The Palestinian Authority has an artificial existence, to which it is excessively loyal

It is indeed unfortunate that the Palestinian Authority’s nefarious relevance continues to hold sway over so many lives. Departing from the 2014 Israeli aggression against Gaza and, more recently, its attempts to manipulate the Jerusalem Intifada through security coordination which was challenged by Palestinian journalist and hunger striker Muhammad Al-Qeeq, as well as the assassination of PFLP member Omar Zayed Nayef, the PA has influenced matters through the juxtaposition of purported representation and actual detachment from reality.

Recent comments by Israeli Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Ze’ev Elkin shed light upon this manipulative game of both language and reality, a joint endeavour between Israel and the PA. During a speech at Bar-Ilan University in Jerusalem, as well as in a recent interview with YNet News, Elkin’s focus on the dissolution of the PA provided a stark contrast to the reality of security coordination with Israel.

In the interview, Elkin reiterated his claims about the imminent collapse of the PA, although he admitted that such a possibility sits “between 40 and 95 per cent.” He cited internal strife within the organisation as a prime factor which would lead to its dissolution. Elaborating further, Elkin added, “The PA will collapse in either circumstance. There is no reason to give it an artificial existence.”

Applying the label of inauthenticity to the PA as Elkin inferred is a contentious issue; not because of any patriotic relevance but rather as a question of analysing the existence of an entity that owes its established artificiality to both Israel and the Oslo Accords. If there is no reason to give the PA an artificial existence, the logical conclusion would be that the organisation is already the embodiment of such a condition. It is also easy to identify the culprits and its collaborators through which the dynamics of dependency and acquiescence are controlled. The contention lies in the context of artificiality being applied to the dysfunctionality between the PA and the Palestinian people, as well as analysing the benefit and detriment of such a corrupted existence.

As regards Palestinians, it is the constant reinvention and mellowing of resistance into accepted political trajectories that have rendered anti-colonial struggle into an isolated and arduous task. The PA is the epitome of betrayal; its determination to ensure Palestinian subjugation particularly through security coordination is one of the reasons why the “artificial existence” should be acknowledged as fact, not simply as a future possibility.

Another repercussion of the PA’s existence is the effort to ensure further division that makes legitimate Palestinian representation a difficult concept to envision. The PA’s representative role has been rendered obsolete since its inception, regardless of international recognition. Within Palestine, the PA’s support for a fictional state based upon territorial fragmentation is also an extension of the macabre metaphor that has hindered unity within anti-colonial struggle.

If not devising political strategies resulting in calculated delays and the erosion of liberation as historically articulated by Palestinian resistance factions, the PA has now exposed itself blatantly as a mechanism that calculates coldly and deliberately the means through which it can cling to its purported legitimacy, and thus revel a little longer within the confines of its existence, no matter how artificial.

Therein lies the PA’s authenticity; it has stuck tenaciously to its debatable foundations and carried out its assigned duties with precision to the detriment of the Palestinians. What the PA is doing is worse than the squandering of opportunities to fulfil its supposed role as a government-in-waiting; it is instead fulfilling its prescribed and accepted role of preserving Palestinian territory, not for the much-heralded (albeit illusory) Palestinian state, but for the benefit of Israel’s colonial expansion.

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