For years, the AMAN coalition of Palestinian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) focused on issues of administrative and financial corruption. However, the Palestine chapter of Transparency International, which was established in 2000, decided in 2021 to tackle a much more controversial issue: political corruption.

Those two words seem to many to be synonymous rather than an oxymoron, but the eroding integrity of the current Palestinian leadership appears to have forced the local Transparency International to raise the stakes and tackle a corrupt political system that among other things canceled an already long-overdue national election and allegedly ordered harming a critic in Hebron by the Palestinian security forces, an act that led to his death and the violent crackdown of demonstrations calling for accountability.

In their anger at the deterioration of the Palestinian political system, many repeated a statement made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he would resign if 50 or more Palestinians call on him to step down. Abbas, 86, is now in his 12th year in office after long passing his four-year term and appears to have consolidated all powers in his hands.

In a 10-point manifesto, AMAN called on Palestinians to reject this anti-democratic slippery slope and made a special plea to civil society organizations to “fight this political corruption by creating a coalition that can contribute to making a change toward a more honest governance structure."