Palestinian Political Identity after October 7: Shifts in Legitimacy, Representation, and Modes of Action

The events of October 7, 2023, and the war that followed reopened the debate over Palestinian political identity, the sources of legitimacy, the actor capable of representing Palestinians, and the most effective instruments for achieving their national rights. The war confronted Palestinian society with two simultaneous experiences: the capacity of armed action to break political stagnation and return the Palestinian question to the center of international attention, and the enormous humanitarian and political costs generated by the prolonged confrontation.

This paper proceeds from the premise that the most significant transformation has occurred in the criteria by which leadership, representation, and modes of political action are assessed, while the fundamental components of Palestinian national identity—foremost among them self-determination, ending the occupation, and the right of return—have retained their central place. The paper therefore examines how the relationship between national belonging, trust in political factions, the legitimacy of institutions, and preferences for armed, popular, or negotiated forms of resistance has been reordered.[1]

The paper uses the concept of political identity to refer both to Palestinians’ understanding of themselves as a national community possessing shared rights and to their perceptions of the institutions that represent them and the strategies capable of securing those rights. Within this definition, factional popularity and preferences regarding modes of action serve as indicators of public opinion. Political identity, however, requires a broader assessment that includes national belonging, conceptions of rights, the boundaries of the political community, and the sources of legitimacy and representation.

The paper draws on political discourse, published materials, and public opinion surveys conducted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while recognizing the limitations of generalizing these findings to Palestinians in Jerusalem, the territories of 1948, and the diaspora. It also takes into account variations in attitudes according to geography and the degree of direct exposure to the war.

Analyzing these transformations requires distinguishing between four overlapping levels. The first concerns national identity: the continued perception among Palestinians that they constitute a political community bound by common rights and a shared destiny. The second concerns representative legitimacy: which actor possesses the mandate to speak on behalf of Palestinians and make strategic decisions in their name. The third is performance legitimacy, which derives from a political actor’s ability to achieve tangible results, protect society, administer institutions, and translate power into political gains.

The fourth level concerns preferences regarding modes of action, ranging from armed and popular resistance to negotiations and diplomatic and legal action. This distinction helps explain how Palestinians may support a particular political or military instrument while retaining reservations about the faction employing it or questioning that faction’s suitability to govern and represent them.

Palestinians entered this period amid a prolonged institutional and political division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Authority and representation were distributed among the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, Hamas, and other factions. This produced four competing sources of legitimacy: the historical and international recognition of the PLO, the institutional presence of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas’s operational capacity on the ground, and shifting levels of popular support for different factions and leaders.

Understanding the wartime period therefore requires distinguishing among three questions: Who enjoys popular support? Who possesses organizational and operational capacity? And who holds the institutional and national mandate to represent Palestinians? The divergent answers reveal a crisis of representation that extends beyond competition between Fatah and Hamas to disagreements over the meaning of leadership, its function, and the sources from which it derives legitimacy.

The Palestinian Context before October 7

The Palestinian division that has persisted since 2007 provides an essential starting point for understanding the political environment preceding October 7. The leadership of the Palestinian Authority adopted popular resistance, diplomacy, and negotiations as its principal instruments for managing the conflict, while Hamas maintained the centrality of armed resistance within its political project.

The disagreement extended beyond the choice of instruments. It also involved competing sources of legitimacy, relations with Israel, the function of the Palestinian Authority, and the conditions governing integration into regional and international systems.[2] The years preceding the war witnessed several attempts to overcome the division, including the Hamas–Dahlan understandings of 2017, which reflected growing recognition within Hamas of the consequences of division for the Palestinians’ ability to administer Gaza and formulate a unified national position.

These attempts, however, remained constrained by calculations concerning power, influence, security, and regional relations. The division consequently persisted as an institutional structure capable of reproducing itself, rather than merely as a temporary political disagreement.[3]

The pre-war period also coincided with political deadlock, expanding Israeli settlement activity, declining Palestinian Authority influence over Israeli policies, and the parallel advancement of regional normalization processes.

The “Peace to Prosperity” plan, commonly known as the “Deal of the Century,”[4] represented one of the clearest manifestations of this trend. It proposed a demilitarized Palestinian state composed of areas connected by bridges and tunnels, alongside Israeli annexation of the Jordan Valley and settlements, recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s unified capital, the location of the proposed Palestinian capital in areas on the outskirts of East Jerusalem, and an approach to the refugee issue that excluded return to Israel.

