The current intifada will not yield substantial change for the Palestinians or bring about a diplomatic breakthrough. This is the belief of Fatah activists who served as field leaders in the first and second intifadas.

The first intifada (1987-1993) ended with the Oslo Accord, which on paper promised the creation of a Palestinian state within an established time frame. The second intifada (2000-2005), after terrible bloodshed, led to Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the rise of Hamas. If this is so, why don’t Fatah field leaders think the current intifada, being carried out by individuals, will bring about positive change, in the best-case scenario, or lead to tremendous chaos, in the worst-case scenario? In these activists' opinion, which is shared by Palestinian journalists who covered the germination of past intifadas and their results, today's intifada is doomed to fail because no leader has emerged to lead the would-be insurrectionists.

In the first intifada, which broke out in December 1987 as a popular uprising in Gaza's Jabaliya refugee camp, Fatah field operatives immediately took charge, acting on their own, and created a central command structure. That’s where the process of mobility for a new Palestinian leadership began. Ihab al-Ashkar, for instance, was a key activist in the central command, orchestrating collective actions, such as protests, confrontations with the Israeli military and general strikes, and handling contact with the Palestinian leadership in Tunisia.

Other young Palestinians consolidated their power through the waves of the uprising and had their status as leaders strengthened after they were arrested by Israel and sent to prison. For instance, Hisham Abd al-Razzaq, Mousa Abed al-Nabi, Sufian Abu Zaida and Qadura Fares, as well as senior field leaders Mohammed Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub, who were expelled from the territories, became leaders in exile, returning after the signing of the Oslo Accord. Most of the former field operatives are convinced today that if Israel had not reached an agreement with Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, it would have had to reach an agreement with them, as the leaders on the ground in the territories.