Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas was in his component when, on stage on the UN Basic Meeting (UNGA) final month, he thanked 124 international locations for voting sure on the first-ever decision launched by Palestine on the UNGA.
He was again on the scene of one of many PA’s most vital political achievements since its institution underneath the Oslo Accords within the mid-Nineteen Nineties – Palestine’s profitable 2012 bid for non-member observer standing.
Abbas, an architect of the peace course of that created the PA as a government-in-waiting till the institution of a Palestinian state, succeeded Yasser Arafat on the helm of the PA after his loss of life. Since then, the PA has made worldwide recognition and diplomacy a precedence, with fixed requires UN motion and a years-long marketing campaign for the Worldwide Prison Court docket to research crimes dedicated in Palestine.
On the UNGA, Abbas condemned Israel’s yearlong struggle on Gaza, ongoing incursions and settlement enlargement within the occupied West Financial institution.
However for a lot of Palestinians, who’re reeling from the deadliest yr in an extended historical past of violence, Abbas’s phrases on the UN felt drained and irrelevant.
Whereas the Palestinian Authority “paid lip service” to the tragedy Palestinians had been going through, it additionally continued to hold out its position as “subcontractor” for the Israeli occupation by suppressing protests and resistance within the West Financial institution, Yara Hawari, a co-director of the Palestinian suppose tank Al Shabaka, informed Al Jazeera.
“Actually for the reason that starting of the genocide in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority has been absent from the scene, making a couple of feedback right here or there, or statements that actually do nothing”, she mentioned. “However there have been no concrete actions to help Palestinians in Gaza”.
Sam Bahour, a Palestinian American businessman primarily based within the West Financial institution, agreed, telling Al Jazeera that the majority Palestinians really feel the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian political management extra broadly, have been largely “lacking in motion”.
“October 7 didn’t change the Palestinian management’s mode of operation; it merely intensified it”, he added. “Their mode was, and stays to be absent – absent on the bottom in Palestine, absent politically, and absent from Palestinian day by day life”.
“The place they’re current is within the halls of the worldwide venues, which has a constructive position, however one, because the previous yr taught everybody, that isn’t sufficient to finish this Israeli-made nightmare of many years”.
Light into the background
For years earlier than October 7, the Palestinian Authority has seen its legitimacy tumble amongst Palestinians in each the West Financial institution and Gaza because it failed to guard them from escalating army and settler violence.
The Palestinian Authority safety forces’ position within the suppression of Palestinian resistance and the authority’s “safety coordination” with Israel – a deeply controversial, US-managed association that sees PA safety forces work along with Israel – have additionally lengthy been a think about Palestinians’ anger.
Disillusionment has solely deepened in recent times because the PA has carried out a collection of violent crackdowns and detentions, focusing on not solely these seen as threats to Israel’s safety but additionally critics of the PA itself. In some circumstances, detainees have been subjected to abuse
Some 89 p.c of Palestinians need the 88-year-old Abbas to resign, based on a ballot printed in June by the Palestinian Heart for Coverage and Survey Analysis. The PA itself shouldn’t be faring a lot better, with some 62 p.c of Palestinians supporting its dissolution.
It doesn’t assist the PA’s legitimacy that there have been no main elections in practically twenty years – that means that a whole era of Palestinians have by no means voted. Abbas known as off a presidential election scheduled for 2021 after Israel rejected the inclusion of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem within the vote.
Whereas the PA has lengthy been perceived to be distant and out of contact, Palestinians’ frustration with their management has solely intensified, particularly up to now yr.
“We’re seeing an unprecedented second of disaster within the historical past of the Palestinian battle, and we’re not seeing a commensurate response from the Palestinian Authority; they’ve largely simply disappeared into the background”, Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel Program and senior fellow on the Arab Heart in Washington DC, informed Al Jazeera.
“That distinction between the diploma of urgency and wish for management and the disappearance of that management on the similar time has by no means been so stark”.
Shut out from negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza, the PA has constantly denounced the continued onslaught there however has confirmed unable to play a job towards its finish. In the meantime, in current weeks, the deadliest Israeli raids on occupied West Financial institution cities in 20 years have underscored the PA’s impotence even within the areas it supposedly controls.
