(Jerusalem Post) Yoni Michanie - No serious post-conflict framework treats representation as an automatic right detached from responsibility. Post-war governance is not a reward for suffering; it is a mechanism for preventing recurrence. That distinction matters. When a governing authority initiates war through mass violence against civilians - deliberately targeting noncombatants and engaging in systematic hostage-taking - it forfeits legitimacy over the political space it controlled. The institutions, narratives, and power structures that produced the violence cannot be entrusted with overseeing their own dismantling. But what happens when those power structures enjoy overwhelming popular support? In December 2023, polling by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research revealed that 3/4 of Palestinians supported Hamas's attack on Oct. 7. Support was particularly high in the West Bank, where backing for the assault reached 82%. Subsequent polling showed sustained majorities backing the decision to launch the attack, with support remaining above 70% even months into the war. This presents a challenge. We are discussing a popular consensus endorsing an operation characterized by systematic atrocities against Israelis: mass civilian casualties, sexual violence, torture, and the abduction of 250 hostages including children and the elderly. When so much of the Palestinian population endorses an attack involving the deliberate massacre of civilians, this reveals that Oct. 7 was not merely tolerated or rationalized as a necessary evil but embraced as a defining moment of collective identity - something that made Palestinians feel proud. Calls for automatic Palestinian representation on governing bodies rest on the idea that populations should have agency in determining their political future. But what happens when Palestinian democratic sentiment produces an overwhelming mandate for violence against Israeli civilians? What happens when the "will of the people" is inseparable from the endorsement of atrocity? Defining the political framework to prevent another Oct. 7 requires demonstrated rejection of the violence that 75% of Palestinians endorsed. Agency for the Palestinians is not the right to immediate political control regardless of recent conduct. It is the capacity to make choices and bear responsibility for their consequences. Palestinians made choices on and around Oct. 7. Those choices included overwhelming support for an operation that systematically violated the most basic prohibitions of international humanitarian law. The road to Palestinian political autonomy runs through moral accountability, not around it.