatah-Hamas crisis, the neoliberal project ushered in by Oslo has affected all Palestinian parties to varying degrees and has made them unable to give expression to the popular will.