At the same time, the Abraham Accords expanded the trajectory of Arab–Israeli normalization. Subsequent U.S.-led negotiations over possible normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel suggested that the regional order could be reorganized without a prior settlement of the Palestinian question. These developments deepened a sense among segments of Palestinian society that their cause was losing its centrality in regional calculations.

Interpreting the October 7 decision as a direct response to this trajectory would require evidence concerning the calculations of the leadership that made that decision. What can be observed more clearly is that the attack reconnected the future of normalization with the fate of the Palestinian question, bringing war, political settlement, and recognition of Palestinian statehood back into regional interactions.

Transformations in the Concept of Resistance and Political Effectiveness

October 7 altered the position of the Palestinian actor within international political interactions. Hamas became a central party in negotiations over ceasefires and prisoner exchanges because of its battlefield capabilities and its control over the issue of Israeli hostages.

This shift was reflected in the way the U.S. administration and regional mediators treated Hamas’s positions as crucial to reaching an agreement, including U.S. President Donald Trump’s reposting, on his Truth Social platform, of a Hamas statement concerning one of the ceasefire proposals.

This gave Hamas a form of functional negotiating legitimacy derived from its capacity to influence the course of the war. Broader national legitimacy, however, remained connected to popular authorization and inclusive Palestinian institutions.[5]

The growing international prominence of the Palestinian question was also reflected in the recognition of the State of Palestine by Spain, Ireland, and Norway in May 2024, alongside an expanding European debate over arms exports to Israel. Spain took steps to restrict or cancel certain deals, while the Italian government continued to maintain positions supportive of Israel amid large-scale public protests calling for an end to the war.

These differences demonstrate the Palestinian issue’s growing presence within European politics, while also revealing the continuing gap between diplomatic recognition and the capacity to produce change on the ground or establish effective Palestinian sovereignty. The war therefore expanded political and symbolic recognition of Palestine, while the translation of this recognition into binding instruments remained dependent on the balance of interests within Western states.[6]

At the regional level, the war activated the network commonly described as the “Axis of Resistance” within a multi-front conflict involving Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Iran-backed Iraqi factions. This interaction provided Hamas with regional strategic depth and expanded the geographical scope of military and economic pressure beyond Gaza, particularly through the Lebanese front, the Red Sea, and attacks targeting U.S. bases and interests.

At the same time, each actor within this network retained its own national and organizational calculations and its own limits regarding the risks it was prepared to bear. The axis consequently operated as a support network characterized by varying capabilities and levels of involvement. It succeeded in widening the geography of the conflict and increasing its costs, while its ability to impose a unified political outcome remained limited.

On the other side, U.S. military and political support for Israel reaffirmed the continuing imbalance of power, despite increasing disagreements within Western states concerning the conduct of the war and its humanitarian costs.[7]

Within this context, the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation represented a major turning point, not only at the military and security levels but also politically, in terms of the reproduction of a Palestinian political identity. The period generated changes affecting the substance of the political process, Palestinian choices and orientations, and their role in international relations.

Among the most significant changes was a shift in Palestinian collective consciousness and political self-perception. Palestinians increasingly came to see themselves as actors capable of influencing international relations and advancing their interests. One indication was Hamas’s transformation, despite its designation as a terrorist organization by a number of states, into a negotiating party in ceasefire talks. U.S. President Donald Trump himself reposted a Hamas statement announcing its acceptance of a ceasefire proposal on his Truth Social account.[8]

This shift contributed to reframing the Palestinian question. Whereas it had for decades been associated primarily with refugees, the peace process, and the two-state solution, it increasingly became connected to narratives of national liberation and ending the occupation.

This change also extended to the policies of several major states, particularly Spain, which suspended or cancelled certain arms export arrangements involving Israel,[9] while recognizing Palestine as a state alongside Ireland and Norway.[10] Other states, including Italy, continued their political support for Israel while facing substantial domestic public pressure.[11]

Another significant development was Hamas’s relative success in demonstrating a form of political and military alignment with regional actors operating within what Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah described as the “Axis of Resistance.”[12] This network included Iran, the Houthis in Yemen, Iraqi factions, Hezbollah, and Palestinian resistance organizations in Gaza. On the opposite side stood a U.S.–Israeli partnership supported by positions adopted by several European states that emphasized Israel’s right to defend itself.

During the early stages of the war, October 7 strengthened Hamas’s legitimacy among segments of Palestinian society that viewed its military initiative as a challenge to the existing imbalance of power and political stagnation.

Israel, meanwhile, sought to weaken Hamas’s capacity to govern and administer society by targeting its military, security, and administrative structures, including police personnel and institutions responsible for aid distribution and maintaining public order.

