The distance between the Palestinian leadership and the Diaspora has never been greater. Palestinians living under occupation see all the faults of the Palestinian Authority in fine detail, yet continue to recognise the need for leadership; the Diaspora, in contrast, has headed off in a more freelance, anarchic direction. Articulate young commentators from North America and Europe speak easily of Palestinian ‘factions’, with Mahmoud Abbas, head of a state recognised by 134 nations, chairman of the PLO and president of the PA, no more important than anyone else. Karma Nabulsi, the scholar and one-time PLO officer, was among the first to predict this estrangement, which she dates to the Palestinian presidential elections of 1996. Yasser Arafat was elected by voters under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, turning him from the leader of a government-in-exile into the head of a government under occupation. Nabulsi saw this change as a betrayal of the central place of the refugees in the Palestinian struggle. Her essay 'Justice as the Way Forward' opens with a bitter question from a refugee in Lebanon: 'Don’t I have the right to choose my president?' The new government was often incompetent, occasionally corrupt, and helpless to influence or resist Israel – but for many in the Diaspora, its greatest crime was returning home at all.
