Dismissing the PA’s tactics of collaboration

The Palestinian Authority has made it clear this week that Palestine and Palestinians are commodities for exploitation when it comes to rights and legitimacy. Since US President Donald Trump’s visit which, despite feeble attempts to portray it otherwise, was another exercise in belligerent bullying and wilful acquiescence, the PA has embarked upon different narratives which seem at odds with each other and yet are imbued with the identical aim of facilitating the colonial process.

On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is willing to suspend his demand that Israel freezes settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank in order for negotiations to be initiated again. The comment was apparently made by Abbas’s senior economic advisor Mohammad Mustafa, who justified the decision by saying that it was beneficial. “We think it’s better for all of us right now to focus on giving this new administration [in Washington] a chance to deliver,” he explained. Mustafa also declared that Abbas would “tone down his campaign to prosecute Israel for alleged war crimes and to rally condemnation of the Jewish [sic] state at the United Nations.”

The same report also quotes another Abbas aide, Mohammed Shtayyeh, who described Trump’s signing of the waiver regarding the US embassy’s relocation to Jerusalem as a new dynamic and a closed chapter. “The embassy issue is behind us,” he claimed.

Meanwhile, former Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath asserted the Palestinians’ “indisputable right” to armed struggle. During an interview on Palestinian Awda TV channel and quoted in the Times of Israel, Shaath insisted that he “never thought there was any problem with engaging in armed struggle and at the same time engaging in political and diplomatic efforts in support of your cause.”

The entire charade should dispel any lingering strands of the elusive “hope” which the PA and the international community, notably the UN, are fond of including in their rhetoric. It should also affirm in people’s consciousness that despite claiming otherwise, “waiting” is the PA’s preferred option when it comes to negotiations as the tactic plays into Israel’s colonial aspirations and the international community’s aim of gradually depleting Palestine geographically and, as a result, making Palestinian displacement an undisputed, permanent humanitarian fact.

Putting Shaath’s comments to one side, the collusion exhibited by the PA should ignite outrage. The internationally-recognised Palestinian leadership has prioritised US and Israeli demands, thus normalising colonialism and its ramifications, and entrenching itself in a disadvantaged position by advocating relentlessly in the interests of the dominant and oppressive entities. If the PA is exhibiting agreement with the impositions dictated by the US and Israel, it is also facilitating the international community’s approach of maintaining the cycle of violations for the benefit of propping up the institutions thriving upon violence.

Acting belatedly after issuing regurgitated “threats” to resort to international institutions for justice has characterised the PA’s political role. This tactic is usually complemented by bargaining, whether over Palestinian prisoners or agreeing to further land appropriation. In this case, the PA is acquiescing in a dangerous game by prioritising Trump’s vague statements about brokering a deal, despite his aggressive campaigning against Palestinian rights as a presidential candidate. The purported dispelling of the two-state paradigm, linguistically void of any coherent meaning, was also interpreted as a positive step.

At the UN, the US has stepped up its actions to protect Israel by initiating aggressive diplomacy at the same time that Danny Danon has been appointed as vice president of the UN Security Council. Palestine, meanwhile, has been obliterated from the narrative. Not even the convenience of mentioning Palestinians as an impediment to Zionist motives is making headlines any more. The PA, therefore, is collaborating in ensuring that diplomacy is all about Israeli and US interests, rather than legitimate Palestinian rights.

Only when we consider that the PA has clearly shifted from alleged leadership to facilitating Israel’s colonial project does retracting the threat to pursue justice at the International Criminal Court make any sense. Seeking Israel’s prosecution at an international level, while unlikely to change the colonial framework or international support for it, was seen by some as the means through which Palestinians could assert their moral and legal legitimacy. Diluting that stance for Trump is a ludicrous step in a very wrong direction. Abbas and his aides might remember how the current voluntary decision to pursue a less demanding approach at the ICC mirrors the precondition insisted upon by former US President Barack Obama during the previous negotiations.

Yet it seems that the PA is equating Trump with some weird image of optimistic change, despite all evidence pointing to the contrary. Trump is playing the waiting game with competence despite his muddled communication. The PA is set on a course which repeats past blunders while exacerbating the ramifications. Calling the signing of the embassy move waiver a “new dynamic” and relegating it to the past is a short-sighted approach which is likely to come back and haunt the Palestinians in decades to come. Trump has merely postponed the decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; whether to the near future or for another president to deal with is impossible to tell. Still, there is no proof of permanence in the waiver and Netanyahu has clearly said that the US embassy relocation will signify the first step in appropriating all of Jerusalem with international blessing.

With all these implemented drawbacks, Shaath’s comments regarding the amalgamation of armed resistance and diplomacy can only be relevant if Palestinians are allowed the space for both. If the PA continues to sabotage the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people by clamping down on resistance efforts, armed or otherwise, for Israel’s benefit, it will be pertinent to question how much weight can be given to statements uttered by PA officials, despite their veracity if taken at face value.

Since the priority for the PA is to appease both Israel and the US, which in turn makes the PA a willing accomplice in their rights abuses, it is also important to note that sabotaging the Palestinian right to armed struggle at an international level is heading towards becoming an unfortunate accomplishment. This is not to say that the Palestinians themselves will give up their right to resistance; the collective experience of colonisation is too far removed from the PA and its acquiescence for that to happen.

However, the PA exploits the Palestinian right to resistance whenever it suits Abbas to do so, or as the means through which it can then turn against Palestinians through security coordination with Israel; against resistance efforts, for example. This means that the strength of legitimate armed resistance, which is enshrined within international conventions but is already marginalised in favour of treacherous diplomacy, might soon render itself as insignificant, which makes a Palestinian articulation of rights and struggle from within as the only viable option upon which Palestinian politics should be based.

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