Strategic Assessment

For the first time in the history of the Palestinian national struggle, there are two separate leaderships pitted against one another that came of age in Palestinian territory and have, since 1967, experienced the struggle against the Israeli occupation. Fatah and Hamas are awaiting the publication of President Obama’s political program, and each is trying to take advantage of the change in American policy to strengthen its status at the expense of the other. Moreover, the generation-based succession within the Fatah leadership during the movement’s recent sixth general convention dramatized further the reality of fragmented Palestinian national unity.