A Leadership Crisis Is Compounding the Decline of the Palestinian Cause

No fresh alternative has emerged to the increasingly unpopular duopoly of Hamas and Fatah

- Marcus Walker & Abeer Ayyoub

The Palestinians' national cause has reached its lowest ebb in nearly 80 years, and there is no one to turn it around.

The Gaza Strip is in ruins. Many residents might leave or be pushed out following the war sparked by the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. Palestinian territory in the West Bank is divided by ever-expanding Israeli settlements. Middle East countries have been building ties with Israel, and allies such as Iran and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah were battered by Israeli attacks last year.

Palestinians, meanwhile, are fighting with each other, caught between violent groups such as Hamas and the secular nationalist party Fatah, which governs parts of the West Bank and is widely seen as corrupt and ineffective.

No third force has been able to break that duopoly. No new generation is emerging in either party to offer a fresh vision or strategy.

"I hate the two factions," said Noha Kamal, a mother of three from Rafah in southern Gaza who has had to flee with her family from their largely flattened city. "If it weren't for their division, we wouldn't have ended up in this situation."

That widely held frustration has burst out in sporadic street protests in Gaza and even the revenge killing of a Hamas security officer.

"Out, out, Hamas out," demonstrators in the Palestinian enclave have been chanting, braving the Islamist group's violent repression and Israel's renewal of the war.

Opinion polling has been difficult and intermittent during the war, but in a survey last fall by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, a think tank in Ramallah, 35% of Gazans said they supported Hamas. In the West Bank, Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, fared even worse, with support reaching just 18%.

One thing many Palestinians agree on is how much internal divisions have weakened them in the unequal struggle with Israel.