National Committee for Strategic Thinking

By Dr. Ibrahim Abrash

We understand that everyone, leaders and people alike, are preoccupied with a war of extermination and ethnic cleansing and with the enemy’s attempts to liquidate the national cause. We also appreciate all official, party and popular efforts from all sectors of society to spotlight what is happening in the Gaza Strip — death, hunger, the threat of forced displacement, the expansion of settlements, assaults on freedom and the danger of annexation, among other things.
But because I share the late leader Abu Ammar’s belief that the Palestinian people, like the phoenix, always rise from the ashes, and because I am convinced that the enemy will fail in this war against the Palestinian people and that the people will continue to resist and confront the occupation, there is a need to balance daily concerns and the course of the war with long-term strategic thinking that goes beyond emotions and treats the war as an open-ended conflict.

For that reason, we propose forming a council of elders or a national working group that operates quietly, away from the spotlight, and thinks strategically and outside the box about issues that concern all Palestinians, removed from bickering and political disputes. The most important of these issues are:

1- How to achieve national unity on new foundations, away from the futile methods of past reconciliation dialogues.

2- Ways to confront occupation policies in the West Bank and Gaza, and to develop a strategy based on new concepts and definitions of resistance to occupation that learn from past mistakes.

3- How to preserve the political, identity and cultural unity of the people.

4- How to correct and improve Palestinian relations with Arab states and neighboring countries.

5- How to preserve positive global popular and state-level shifts and institutionalize and sustain them.

6- Restoring the standing of the PLO as the umbrella for all Palestinians, reactivating it and bringing everyone under its framework — especially in light of the presidential decree of 19/7/2025 to hold elections for the National Council this year, which was effectively undermined and nullified by the first statement of the preparatory committee for National Council elections on August 7 through the conditions and caveats it set for holding the elections and for participation, making the holding of the elections uncertain.

7- Preserving the Palestinian Authority and supporting it in the face of enemy attempts to cancel its national functional role.

8- Developing mechanisms to improve the media system to confront disinformation and lies from Zionist media outlets and even Arabic-language satellite channels.

9- Activating civil society institutions and rebuilding their presence at home, and working to activate all unions and syndicates at all levels on the basis of national, not party, affiliation — especially since these institutions and unions will play a leading role in confronting the occupation in the upcoming phase.

10- How to unify the efforts of Palestinians in the diaspora — who constitute half of the Palestinian people — within a national strategy and spare them the repercussions of partisan and ideological divisions, particularly given their role in popular mobilizations in Europe and the Americas.
We hope such thinking is present and that there are those quietly tending to it, and that no one presumes to say, “Now is not the time for this — we must devote ourselves entirely to the battle!”