“This book represents an attempt to understand the situation of the Palestinians and their national movement at the start of the twenty- first century. This has been a period of reversals and change; it is different in essence from earlier periods of Palestinian history since the Palestinian Nakba. I shall focus on the period which began following the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), with special attention to the period following the second intifada against Israeli occupation (October 2000). 

…..

I will argue that the crisis among the Palestinians is so severe that the street fighting and confrontations covered by the media scarcely scratch its surface. The problem runs so deep that the Palestinians have actually lost the ability to function efficiently, internally or externally, as a single national group. e existential crisis that currently afflicts the Palestinians and their national movement is no accident. It is, in fact, a direct result of historical processes that intensified after the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority in 1994, and erupted into the public sphere in the post-Arafat era. “

-As’ad Ghanem