Political Analysis: PLO Leadership and the Architecture of Exclusion

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By: Prof. Dr. Mohsen Mohammad Saleh.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership could have erected one or two barriers, or dug one or two trenches, to ensure its continued reproduction and construct for itself a form of “legitimacy” that it knew, better than anyone else, did not genuinely reflect the will and aspirations of the Palestinian people. Yet, the sheer scale of the preventive measures and exclusionary steps undertaken by the PLO leadership is striking.

Violation of the PLO Charter:

To begin with, the PLO’s governing framework stipulates that membership is a right of every Palestinian and that it serves as an umbrella for the entire Palestinian people, regardless of their political orientations, affiliations or places of residence. In practice, however, the PLO leadership restricted this right to the “Oslo camp” and supporters of the peace process with Israel when it decided that participation in the elections would be contingent on adherence to the agreements concluded by the PLO leadership. Consequently, those who did not accept these agreements would have no place in representing the Palestinian people. Thus, in violation of the PLO’s National Charter, it effectively excluded broad factions, political currents and popular forces that, according to opinion polls, represent a majority of the Palestinian people, while blocking resistance forces, particularly Hamas and the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine (PIJ), from meaningful participation on the basis of their political programs.

Moreover, the PLO leadership leveraged Israeli, official Arab and Western international demands to strengthen its position against its own constituents, rivals and opponents by excluding resistance forces and Islamists, regardless of their popular support. Indeed, it went so far as to participate in, promote, or at least consent to the inclusion of language in the New York Declaration of September 2025 on the two-state solution affirming Hamas’s exclusion from participating in rebuilding the Palestinian political system and calling for its disarmament!!

Palestinians Inside and Outside Palestine:

The PLO leadership continued its efforts to consolidate its position by abandoning equal representation in the Palestine National Council (PNC) and instead allocating 200 seats (57%) to the West Bank (WB) and Gaza Strip (GS), compared with 150 seats (43%) for Palestinians Abroad. This is particularly striking given that, according to Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) figures at the end of 2025, the combined population of the WB and GS stood at 5.557 million, representing 35.9% of the total Palestinian population, compared with 8.077 million Palestinians outside Palestine, or 52.1% of the total. Meanwhile, Palestinians in the 1948 occupied territories numbered 1.855 million, representing 12% of the Palestinian people, yet they are not included in the PNC membership.

Excluding One-Third of the Seats Allocated to Palestinians Inside Palestine:

The PLO leadership then erected another line of defense by taking control of 67 seats allocated to the WB and GS, removing them from the electoral process and placing them under the direct control of the PLO leadership.

Circumventing Representation of Palestinians Abroad:

Arrangements are now underway, or may already be underway, to undermine the prospects for genuine representation of Palestinians abroad by establishing “electoral constituencies” whose members are appointed and in which the PLO leadership itself has the decisive say!! Seats will then be allocated through an agreement between the leadership and those it brings under its umbrella.

Earlier and Subsequent Lines of Defense:

Before and after this, further lines of defense, safeguards and trenches have been put in place to prevent unwanted candidates from reaching the PNC:

• The “ruler by decree,” who has the “authority” to issue decrees and laws, is PLO President Mahmud ‘Abbas.

• The person who appoints and approves the “independent” Central Elections Commission (CEC) is Mahmud ‘Abbas.

• The person who can issue decrees altering the “rules of the game” is Mahmud ‘Abbas.

• The person who can halt, postpone or cancel the elections is Mahmud ‘Abbas.

Nevertheless, concerns remain that Hamas and supporters of the resistance, opponents of the Oslo Accords, and opponents of “Abbas’s Fatah” may still form “independent” lists capable of breaching ‘Abbas’s walls and trenches and asserting themselves in the PNC equation!!

Fundamental Issues:

The problem is not merely that a particular group has monopolized the leadership of the PLO; rather, it is broader and deeper:

• For more than two decades, the PLO leadership has demonstrated its inability and failure, leaving its “legitimacy” effectively exhausted. Throughout this period, the PLO itself has remained marginalized and isolated in the “intensive care unit,” ultimately becoming little more than another arm of the PA in Ramallah, which is itself under Israeli occupation.

• Moreover, this leadership lacks a “vision” for overcoming the Palestinian crisis and divisions and for putting a genuine liberation project back on track. It remains trapped in a peace process that Israel has long moved beyond and effectively discarded, while lacking a credible political program capable of securing majority Palestinian support.

• It runs an organization that is supposed to represent the entire Palestinian people with a closed, factional mindset that allows no genuine partnership and rejects any authentic expression of the Palestinian popular will.

• Under its leadership, the PLO’s institutions and departments have deteriorated and lost their effectiveness, while Palestinians abroad have been neglected. It has also failed to draw on the expertise, capabilities, resources and contributions of the Palestinian people, including its prominent figures, experts and independent voices.

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Finally, Mahmud ‘Abbas appears largely indifferent to the clear message conveyed by Palestinian public opinion polls over many years, which consistently show more than 80% calling for his resignation. Moreover, these polls indicate that he would lose any free and fair election by a very wide margin to any of Hamas’s candidates or to the imprisoned Marwan Barghouti.
The question remains, particularly for someone who has passed the age of 90: Why erect all these walls and dig all these trenches to perpetuate the status quo and engineer exclusion? And who benefits from this?! Does the Palestinian people, with their immense sacrifices, patience, steadfastness, expertise and capabilities, not deserve better leadership?!