Palestinians had long lost confidence in their Palestinian Authority as their representative, who was supposed to defend their rights and work to achieve their statehood. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, was imposed on the Palestinians in the 2005 election when the Israeli forces had arrested and restricted the movements of other Palestinian candidates and his campaign was given 94% of TV coverage. Although his presidency had expired in January of 2009 he is still, illegally and unconstitutionally, occupying his position. Polls had shown that his popularity is very low.
Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, and his government were also imposed on Palestinians when Abbas appointed him to the position after the democratically elected Hamas government foiled an American coup d’état that eventually caused a division between the Palestinians.
The Palestinians were deceived by the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords. They were misled that the Accords would be merely the first step in a plan that would eventually lead to Israeli withdrawal back to the 1967 Armistice Lines and to the establishment of a Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by 1995. Thus Yasser Arafat had dramatically altered the charter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to reflect a new strategy of denouncing the legitimate armed resistance (labeled violence at the time), abandoning the liberation of all Palestine, accepting and recognizing the existence of the Israeli state on 78% of Palestine, and announcing peaceful negotiations as the only strategic choice for solving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
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