The international community's blind addiction to the PA must be stopped

From the day of its establishment three decades ago and during all the years of its existence, the Palestinian Authority (PA) functioned as a corrupt and failed semi-state entity. Not only did it fail to realize its historic national goal as a platform for the full implementation of Palestinian independence and the establishment of a sustainable state “with Jerusalem as its capital,” but over the years the PA lost its grip on the Palestinian public along with its support, and failed the test of controlling its destiny.

The failure of the PA actually began in its early years. Instead of fighting Palestinian terrorism as required by the Oslo Accords, PA president Arafat chose not to confront Hamas and the other Palestinian terror organizations. In fact, as long as they did not threaten his rule, Arafat and the PA perceived Hamas and the other terrorist organizations as a means of pressuring Israel to make further concessions in the negotiations.

In Arafat’s speech in Johannesburg in May 1994 he compared the Oslo Accords to the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah (which was violated by Muhammad when he conquered Mecca). He continued incitement against Israel and the entrenchment of the narrative that peace with Israel was not desirable, “We are in need of you as Muslims, as Mujaheddin [warriors of Jihad],” he said.

Preferring the use of violence against Israel whenever the latter did not agree to his demands at the discussion table, he began the next round in September 1996 with the Western Wall Tunnel riots; continued with the Nakba Day events in May 2000; and peaked in September 2000 with the outbreak of the Second Intifada following the failure of the Camp David Summit (between Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Arafat, mediated by US president Bill Clinton).

Even after Arafat’s era at the end of 2004, the PA was unable to change its course and kept on marching the Palestinian people towards the realization of their national goals of freeing “Palestine from the river to the sea” through violence – apart from Salam Fayyad’s years as PA prime minister (June 2007-June 2013) who acted in complete opposition to the pattern of action of Arafat’s successor PA president Mahmoud Abbas and was therefore removed from his position. 

Abbas understood that endorsing the armed struggle was harmful to the national goals of the Palestinians, and therefore spoke out officially against the use of terrorism. Yet at the same time, he continued the work on incitement against Israel at every stage, including in school curricula, and continued to glorify terrorists and to pay salaries to those in Israeli prisons and their families.

Dead on arrival

The main failure of Abbas and the PA was twofold. 

First, Abbas’s refusal to respond to Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s proposals in 2008 and US secretary of state John Kerry’s outline in 2014 clearly illustrated that the PA is unable and unwilling to reach a historic compromise with Israel and a peace agreement with the Jewish state. 

Second, the fall of the Gaza Strip to Hamas in June 2007 and the gradual loss of governance in the West Bank (which without Israel would certainly have turned into “Hamastan 2”) proved that the PA is incapable of governing the Palestinian people and being a real alternative to Hamas.

Yet despite the bitter historical experience with the PA, the clear evidence that it has lost public legitimacy, and the realities that indicate the loss of its governance in the West Bank territories, there are still voices, both in Israel and in the United States, who expect that after the fall of Hamas, the keys of the Gaza Strip should be given to Abbas and his loyalists. 

While Israel is not interested in controlling the 2.2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and accepting responsibility for managing their day-to-day lives, the Biden administration hopes that the return of Abbas and the PA to Gaza will restore peace to the region and perhaps be an opening for the renewal of the peace process with Israel.

Thus, it seems that elements in Washington and Jerusalem are simply “addicted” to the PA, an addiction that stems from blindness to history and contemporary reality. Even if the PA were to return to Gaza, it wouldn’t be long before it once again lost its rule to Hamas or another Islamist organization, or started another intifada against Israel after the latter didn’t agree to concessions that would endanger its security.

Statements regarding the return of the current PA to the control of the Gaza Strip are not a disconnection from reality but a great danger of duplicating the system that existed in the Gaza Strip until October 7, 2023. 

The international community must sober up and free itself from the torments of its love for the PA, that blinds its eyes and prevents it from understanding the magnitude of the rift and the nature of the change required.

The Palestinian people deserve something better; Israel, the region, and the world deserve something more responsible and functional. 

The future of the Gaza Strip, like that of the Palestinian entity as a whole, lies in integration into a new regional architecture, based on the normalization processes between Israel and the pragmatic Sunni Arab world led by Saudi Arabia. 

In such a framework, the scope of opportunities will increase and Palestinian development will become possible as part of the protective wall against Hamas barbarism under the auspices of the axis of evil led by Iran. 

The current PA is immature and unable to meet the challenge at this time, and hence we must not stumble in our blindness.

Professor Kobi Michael is a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Israel, and a visiting professor at the University of South Wales, UK.

Dr. Ori Wertman is a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS), Israel, and a research fellow at the University of South Wales, UK. His recent book is Israel: National Security and Securitization (Springer, 2023).