‘A new political current’: Sinijlawi on the rise of pragmatic Palestinian leaders

Samer Sinijlawi believes that a growing movement of young, politically moderate, and pragmatic Palestinians holds the key to convincing Israelis there is a genuine partner for peace.

Speaking to Jewish News on the eve of local elections in Gaza, the influential  political activist  outspoken campaigner for democratic reform within the Palestinian Authority (PA) highlighted what he called “a new political current.”

He noted that in nine cities, Saturday’s election featured candidate lists led by a younger generation—many from mainstream Fatah, as well as independents, professionals, business leaders, academics, and civil society figures—openly challenging the authoritarianism of leaders like President Abbas.

“They are acting as a collective movement, with several groups challenging the risks and obstacles supported by the older opposition, while the young opposition generation emerges as a force for change,” he said.

“Many young people had become hopeless, unable to participate in decisions that remain monopolised by the President. Now, they are trying to introduce a new path for Palestinian politics—liberal, democratic, moderate, practical, and pragmatic.

“This movement is defining a new platform for Palestinians to become more relevant. For too long, we have been sidelined on issues that directly impact us.”

In a revealing interview, Sinijlawi, a long-time Fatah representative who is deeply critical of President Mahmoud Abbas, described recent moves by the UK and other European states to recognise a Palestinian state as “political theatre.”

While he did not condemn the decision of Keir Starmer’s government to recognise a Palestinian state, he commented:

“I am a Palestinian. I will be happy to see more states recognising the state, but this will not solve the problem, because it is only political theatre. They have announced this recognition, maybe upgraded the level of diplomatic representation of the PLO at the PA in London.

“For me as a Palestinian, I can understand that this is good news for the UK and for others who feel maybe it’s time to recognise the two sides, the two states. But for me as a Palestinian, I shouldn’t depend on these political theaters.

“I should work harder to convince the only state that, if it recognises the state of Palestine, it will change the life of Palestinians. It will change the state of Israel. If 190 states recognize the state of Palestine and Israel is not among them, it is meaningless.”

As founding chairman of the Jerusalem Development Fund, Sinijlawi is a former Palestinian fighter who spent five years in an Israeli prison for acts committed during the First Intifada.

He has since become a peacemaker, spending the last 30 years building bridges.

On May 3, Sinijlawi also appears at a Jewish News supported event in north-west London, where he will be in conversation with columnist Josh Glancy, who will be joined also by Louise Jacobs, vice-chair of the JLC.

His reflections on his time in prison, beginning at age 15, are a remarkable example of someone with the ability to forgive and the determination to turn their life around.

He  has previously said: “I started my political life throwing stones in the streets of my city because I wanted, at the age of 14 in 1987, to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea.

“When I entered prison at the age of 15, it was a very hard experience, but I can tell you that I maybe learned something that helped me a lot to develop my personality,” he now recalls.

“I learned to be independent. You need to take care of everything that’s related to you. Nobody is providing anything for you. I learned patience. You cannot defeat time. That is controlled by nature. You cannot change this.”

In prison, Sinijlawi also came to a different view of those he had hated.

“I think I started discovering the Israelis,” he recalls. “I started my long journey of discovering the other side and spent a lot of hours talking with my guards. I got a lot from that experience.”

He added: “When you start knowing the other side, you start understanding that the best way is to defeat the hard feelings inside you and to open the doors. Hard feelings will defeat us both. Sometimes we need to defeat ourselves, not the other side. We need to defeat that part of hard feelings that generates a temper that goes more into revenge.”

During the interview, he also expressed his belief that, even amid bleak events in the Middle East, a two-state solution is still possible.

Remarkably, he refused to put the blame of the failure to secure peace on Israel, and said the power to secure two states lay with the Palestinian people and the need to convince Israel they were a genuine partner for peace.

“What we need to do as Palestinians is to try to get the recognition of that particular state [Israel],” he argued. “And it could be, if we are able to change the perceptions for 51% of the Israelis in the coming Israeli election, we are always one Israeli election away from peace as Palestinians.

“The only way to be able to get things moving ahead is to convince 51% of the Jewish voters to vote for an option that will open the diplomatic colleges and create a state of Palestine next to Israel.”

He continued: “If a political leadership rises from the Palestinian side, we have the power of convincing the Israelis that there is a partner on the Palestinian side, and that there is a change.”

With Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government considered to be one of the most extreme in Israel’s history, he also rejected suggestions that coexistence now seemed further away than ever.

“Most Israelis supporting the current right-wing coalition, which I hope will change in coming elections, do so not out of ideology but out of confusion and fear,” he reasoned. “They don’t trust Palestinians. Somebody has manipulated their minds, brainwashed them to think the only way is just to fight hard and continue fighting—that war is the only option for Israel and its security.”

Sinijlawi reflected on the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, which he noted happened at a time when security on the border with Gaza was almost non-existent.

A Palestinian and Israeli state with borders would actually offer security, he argued.

“Two, three battalions of the Israeli army in Gaza will not provide security for Israelis,” he said.

“One battalion of the Israeli army on all the borders of Gaza will provide security for Israelis. We need to be outside Gaza to protect Israelis, not inside Gaza, because we have seen during the war that soldiers are killed inside Gaza. Israel has the strongest army in the region, despite the failure on the seventh of October. They can defend themselves.”

Controversially, he said he still held out hope that US President Donald Trump was the only leader with the authority and political will to settle conflicts in the region.

He also argued that the downfall of the Iranian regime would only come when the people there, with all the risks that came with it, wanted to see the downfall of their rulers.

But Sinijlawi optimistically refused to rule out the possibility of Jews and Palestinians living in peace together.

“There has been coexistence in this region for thousands of years. Jews have been here historically,” he said. “They have never been alone; there were always others—and others are us. Things went wrong only in the last 100 years, but the majority of the history in this land is coexistence between the same people.”

He added: “Since we have that history of coexistence, we are capable of finding a future of coexistence and common ground.”

Buy tickets to hear Samer Sinijlawi speak in north-west London: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/wedemocracy/2103786