In late August, Knesset member Ksenia Svetlova of the Zionist Camp visited Ramallah, where she met with senior figures in the Palestinian Authority (PA). She has known them since her time as Arab Affairs correspondent for Channel 9, an Israeli Russian-language TV station.

Born in Moscow and fluent in Arabic, the 37-year-old parliamentarian thought it important to hear top-ranking Palestinian officials in an unmediated format. This, she thought, would provide her with an up-to-date picture of what is happening in the PA. It is hardly surprising that she came away from her visit with some disconcerting realizations: Hamas is resurgent and getting stronger; President Mahmoud Abbas has lost most of his legitimacy among the Palestinian public, which is disappointed with his performance; and the person who keeps popping up as a future leader is Marwan Barghouti, currently serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison.

“It is not a good sign, as far as Abbas is concerned. It is an expression of the enormous disappointment felt about his promise to resolve the conflict diplomatically, without resorting to violence,” Svetlova told Al-Monitor in an interview. “Barghouti is a terrorist who has become something of a mythical figure. That worries me a lot, because it reflects the disconnect from the pragmatic approach characteristic of the Palestinian leadership over the past decade. The Palestinian public is desperate, and desperation breeds bad things, like a return to violence by lone wolves.”

As someone who in the past used her Russian passport to cover the war in Iraq and the revolution in Tahrir Square, who reported from Lebanon and the Syrian border, and who interviewed the late Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat as well as Abbas, Svetlova has a hard time separating herself from her work in the field as a reporter. She still makes a point of staying in touch with her sources.