Disbanding the Palestinian Authority

In December 2010, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a television interview that if Israel continued to build settlements in the West Bank he would disband the Palestinian Authority (PA), the West Bank authority established under the Oslo Accords.

“I cannot accept to remain the president of an authority that doesn’t exist,” he said.

Abbas responded to the re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in early 2013 by again threatening to dissolve the PA. “I’ll tell him… Sit in the chair here instead of me, take the keys and you will be responsible for the Palestinian Authority.” The threats were made in an attempt to apply pressure on the Israeli government to kick start negotiations.

For the last seven months, both parties have been back at the negotiations table, with the hope of finding a solution to the decades long conflict by this April. The two sides, led by US Secretary of State John Kerry, are again trying to draw the borders in a two state solution.

Established under the Oslo Accords as an interim body, the PA was sold as a national project that would see the transportation of Palestine from an occupied territory to an internationally recognised state. The West Bank was split into three areas under the accords; Areas A, B and C. The PA was given apparent full control of Area A, the smallest chunk of land, while Area B came under shared control and Area C fell under full Israeli control.

The idea was that a final status peace agreement would be reached within 5 years, and all areas would fall under Palestinian jurisdiction. Twenty years later and the status quo established by the Oslo Accords is still in place.

The PA’s control remains limited to Area A, where its authority is nonetheless frequently violated by Israel. For Palestine, the two central functions anticipated from the PA – providing both a vehicle to statehood and a means of institution building – have arguably failed.

The last 20 years of negotiations between the PA and Israel have instead left the West Bank fragmented into 167 enclaves, which are in turn broken up by 552 checkpoints and barriers as well as being separated from Israel by a 440 kilometre long concrete wall which has annexed East Jerusalem, the envisioned capital of an independent Palestinian state. The settler population has doubled and 53 thousand settlement homes have been constructed to house them. Meanwhile 15 thousand Palestinian homes have been destroyed, according to infographics from Visualizing Palestine.

Instead of viewing the Authority as a vehicle towards statehood, many Palestinians see the PA as an arm of the occupation, with the biggest beneficiary of its existence being the occupier. PA run schools and hospitals, supported by foreign aid, maintain a status quo allowing Israel to shoulder its obligations as an occupying power. Instead of tackling the underlying political issues, millions of dollars of aid are poured into the PA and projects in the West Bank, acting as temporary plasters that serve to make the current situation viable.

The security cooperation between Israel and the PA, which was at a high, according to a 2012 summary report by the Coordinator of Activities in the Territories, has led many to define the Authority as a puppet of the occupation. This has fuelled a decline in Abbas’ popularity and, in turn, led to calls for the third intifada to be pitted against the PA.

Israel’s Yossi Kuperwasser, director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, said during a court case waged against the PA, “I think that the Palestinians shared partial, tendentious and incomplete information with the Shin Bet.”

Shin Bet, the Israel security agency, was reportedly trying to “cover up their inability to use this tool called the Palestinian security forces in supplying them with the purpose for which they exist: preventing terror.”

Not only is it recognised here that the PA is openly sharing files with Israel’s notorious intelligence agency, there is no attempt to hide the fact that the PA, as an entity, has been created solely for this purpose, as a “tool” to be used by Israel.

In 2011, 31 per cent of the total PA expenditure, one third of its budget, was spent on security, the beneficiary of such large national expenditure being Israel.

This led Yossi Beilin, the Israeli architect of the Oslo process, to also call for the disbandment of the PA. In a heavily worded letter to Abbas he said; “Do not let Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hide behind the fig leaf of the Palestinian Authority – impose upon him, once again, the responsibility of the fate of four million Palestinians.

“Remain as the head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which will give you the authority to lead the political negotiations if and when they resume, but for the sake of your own people, for the sake of peace, you cannot let this farce continue,” he said.

While the talks restarted, the call for PA disbandment has continued. The two-state solution currently being deliberated is likely to include large settlement blocs being annexed to Israel, with compensatory land swaps, which some argue could be defined as illegal under international law. Israel is likely to gain “legal” control of the valuable Jordan Valley under the pretext of security, with the right of return for Palestinian refugees shelved.

After they have carved up the complex territory, the Palestinian State will be demilitarised with no control over its borders or airspace. Just as the Bantustans of South Africa were seen by the world as fantasy entities with governments and borders that gave them a veneer of legitimacy, a “state” of Palestine as envisaged by Israel similarly leads one to consider when a state ceases to be a state. This kind of “state” also leads one to question where the terms “peace” and “agreement” are in this solution.

After 20 years of negotiations, which many argue has only led to 20 years of concessions made by the Palestinian side, most citizens seem unexcited by the new talks. Talks that continue despite Israel’s refusal to freeze settlement building, an issue which led to the breakdown of the last talks and despite moves in the Knesset to enforce Israeli sovereignty over Al-Aqsa, Jewish claims to the Islamic holy site sparked the last intifada.

On the ground the effect of dissolving the PA would be disastrous, with a projected loss of $3 billion of public spending, 100,000 public servants left unemployed and the poverty rate potentially rising to 60 per cent, according to a report by the Palestinian Center of Policy and Surveys Research. There is also a genuine concern that the power vacuum left behind would be filled with more radical elements.

However, disbanding the PA may push the completion of a two state peace agreement, with the possibility of using the situation as leverage to gain more from the negotiations than a Palestinian Bantustan. Of course its dissolution would make negotiations between the state of Israel and a future state of Palestine difficult, which instead of contributing to the two-state framework, could lead to a one-state solution becoming the only viable option. Either way, it would mean an end to the occupation.

Alternatively Israel could launch a full scale occupation of the whole West Bank, without the façade of the “liberated” Area A. The latter would cost Israel billions, with the gap left by the PA in Area A cities like Nablus and Jericho requiring an investment of more manpower for little gain. In a desperate bid to protect the Jewish demographics of Israel from the threat of a one-state solution, and with the maintenance of the status quo no longer possible, a viable State of Palestine may be born.

Alternatively, the one-state solution may finally gain some ground, outside academic circles. The one-state solution is unpopular with many Palestinians, who see the negotiations as futile, but are still focused on the aspiration for a nation state and see the PA as the only vehicle to get there, while the PA’s 100,000 employees are understandably more concerned with their pay cheque. However the situation on the ground is often referred to as a “one-state reality”, inferring that the one-state solution is the only option.

In this case, Israel would have to choose between turning the one-state into an apartheid state with Palestinians as second class citizens, or a democratic state granting equal rights to its citizens.

In one-state, accusations of apartheid could not be so easily thwarted by those who excuse Israel’s policies and international condemnation would be quick to follow. Either way, desperate not to let the power vacuum left by the PA be filled by radical Islamist groups that may not be so easy to negotiate with, Israel and the US would be pushed to think of alternative solutions.

Nonetheless, Abbas’ past threats to dissolve the PA are empty. Like Israel and its backers, the Fatah run PA does not want the power vacuum to be filled with its political enemy number one; Hamas, who it has been pitted against since the 2006 elections, with the dissolution of the West Bank authority also spelling the dissolution of Fatah’s authority over the territory. In a meeting with EU representative Marc Otte, Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestinian side, was recorded saying; “Reaching an agreement [with Israel] is a matter of survival for us. It’s the way to defeat Hamas.”

Instead, April will see a US brokered peace agreement unveiled with a State of Palestine resembling a state but not a state with sovereignty but dependent, run by a leader that governs the oppressed, but who is a puppet for the oppressor. The status quo will largely be the same, except this time it will no longer be a called a conflict and the US will celebrate the success of bringing “peace” to the region.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.