Introduction

The convergence of Palestinian national conceptions of legitimacy with those introduced by international peace and statebuilders during the Israeli–Palestinian peace process was always a delicate and fractious affair.

While Western donor states and the United Nations (UN) tend to broadly assert that their global interventions defend and propagate ‘international legitimacy’ embodied in liberal humanist values, the implementation of international legal norms and resolutions, and respect for human rights conventions, the Palestinian case study strikingly contravenes these claims.

Instead of propagating international legitimacy, the institutions and processes established by these actors in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) de facto came to manage the fallout generated by the absence of the application of these norms. This significant incongruence transformed the question of legitimacy into a struggle over which party in the Western-sponsored Israeli–Palestinian peace process was capable of instrumentalising and even leveraging legitimacy over the other.

While this approach was problematic in its own right, it also came in the context of a longer historical experience of internal Palestinian leveraging manoeuvres on behalf of Fateh, the main Palestinian partner to international peacemaking interventions. For years, Fateh engaged in exploiting its monopoly over legitimacy within the movement to steer the latter in the direction of accepting international legitimacy norms. This was undertaken upon the belief that this ‘pragmatic’ strategic direction could bear fruit in the balance of forces internationally and regionally, while averting serious confrontation with the movement's main Arab patrons. The decision nonetheless led to deep tensions within the Palestinian movement that were never truly resolved, but subsequently were given space to thrive after the failure of this process.

As the serious asymmetric power relations between Israel, Western donors and the Palestinians began to be exposed with the breakdown of July 2000 Camp David negotiations, Fateh's strategy to use international legitimacy norms to achieve Palestinian rights appeared to fail. A period of far more deadly political violence was soon ushered in, with the question of legitimacy openly instrumentalised by Israel and Western donors against their former Palestinian ‘partner’ in peacemaking. Israel and Western donor states would repeal diplomatic and financial support to the Palestinian Authority (PA), while Israel militarily destroyed PA institutions as a means to leverage different political concessions, including institutional reforms proposed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.