Palestinian leaders lack electoral legitimacy, partly because the Palestinian diaspora has no say.

The Oslo Accords concentrated power in the hands of Palestinians based in the West Bank and Gaza [EPA]

The Palestinians have big decisions to make. Their national movement
has followed a singular trajectory for decades but now they are at a
historic juncture. Yet they lack representative leaders who are capable
of steering them ably into the future. That is because no Palestinian
currently commands the weighty authority of electoral legitimacy.

Consequently, the Palestinians must conduct new Palestinian National
Council (PNC) elections at the soonest practicable date. Furthermore,
those elections must be conducted across the Palestinian communities
around the world.

1948 witnessed the creation of one of the
world's few scattered national movements. The Nakba - Arabic for
"catastrophe" - was orchestrated by Jewish paramilitaries and resulted
in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. More than 750,000 native refugees
fled and were dispersed from their homes when the Jewish state was
established.

The Palestinians quickly overcame their
geographical isolation from one another to begin rebuilding their
national institutions. Representation for all Palestinians - both
internally and externally displaced refugees, along with the
Palestinians who remained in their villages - was one of their earliest
goals. All agreed that the Palestinians everywhere ought to have a say
in how their collective struggle to reclaim their homes and lands would
be conducted.

The PNC was formed to represent the isolated
Palestinian communities around the world. As the legislative body of the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was created in 1964, it
continues to be responsible for electing the members of the Executive
Committee. The Executive Committee, in turn, is the leadership of the
Palestinian people both in Palestine and in the Diaspora.

The
PLO's broad status as the sole, legitimate leadership of the Palestinian
people began to change with the Oslo process. The Accords concentrated
power in the hands of a few who took the West Bank and Gaza as their
geographical locus.

Over time, the Palestinian Authority, which
was one of Oslo's outgrowths, supplanted the PLO as the decision-making
body. By doing so, it effectively severed vast segments of the
Palestinian people from their sole form of representation. Negotiators
learned to stop thinking about the rights and needs of the Palestinians
in the refugee camps in Lebanon and in Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi
Arabia, Israel and around the world. Instead, they focused solely on the
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. A kind of parochialism took
root.

The current Palestinian national leadership is far from
representative, and the decisions it takes are taken blindly. In
Ramallah, 5 million roaring Diaspora voices barely make an audible
register. There are no consequences for ignoring their demands.

Presently,
there is an overwhelming desire for the reformation of the PLO,
beginning with a demand for PNC elections. Significantly, the demand is
not a new one. Activists and scholars, like Oxford academic Karma Nabulsi,
have been organising around the issue for more than a decade. Oslo's
welcome dirge has combined with the Arab Spring to heighten the urgency
of their call, but the core demand has not changed: The Palestinians
must reinvigorate their democratic institutions. This is eminently
doable, even in the current hostile environment.

While the PNC
was once considered to be representative, the process by which members
were nominated hasn't been democratic for a long time. This mostly had
to do with the difficult logistics of polling refugees in distant
places. Today, advances in telecommunications technology and the
extensive demographic data compiled by scholars and the United Nations
Refugee Works Agency (UNRWA) have made many of these obstacles
surmountable.

The Iraqi experience shows how effective motivated
organisers can be at capturing the views of a scattered people. After
the US invasion in 2003, there was a general consensus that the Iraqi
people around the world ought to have a say in their country's future.
The elections in 2005 were structured to enable roughly 1 million Iraqis
in the Diaspora to vote. Voters from eleven countries participated in a
poll conducted by the International Organisation for Migration.
Significantly, two of those countries - Jordan and Syria - are home to
large numbers of Palestinian refugees.

The benefits of holding
PNC elections are obvious. The Palestinian issue, which is fundamentally
about redressing a historical injustice (the ethnic cleansing of
Palestine), cannot be properly settled without a deep understanding of
what the Palestinian people want. Their voices everywhere must be heard
if a just solution is to emerge. Moreover, any solution that does not
accurately reflect the views of the Palestinians will unfurl; top-down
decision-making won't work. Two Intifadas have shown us that.

Palestinian
leaders have long made decisions about the future of their people
without knowing what they want. That needs to change. The basis for a
strong, vibrant, and resilient Palestinian national movement -
democratic representation - must be reinvigorated. It's time for the
Palestinians - all of them - to be heard. It is time for new PNC
elections.

Ahmed Moor is a Master in Public Policy candidate at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

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