Field Dossier: Manufactured Self-Defeat

How Palestinian leadership choices—not history alone—produced paralysis, stagnation, and isolation, while civilians paid the price.

After the talks and the long flights, someone serious always leans in and asks: "But what were they supposed to do?" I used to answer that carefully — too carefully — until the primary documents cured me of the habit. What snaps into focus isn't a tragedy with no choices in it. It's a system, built deliberately, that rewards grievance, punishes reform, and makes self-defeat the rational strategy for a leadership class that would rather rule a ruin than risk an election. This dossier names how it was engineered, and why permanent struggle is exactly what its architects were aiming for.

Better to say no and blame Israel than say yes and face internal war.

The Israel Brief is the Mitzpe Institute's read on Israel and the region — most mornings, Sunday through Thursday. More at mitzpe.org.