Israel also promoted arrangements involving certain clans and local groups to administer specific areas or functions outside Hamas’s control. Psychological warfare included the distribution of leaflets offering financial rewards for information about Hamas leaders, including Mohammed Deif, Yahya Sinwar, and Mohammed Sinwar.[13]

These efforts highlighted the distinction between weakening an existing authority and constructing an alternative possessing social and national legitimacy. Clans and community leaders in Gaza rejected attempts to incorporate them into Israeli-sponsored governing arrangements, while local armed groups emerged that were able to operate within limited geographical areas by exploiting the security vacuum and changing battlefield conditions.

This suggests that the future of governance in Gaza will depend on whether any alternative framework can provide security, services, and humanitarian assistance; secure Palestinian acceptance; and connect to a broader political framework capable of reunifying the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Hamas’s legitimacy consequently came to depend on two simultaneous criteria: its capacity to continue functioning as a resistance movement, and its capacity to assume the responsibilities of governance, protect society, and manage the consequences of war.[14]

The war also reinforced a sense of shared Palestinian experience across different geographical spaces. The devastation of Gaza coincided with expanding military operations and displacement in parts of the West Bank, increased activity by Palestinian armed groups there, expanding settlement activity,[15] and Israeli calls for the displacement of Palestinians toward Jordan.[16]

Within Israel, arrests and prosecutions linked to expressions of opinion concerning the war increased. Palestinians in Jerusalem faced additional restrictions on access to Al-Aqsa Mosque, while conditions for Palestinian prisoners deteriorated sharply inside Israeli prisons.[17]

These developments strengthened perceptions of a shared Palestinian destiny because the consequences of the war and associated security policies extended to communities that had not participated directly in the October 7 attack.

Yet the unity of experience remained broader than organizational unity. Solidarity and a sense of common belonging increased, while divisions among institutions, leaderships, and political programs persisted.

It is therefore important to distinguish between the unification of the symbolic space of the Palestinian cause, produced by shared experiences and common threats, and the construction of political unity, which requires a representative institution, a mechanism for decision-making, and a common national program.[18]

The war also pushed Palestinians to reassess the relationship between resistance and political settlement through two apparently contradictory criteria: the capacity to take the initiative and break political stagnation, and the capacity to protect society and reduce humanitarian costs.

Among some Palestinians, the attack strengthened the conviction that armed resistance had succeeded in returning the Palestinian question to the center of international attention after years of declining prominence. At the same time, the scale of killing, destruction, displacement, and harm to women, children, and the elderly generated growing questions about the ability of any strategy to transform confrontation into sustainable political outcomes.

Data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health and reports by United Nations institutions indicate an unprecedented scale of human losses and destruction of civilian infrastructure. Protecting society has therefore become an essential component in assessing political and military effectiveness.[19]

Public opinion surveys demonstrate that Palestinian attitudes shifted throughout the war depending on location and time. Support for armed action and for the decision to carry out the October 7 attack initially increased, before gradually declining, particularly in the Gaza Strip, alongside a relative increase in preferences for negotiations and the two-state solution.

This change reflects an ongoing reassessment of political instruments in light of their outcomes and costs rather than a definitive shift toward any single option. It also demonstrates that the legitimacy of resistance has become connected to the ability to combine pressure on the occupation with protection of the population and the achievement of a political settlement that preserves national rights.[20]

Declining confidence in the negotiation process is connected to accumulated political experience dating back to the 1993 Oslo Accords. The PLO recognized Israel and entered a negotiating process that was expected to lead to a final settlement. Yet questions concerning statehood, Jerusalem, borders, refugees, and settlements remained unresolved, while settlement expansion continued, land confiscation persisted, and checkpoints and military incursions increased within areas administratively governed by the Palestinian Authority.

The Paris Economic Protocol also created an unequal relationship that kept the Palestinian economy dependent on Israel in trade, taxation, movement, and access to resources.[21]

These outcomes shifted Palestinian criticism from the implementation of Oslo toward the structure of the political process itself. The Palestinian Authority administered the population and provided services in parts of the occupied territories, while Israel retained decisive control over borders, land, resources, movement, and security.

Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 followed years of armed resistance and the Second Intifada and was undertaken within the context of Israeli security, demographic, and political calculations. It did not result from an agreement granting Palestinians full sovereignty over the territory.

Some Palestinians consequently interpreted the withdrawal as evidence of the effectiveness of armed pressure. Its unilateral character, however, contributed to a subsequent period defined by blockade, external control, and internal Palestinian division.

