The Third Founding of Palestine: Confronting the Engineering of Disintegration

The Israeli war of extermination in Gaza has gone beyond merely being a war targeting land and people, or a mere military attempt to impose new realities through killing, destruction, starvation, and displacement, to a deeper and more dangerous level. This reveals a shift in the nature of Zionist strategy itself, from the concept of conflict management strategy that governed Israeli policy for decades, to an attempt to engineer Palestinian disintegration and reshape the Palestinian condition, serving goals that transcend the military moment, towards re-formulating the conditions of Palestinian political and social existence. This transformation cannot be understood in isolation from the accumulated contradictions facing the Zionist project; for the continuation of military superiority has not produced a historical resolution, just as the ability to control has not translated into an ability to end the presence of the Palestinian people or overcome their cause. After decades of occupation and settlement, and despite the military power and widespread political support Israel possessed, especially from Washington and its orbit, the Palestinian remained present as a national identity and a political and historical actor, just as the Palestinian cause remained present in global consciousness. Hence, the transition from an attempt at resolution to an attempt at disintegration to ensure resolution does not reflect an excess of power as much as it reveals a strategic dilemma for the Zionist project. When power fails to produce political surrender, the reliance shifts to exhausting the bearer of the cause itself; i.e., the Palestinian society, by weakening the conditions of its cohesion, undermining its institutions, distorting its collective consciousness, and deepening its internal contradictions and transforming them into an alternative to confrontation with the occupation and the colonial control system. Here, we must pause at the expansion of phenomena of exaggerating and igniting secondary differences and their transformation into a state of media infighting that fills the public space, especially in light of the decline of common ground and the absence of a leadership that possesses a unifying vision and mutual trust with its people and with society, to always keep the compass facing strategies of extermination and displacement. The concept of “engineering disintegration” does not merely mean benefiting from the reality of Palestinian division, but rather refers to an attempt to transform this division into a permanent path that reshapes Palestinian reality from within. What is required is not only to prevent political unity, but to weaken the ability to produce meaningful national unity, so that Palestinians become preoccupied with managing their internal crises more than their ability to confront the project that generated and invested in these crises. This strategy comes in the context of a broader dilemma facing the Zionist project itself. A number of researchers, including Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, have argued that the Zionist project faces a structural crisis that could threaten its continuation in its current form. This does not necessarily mean an imminent collapse, but rather indicates that the contradiction between the logic of permanent control and the impossibility of ending Palestinian existence poses deep historical questions about its future. From this perspective, policies of displacement, fragmentation, annexation, settlement, and prevention of reconstruction can be understood not only as tools for controlling the present, but as attempts to shape the future, by weakening the party that represents the most fundamental historical challenge to the Zionist project, which is the continued existence of a Palestinian people who possess a national identity, a collective memory, and an inalienable political right. The Palestinian division has become more than just a reality from which Israel benefits; it has become a functional element in a broader strategy. Israel realizes that the minimum level of Palestinian unity, politically, institutionally, and socially, is capable of re-presenting the Palestinian cause as the cause of a people struggling for freedom and self-determination, rather than as an internal conflict between competing Palestinian forces. However, the deeper danger lies not only in political division, but in the attempt to transfer it to the level of dismantling the national and social fabric. The Zionist project does not target institutions and leaders only, but targets the entire unifying national sphere; through displacement, geographical fragmentation, prevention of reconstruction, acceleration of settlement and annexation, and weakening the bonds that make Palestinians one people despite the multiplicity of their locations. Hence, one can understand the attempts to fuel regional, familial, and factional tensions, deepen the loss of trust among components of society, and push the Palestinian situation towards something more dangerous than division: towards internal erosion. For when partial identities take precedence over national identity, and when shared pain turns into an additional field for competition and division, the occupation will have achieved one of its most dangerous goals; not only controlling the land, but weakening the ability to produce a common meaning for the future. Societies are not only defeated when they are militarily defeated, but when they lose their collective sense of the unity of their destiny, their ability to overcome their differences, and their right to produce a unifying project. Therefore, disintegration is not just a fleeting political state, but a historical process that can reshape consciousness and social relations if not confronted. Confronting this strategy does not begin only with ending the division, nor is it sufficient to call for national unity as a mere moral slogan, but it begins with rebuilding the foundation that gives unity its meaning, which is the Palestinian national idea. For the national project, no matter how important it may be, is not the origin of the story; rather, it is the political and institutional expression of a deeper idea that preceded its emergence and gave it its legitimacy; the idea of one Palestinian people, with the right to self-determination, and capable of overcoming attempts to uproot and fragment it. It was the Palestinian national idea that prevented the Nakba from turning Palestinians into mere groups of refugees separated from their homeland and their cause, and this can be considered the first founding of this idea. The second founding was represented by the emergence of the contemporary national movement and its institutions and representative frameworks that restored the Palestinian people's presence as a historical actor, and which now seems to be exhausting its role. Today, the profound transformations imposed by the war of extermination necessitate a third founding of the Palestinian national idea; a founding that does not negate the previous experience, but rather draws its lessons and rebuilds the national sphere on more solid foundations; partnership instead of exclusion, democracy instead of monopoly, citizenship instead of tribalism, and popular legitimacy instead of de facto legitimacy. The real challenge is not only to rebuild the national project, but to protect the idea that gives it life and meaning. Political projects can falter or be reshaped, but if the unifying national idea erodes, the ability to rebuild becomes more difficult. The Zionist strategy has shifted from conflict management to engineering Palestinian disintegration, because ending the cause by force is no longer possible, and because the continued existence of a Palestinian people united in their identity, consciousness, and rights represents the deepest historical challenge to the project based on exclusion and domination. Therefore, the priorities of this stage are not limited to resisting the occupation or rebuilding the national project, but begin with re-founding the Palestinian national idea itself; the idea that makes Palestine the cause of a people, not just a disputed land, and unity a historical necessity, not a fleeting political option. The battle today is not only over Gaza or the West Bank, nor only over the form of the coming political system, but over the meaning of Palestine itself; will it remain the cause of one people carrying a historical project of liberation, or will it turn into a set of fragmented issues managed by the realities imposed by the occupation? And if the occupation seeks to engineer disintegration, the historical response must be to rebuild unity on a new basis; popular legitimacy, national partnership, inclusive citizenship, and a leadership entrusted with the great Palestinian pain and sacrifices, as well as with the national future and destiny. The national idea is what gave birth to the national project, and it alone is capable of renewing it and protecting it from erosion, and transforming Palestinian steadfastness from mere survival into a historical force capable of creating freedom, justice, and complete national independence.