Ahmed Moor at Al Jazeera:
Over time, the Palestinian Authority, which was one of Oslo’s outgrowths, supplanted the PLO as the decision-making body. By doing so, it effectively severed vast segments of the Palestinian people from their sole form of representation. Negotiators learned to stop thinking about the rights and needs of the Palestinians in the refugee camps in Lebanon and in Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel and around the world. Instead, they focused solely on the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. A kind of parochialism took root.
The current Palestinian national leadership is far from representative, and the decisions it takes are taken blindly. In Ramallah, 5 million roaring Diaspora voices barely make an audible register. There are no consequences for ignoring their demands.
Presently, there is an overwhelming desire for the reformation of the PLO, beginning with a demand for PNC elections. Significantly, the demand is not a new one. Activists and scholars, like Oxford academic Karma Nabulsi, have been organising around the issue for more than a decade. Oslo’s welcome dirge has combined with the Arab Spring to heighten the urgency of their call, but the core demand has not changed: The Palestinians must reinvigorate their democratic institutions. This is eminently doable, even in the current hostile environment….
The Iraqi experience shows how effective motivated organisers can be at capturing the views of a scattered people. After the US invasion in 2003, there was a general consensus that the Iraqi people around the world ought to have a say in their country’s future. The elections in 2005 were structured to enable roughly 1 million Iraqis in the Diaspora to vote. Voters from eleven countries participated in a poll conducted by the International Organisation for Migration. Significantly, two of those countries – Jordan and Syria – are home to large numbers of Palestinian refugees.