This experience helps explain declining confidence in the ability of negotiations alone to secure Palestinian rights, while political settlement continues to retain support among segments of Palestinian society that consider it necessary to translate sacrifices made on the ground into an internationally recognized political outcome.[22]

October 7 has joined foundational moments in Palestinian collective memory such as the Nakba, the Naksa, and the two Intifadas. Yet it carries a different significance because a Palestinian actor succeeded in transferring confrontation into territory controlled by Israel and penetrating its security system.

The image of the “invincible army,” formed through repeated Arab military defeats and profound power asymmetry, was subjected to a major symbolic and psychological challenge when Hamas fighters breached the fence and entered Israeli communities surrounding Gaza.[23]

The significance of that moment extended beyond its immediate military dimension. It reopened questions about Israel’s vulnerability to defeat and strategic surprise and expanded among some Palestinians a sense of their capacity to exercise initiative and influence events.

At the same time, the collective memory of the war will also be formed by images of destruction, displacement, family loss, and deteriorating living conditions in Gaza.

October 7 therefore carries two overlapping meanings within Palestinian political identity: a moment in which agency appeared to be restored, and a moment in which Palestinian society was exposed to unprecedented costs.

Its eventual historical meaning will depend on Palestinians’ ability to translate these two dimensions into a political project that moves beyond either celebrating the act itself or reducing its significance solely to its humanitarian consequences.[24]

The war also affected regional normalization. It suspended or slowed negotiations concerning the establishment of formal relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel and returned the Palestinian question to regional debates over the conditions governing normalization.

This demonstrated the event’s capacity to disrupt regional arrangements that had been advancing largely independently of the Palestinians. Turning that disruption into a lasting political gain, however, depends on the emergence of a political process that links normalization to ending the occupation and realizing Palestinian statehood.

Later stages of the war witnessed changes in Hamas’s operating environment and in the way Palestinians assessed its performance. The movement’s ability to maintain the conditions it had initially advanced in negotiations declined, while debate intensified over the future of Hamas rule in Gaza, disarmament, and its role in future political and security arrangements.

At the same time, local armed groups emerged, including the group led by Yasser Abu Shabab and others, which succeeded in establishing themselves in specific areas and operating against Hamas members or competing with the movement for local control.

The limited operational capacity of these groups does not itself provide them with political legitimacy. It does, however, reveal the consequences of declining central authority and the expansion of security and social vacuums.[25]

This shift illustrates how legitimacy generated by military initiative changes when war is prolonged and the gap widens between declared objectives and achieved outcomes.

During the first months of the conflict, assessments of Hamas were closely connected to its ability to break political stagnation and restore the Palestinian issue to international attention. As the war continued, additional criteria entered the assessment process, including protecting civilians, securing humanitarian assistance, preserving social cohesion, ending the war, and converting military achievements into political gains.

The legitimacy of resistance thus shifted from being based primarily on the act of confrontation to a more complex form of legitimacy that includes responsibility for outcomes and for the broader societal costs of war.[26]

In this context, declining support for Hamas does not automatically translate into increased support for Fatah or the Palestinian Authority.

Persistently low confidence in President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Authority institutions, alongside Marwan Barghouti’s strong performance in a number of electoral scenarios, reflects a search for a form of leadership capable of combining national symbolism, a history of struggle, and popular authorization.

The war has therefore reopened the possibility of rebuilding Palestinian leadership, while so far failing to produce an institution capable of integrating operational, national, electoral, and international sources of legitimacy within a single framework.

The election of Khalil al-Hayya as Hamas’s overall leader in July 2026 reflected an attempt to rebuild the movement’s central leadership after the losses suffered by its senior ranks, including the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar, and a number of military and political leaders.

Given al-Hayya’s role in negotiations and his regional relationships, his selection also suggests an attempt to combine resistance and negotiation within a single leadership structure.

Yet the location of Hamas’s leadership center outside the Gaza Strip creates a challenge regarding the representation of the society that directly bore the costs of the war, as well as the new leadership’s capacity to balance organizational survival, negotiations over weapons and governance, and participation in rebuilding the Palestinian political system.[27]

The transformations that followed October 7 demonstrate that Palestinian political identity has entered a period in which sources of legitimacy, representation, and modes of political action are being reordered.

National belonging and fundamental rights have retained their centrality, while the criteria used to evaluate factions, leaders, and strategies have changed.

Hamas acquired battlefield and negotiating legitimacy through its ability to take the initiative and influence the course of the war. That legitimacy subsequently became subject to additional criteria: protecting society, managing the costs of war, and achieving a political outcome.

