More than a thousand Palestinian figures have added their names to a petition calling for the reconstitution of the Palestinian National Council through free and transparent elections, in a direct challenge to a Palestinian leadership that has long relied on appointment and organizational quota to fill national institutions rather than submit them to popular will.
The petition, launched by the National Body for Palestinian Popular Action in August, draws a clear line: representation that is not elected is not legitimate. It calls for an electoral process that is free, fair, inclusive, and binding, one that allows Palestinians to choose their own representatives without interference, exclusion, or political conditions designed to determine the outcome in advance. It demands equal opportunity for all candidates and political forces, protection of the process from manipulation, and full respect for results once announced.
Central to the petition is the demand that the diaspora not be left out. Palestinians in refugee camps in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, and in communities across Europe and the Gulf, are not a separate constituency, the petition argues, but an inseparable part of the Palestinian people whose participation in national representation is a right, not a concession to be negotiated. Any reconstitution of the National Council that excludes them is, by definition, incomplete.
The petition also takes direct aim at the logic of renewal by appointment, arguing that changing names and filling posts without holding elections is not institutional reform but its opposite: the entrenchment of unaccountable leadership under the cover of organizational reshuffling. National legitimacy, it states plainly, cannot be conferred by a decree or an internal party arrangement. It belongs to the people and must be expressed through their vote.
Signatories come from Gaza, Jerusalem, Hebron, Haifa, Nablus, Ramallah, Jaffa, Jenin, Bethlehem, and Safed, and from Palestinian communities in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Britain, Sweden, Qatar, Germany, and Denmark. Among the most prominent names on the petition are Mustafa Barghouti, Waddah Khanfar, Sami al-Arian, Osama Abu Irshaid, and Arib al-Rantawi, alongside academics, lawyers, journalists, doctors, trade unionists, and activists spanning the full breadth of Palestinian political and civil life.
The petition closes on a statement that reads less like a conclusion than a verdict: "National legitimacy is not granted by appointment, nor imposed by fait accompli, but is derived from the free will of the entire Palestinian people, in the homeland and the diaspora."
