Rather than working to end the Israeli occupation, the Palestinian leadership has become a key component of it. Security coordination with the Israeli military, which was written into the Oslo Accords, has become the Palestinian Authority’s core duty: It takes up more of its budget than the education, health and agriculture sectors combined. That eroded Palestinians’ trust in the authority, and incentivized corruption and surveillance in Palestinian communities. Twenty-five years later, the authority has failed to deliver peace, justice and self-determination for the Palestinians.

Under the guise of pursuing peace, security coordination has enabled Israel to continue encroaching into occupied Palestinian land on the one hand and entrenching the one-state reality on the other. Over half a century after the occupation began and a quarter of a century after the signing of the Oslo Accords, it should come as no surprise that Israel is now primed to formally annex almost all of its settlements and the Jordan Valley (altogether constituting up to 30 percent of the West Bank).

The real lesson here is the disposability of the Palestinian partner — no matter how acquiescent it may be. The marginalization of the Palestinian Authority by Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu has demonstrated once and for all that Palestinians have no place in any future plans. This dynamic is not unique to the current administration in Washington, although it has been made especially explicit by it. American presidents from both parties have pursued policies that ignored, undermined and weakened Palestinian leaders for decades. As was the case in the negotiations before Oslo, the options for Palestinians are limited to either accepting permanent occupation, or having it imposed on them against their will. The Trump peace plan and Mr. Abbas’s response show that Palestinians have no way to hold their occupier to account through their current political leadership.

What would the outcome have been if the Palestinian leadership had never complied with Israeli dictates — particularly around security coordination? Where would we be today had the “thousand no’s” been uttered 25 years ago? Painful as these questions may be for Palestinians, they present an opportunity for all parties to finally reframe the conversation.

Many Palestinians, including millions of refugees, are no longer willing to wait for piecemeal negotiations over scraps of land. But while there is a general distaste for a “peace process” that has delivered little for the Palestinians, many avenues remain open. One is through the International Criminal Court — a process already begun by the recent war crimes investigation into Israel’s use of force in the 2014 incursion on Gaza and the transfer of Israeli civilians into the occupied West Bank. (Such are Israeli fears of prosecution that the Trump peace plan expressly prohibits the Palestinians from partaking in any action at the court.)