Within the Dialogue Program Organized and Moderated by Phoenix Center for Research, Titled "Issue and Dialogue"

And the issue up for dialogue: "The Reality of the Palestinian Political System and Its Future Prospects"

The first dialogue meeting was held at the level of a select group of political activists and intellectuals, representing diverse sectors of intellectual and political currents in Palestinian society, under the title:

The Meetings of the PLO Central Council and the Repercussions of the Project to Integrate PLO Institutions into the Palestinian State.

The dialogue with the attendees was moderated based on a set of sub-headings related to the main title, with the aim of structuring the flow of discussion within the focused substance of the dialogue's components.

The dialogue session likewise relied on giving participants the opportunity to present their views intensively on the following two headings:

Parameters and Headings of the Dialogue Session

- The first heading: "The motives and needs behind President Abbas's decision to integrate the Palestine Liberation Organization into the departments of the Palestinian state."

- Current political motives.

- President Abbas's administrative and organizational needs.

- The strategic dimensions of the integration decision.

The second heading: "The State and the Organization."

- The PLO: an existing political reality with its bodies, figures, and roles.

- The Palestinian state: a symbolically declared political condition, not institutionally or programmatically realized.

- The state does not enjoy electoral legitimacy and lacks the existence of its components through the democratic process — "election of a head of state, election of a state parliament."

- The third heading: "Did President Abbas's decision following the Central Council meeting constitute a process of smothering the PLO and removing it from the political scene?"

- Who are the parties that benefit from such a direction and decision?

- What are the alternatives for political life amid the atrophy of the Authority and the absence of the state?

- Where do international and regional parties — "Israel, the regional neighborhood, international centers" — stand on such a decision?

After the dialogue moderator presented a set of questions centered on the reality of the political system, its historical components, its structural and programmatic developments, and the transformations it has undergone as a result of regional and international changes, the dialogue's management focused on the following questions:

Does the Palestinian political system accept reform?

Do the components of the Palestinian political system keep pace with the reality and development of the Palestinian people from the mid-1960s to today?

Is the leadership and programmatic structure suited to the variables and developments of the Palestinian people's political and struggle-based life?

The views and positions of the attendees came rich and varied in the interventions on the data presented above. Some were convinced that the PLO has already ended as a result of the effects of the Oslo Accords — effects that led to emptying the PLO of its various contents and annexing it to the Palestinian Authority — and accordingly, proponents of this view see it as impossible to reform or revive the PLO, as the Organization, from this point of view, has fulfilled its functions and historical roles and has ended.

This group considered the process of annexing the PLO to the Palestinian state, planned for implementation, to be a completive process, and one link in the chain of the moral and legal erasure of the PLO, and proponents of this view added that the attempt to bring Islamic Jihad and Hamas into the PLO failed due to the regional and international veto that prevents their entry into the PLO's institutions, which in turn — regardless of intentions — has led to the Organization becoming deficient in representation, closer to a lame duck than to the national tent that includes everyone, and this is a factor added to other factors that rule out the possibility of reforming or rebuilding the Organization.

There also emerged a current calling for rebuilding the Liberation Organization, which constitutes a necessary national need for reformulating the conflict with Israel back to square one. This current held that the PLO needs rebuilding, not reform, through a set of tools, the most important being elections and defining the relationship between the PLO and the Authority, and not annexing the PLO to what is called the Palestinian state, which is a symbolic condition that needs to be embodied on the ground.

This current also demanded transferring the higher political authority's functions to the PLO, such as political negotiations and external international relations, in addition to demanding the necessary reintroduction of Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the PLO's institutions.

A third current emerged, focusing on the necessity of gradual reform of the PLO through ending the division, and repositioning the parties and political movements, including Hamas and Jihad, within the PLO.

This current considered that the national project, as a liberation project, is still standing, and that the annexation of the PLO's institutions to the Authority or the state must be halted.

This current called for limiting Fatah's dominance over the Organization's institutions as an entry point, and for not concentrating political and administrative powers in the hands of President Abu Mazen, and for adopting collective leadership.

Some ideas of considerable importance also emerged at the meeting, holding that reform is not a new-born issue but rather a historical matter that emerged as far back as the 1970s, and remains, to this day, without the required reform having been achieved.

This current drew attention to the weakness and fragility of the opposition inside and outside the PLO, which has reached the point of one party monopolizing all the PLO's resources and details.

The participants recommended the necessity of agreeing on a national program, a comprehensive strategy of struggle, and collective leadership, and domesticating regional and international changes and challenges and turning them into opportunities to guarantee the protection of national rights and the Palestinian cause, and the participants called for sustained popular and national pressure until comprehensive elections are held and all the institutions of the political system are rebuilt.