A leadership crisis is compounding the decline of the Palestinian cause

The Gaza Strip is in ruins. Many residents might leave or be pushed out following the war sparked by the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. Palestinian territory in the West Bank is divided by ever-expanding Israeli settlements. Middle East countries have been building ties with Israel, and allies such as Iran and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah were battered by Israeli attacks last year.

Palestinians, meanwhile, are fighting with each other, caught between violent groups such as Hamas and the secular nationalist party Fatah, which governs parts of the West Bank and is widely seen as corrupt and ineffective.

No third force has been able to break that duopoly. No new generation is emerging in either party to offer a fresh vision or strategy.

“I hate the two factions," said Noha Kamal, a mother of three from Rafah in southern Gaza who has had to flee with her family from their largely flattened city. “If it weren’t for their division, we wouldn’t have ended up in this situation."

That widely held frustration has burst out in sporadic street protests in Gaza and even the revenge killing of a Hamas security officer.

“Out, out, Hamas out," demonstrators in the Palestinian enclave have been chanting, braving the Islamist group’s violent repression and Israel’s renewal of the war.

Opinion polling has been difficult and intermittent during the war, but in a survey last fall by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, a think tank in Ramallah, 35% of Gazans said they supported Hamas. In the West Bank, Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, fared even worse, with support reaching just 18%.

One thing many Palestinians agree on is how much internal divisions have weakened them in the unequal struggle with Israel.

“Instead of fighting the occupation, we are busy fighting each other," said Firas Abu Al-Wafa, a Fatah activist from Jenin in the West Bank. Without unity and new faces, the Palestinian cause is facing doom, he said.

The dream of Palestinian statehood was already gathering dust in the years before the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks that killed 1,200, left 251 as hostages and sparked a year and a half of war. The failure of the peace process under the 1990s Oslo Accords left the Palestinian Authority as little more than a junior partner in Israel’s continuing occupation of the West Bank, rather than a steppingstone to independence.

Around 2010, the majority of both Palestinians and Israelis stopped believing in the two-state solution—dividing the land to end the century-old conflict. Meanwhile Israel was building friendly relations with several Arab countries, bypassing the Palestinians.

Hamas hoped the Oct. 7 attack would revive the Palestinian cause while putting itself at the head. For many months afterward, around 70% of Palestinians approved of the attack, mainly because it put the Palestinian issue back in the global spotlight, according to several surveys by the PCPSR.

But public opinion turned, especially in Gaza, as the war brought far more pain than gain. Just over half of respondents still approved of the Oct. 7 attack as of last fall, including 39% in Gaza.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 50,000 people, according to local health authorities, who don’t say how many were combatants. Much of the enclave lies in ruins, and the bulk of its population of more than two million people has been displaced multiple times.

While the exact death toll remains uncertain, there is little doubt more Palestinian civilians and fighters have been killed in Gaza than in any previous round of fighting in the century-old conflict, including the 1948 war that saw the foundation of Israel and the flight or expulsion of around 750,000 Palestinians from their homes.

With Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah faring badly in fighting with Israel last year, and Sunni Arab governments acting only as diplomatic mediators, it is the Palestinians rather than Israel who are growing more isolated in the Middle East.

“October 7 is a turning point in the history of the conflict—the last nail in the coffin of a two-state solution based on 1967 borders," said Hussein Ibish, a scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “Palestinians can see the end of their national project coming, and Hamas just made it more plausible."

Fatah supporters have also grown disillusioned with party leader Mahmoud Abbas, who is also president of the Palestinian Authority. The 89-year-old veteran of the Palestinian struggle was once seen as a more moderate successor to the longtime national figurehead Yasser Arafat. But he’s now widely seen as merely clinging to office after blocking elections for nearly 20 years. Between 80% and 90% of Palestinians want him to resign, the PCPSR’s surveys have found.

“Abbas does not represent anyone. Stepping down is the least he can do," said Nahed Shuhaibar, a businessman from Gaza. The Palestinian Authority has become merely an agent of the Israeli occupation, he said.

Resentment grew further over the winter when the Palestinian Authority sent its security forces to root out militants in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank to forestall an Israeli crackdown there. The siege achieved little and the Israeli forces moved in anyway.

“We are caught between the Israelis and our public," said Maj. Gen. Anwar Rajab, a senior security official at the Palestinian Authority, describing the militants as “outlaws who managed to hijack the camp."

Fatah’s deputy general secretary, Sabri Saidam, said the Palestinian political class as a whole was struggling to connect with the burgeoning population of young Palestinians who don’t feel represented.

“All Palestinian parties need to have new faces, not only Fatah," Saidam said. “There has to be a serious revamping."

Among the limited political alternatives on offer, some surveys say the physician and left-wing activist Mustafa Barghouti enjoys the most support, and could beat Abbas and other unloved leaders of Fatah and Hamas in a head-to-head presidential election.

But surveys have consistently shown that the truly popular candidate would be his distant relative, Marwan Barghouti, who has been in an Israeli jail since 2002 for his role in the violent Second Intifada. Israel’s government is steadfastly opposed to releasing him.

With no new leadership in sight, many Palestinians at least wish their existing factions would unite to achieve better leverage vis-à-vis Israel, the U.S. and Arab countries. A series of meetings between Hamas, Fatah and other groups last year in Moscow, Beijing and Cairo failed to overcome the mutual suspicion.

“What’s needed is a transitional Palestinian leadership that can take control of the West Bank and Gaza, with a strong-enough technocratic prime minister," said Khalil Shikaki, director of the PCPSR. But it isn’t clear who, if anyone, could win the needed support from Palestinian factions, Israel and Arab countries, he said. “And it would require Abbas to accept reduced power."

Write to Marcus Walker at Marcus.Walker@wsj.com