Strategic Assessment

The twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the first intifada provides a good opportunity to examine the dramatic developments in the Palestinian arena over the past two decades. Chief among these developments are the transfer of the center of activity from the Palestinian diaspora to the territories, and the displacement of the Fatah national leadership by Hamas. Perhaps ironically, these changes have emerged from an unchanging feature of the Palestinian milieu – the ongoing vacillation between the willingness to work toward achieving a state and the unrelenting embrace of long term national goals ("the right of return" and the complete liberation of Palestine). Continuation of this pendulum is likely to confront Israel with difficult future scenarios, especially a decline into the reality of a bi-national state on the one hand, and creation of an independent, hostile, and aggressive Palestinian entity controlled by Hamas on the other.