The PLO and the Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, retained institutional legitimacy and international recognition while continuing to face weaknesses in popular authorization and in their ability to shape the course of the conflict.

The war also demonstrated that a shared identity and sense of common destiny can expand while political and institutional divisions persist.

The experience of war and targeting connected Palestinian communities across Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, Palestinians inside Israel, and Palestinian prisoners, while national decision-making remained divided among multiple institutions, factions, and political reference points.

The Palestinian crisis has therefore become simultaneously a crisis of representation and a crisis of strategy: representation concerns which actor is authorized to make national decisions, while strategy concerns how resistance, negotiations, popular mobilization, and diplomatic action can be connected to political objectives that are achievable and measurable.

The direction of the next phase will depend on Palestinians’ ability to transform partial and competing forms of legitimacy into an inclusive national framework through rebuilding the Palestine Liberation Organization, expanding political participation, renewing electoral mandates, and reunifying the West Bank and Gaza Strip within a single legal and institutional system.

Such a process could transform the unity of destiny revealed by the war into political unity and enable Palestinian political identity to move from responding to threats toward producing a national project capable of balancing the right to resistance, the protection of society, political accountability, and the achievement of national rights.

References

[1] Renad Mansour, “Will the War in Gaza Become a Breaking Point for the Rules-Based International Order?” Chatham House, January 25, 2024.

[2] “President Abbas: Peaceful popular resistance ‘one of the most important weapons that oppressed people can use’,” Palestinian News & Information Agency (WAFA), June 28, 2022.

[3] Hamas, A Document of General Principles and Policies (2017), Article 25.

[4] Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations, The Palestinian Strategic Report 2016–2017, Chapter 1, citing Hamas statements from September 2017.

[5] The White House, “President Donald J. Trump’s Vision for Peace, Prosperity, and a Brighter Future for Israel and the Palestinian People,” January 28, 2020.

[6] U.S. Department of State, “Secretary Antony J. Blinken Remarks on Efforts Toward Saudi-Israeli Normalization,” 2023.

[7] United Nations, Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, February 28, 2019.

[8] United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Protection of Civilians Reports (2022–2023).

[9] Nidal al-Mughrabi and Alexander Cornwell, “Hamas Says It Responds to Gaza Ceasefire Proposal in ‘a Positive Spirit’,” Reuters, July 4, 2025.

[10] Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Unión Europea y Cooperación (Spain), official statements, 2024.

[11] Government of Spain, “Government of Spain Approves Recognition of the State of Palestine,” May 28, 2024.

[12] Reuters, “Thousands Protest across Italy Calling for Gaza Ceasefire,” 2024.

[13] “Gaza Clans Refuse Israeli Plan to Counter Hamas,” The Jerusalem Post, September 28, 2025.

[14] Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), “UN Human Rights Office Condemns Repeated Israeli Attacks on Police Personnel in Gaza,” June 3, 2026.

[15] Rania Abu Shamala, “Israeli Army Drops Leaflets Offering Financial Rewards for Information on Hamas Leaders,” Anadolu Agency, December 15, 2023.

[16] United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), The Humanitarian Situation Update: West Bank, 2024.

[17] United Nations Human Rights Council, Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the Occupied Syrian Golan, 2024.

[18] Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Arrests and Prosecutions of Palestinian Citizens of Israel during the Gaza War, 2023–2024.

[19] United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), East Jerusalem: Protection of Civilians Reports, 2024.

[20] Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Palestinian Prisoners and Detainees, 2024.

[21] United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Reports on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, 2024–2025.

[22] United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel – Situation Reports, 2024–2025.

[23] Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (Oslo I Accord), Washington, DC, September 13, 1993; Reuters, “Saudi Arabia Puts Israel Normalization Plans on Hold after the Outbreak of the Gaza War,” October 2023.

[24] Protocol on Economic Relations between the Government of the State of Israel and the PLO (Paris Protocol), April 29, 1994; International Crisis Group, The Israel–Hamas War: A Turning Point for the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict, 2024.

[25] Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel’s Disengagement Plan: General Outline, 2005; Nidal al-Mughrabi and Andrew Mills, “Exclusive: Hamas Aims to Keep Grip on Gaza Security and Can’t Commit to Disarm, Senior Official Says,” Reuters, October 17, 2025.

[26] Institute for National Security Studies, “What You Need to Know About Yasser Abu Shabab and the Militia He Founded,” June 8, 2025.

[27] “Hamas Names Khalil Al-Hayya as New Overall Leader,” Reuters, July 20, 2026.