No less than 752 individuals have been killed within the occupied West Financial institution since October 7.
“They’re supposed to offer a point of safety for Palestinians, however Palestinians within the West Financial institution have by no means been extra susceptible, extra underneath risk, and extra straight attacked by Israeli troopers and Israeli settlers than they’ve been over the past a number of years, and particularly since final October”, mentioned Munayyer.
No political programme
Internally, Palestinian management has been divided on the response to Israel’s struggle on Gaza and escalation within the West Financial institution, with some criticising Abbas’s response as too timid and others debating whether or not the authority ought to play a higher position in resisting Israel.
Fatah, the occasion on the helm of the PA, together with Hamas and a dozen different Palestinian political factions, have resurfaced long-standing efforts to unite, signing an settlement in July in China, laying the groundwork for an “interim nationwide reconciliation authorities” to rule a post-war Gaza, based on the Chinese language Overseas Ministry.
However the settlement was one in all two dozen failed makes an attempt to reconcile Hamas and Fatah.
Hamas gained the final legislative elections in 2006, largely on account of Palestinians’ frustrations with Fatah. Nonetheless, Israel and the US flatly rejected the election outcomes. In 2007, after a number of failed makes an attempt to kind a unity authorities, a US-backed coup – carried out along side Fatah – unseated Hamas.
Within the battle that adopted, Hamas seized management of Gaza, successfully splitting Palestinian political management between Gaza and the occupied West Financial institution.
Since then, a number of declarations of unity between Fatah and Hamas have led nowhere, and it’s unclear whether or not this time will probably be any totally different. Israel has firmly rejected any association by which Hamas performs a job in governance.
However the alternative of Hamas in Gaza by the PA – a prospect prompt by US officers as a potential “day after” state of affairs following the struggle – has been rejected by many even throughout the PA.
When the thought was first raised, shortly after the struggle began, then-PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh mentioned that PA officers wouldn’t be going to Gaza “on an Israeli army tank”.
In February, Shtayyeh and his authorities resigned amid intense strain from the US to “reform” the Authority.
His successor, Mohammad Mustafa, “has been actually simply specializing in ensuring that the Palestinian Authority simply stays afloat and stays alive”, Diana Buttu, a Palestinian analyst and former authorized advisor to the Palestinian negotiating crew, informed Al Jazeera.
“The PA is at a spot now the place they see that their existence is on the road.”
To this point, the PA’s response appears to have been to hunker down and wait out the disaster.
“So it’s now not Shtayyeh coming in on the again of the tank, which is what the worry was, however on this odd means, it’s Abu Mazen coming in on the again of the tank as a result of he has mentioned and completed nothing over the course of the previous yr, different than simply to journey this out,” mentioned Buttu, referring to Abbas by his nickname.
“When your political programme is simply to journey out each bloodbath and journey out genocide, it means you haven’t any political programme.”
Destroying the Palestinian Authority
Defenders of Palestinian management argue that the PA operates underneath monumental constraints.
Along with its position as civic administrator and supplier of fundamental providers for some three million Palestinians residing within the West Financial institution, the donor-funded Authority can be the most important employer in Palestine, paying the salaries of an estimated 150,000 public staff, together with in Gaza, the place it has no management.
However Israel controls money move to the PA, often withholding funds to use strain. After October 7, Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich started to withhold some $80m a month – the equal of the funds the PA was transferring to Gaza, arguing they’d find yourself in Hamas’ palms.
That pressured the PA to chop the salaries of 1000’s of individuals, deepening an ongoing financial disaster. The scenario was already dire on account of an Israeli ban on the tens of 1000’s of Palestinian labourers who travelled to Israel for work earlier than October 7.
Jamal Nazzal, a spokesperson for Fatah, described Israel’s insurance policies in direction of the PA as “crippling”.
He added that far-right members of the Israeli authorities have gone to nice lengths to discredit the PA, accusing it of supporting the October 7 assaults. Smotrich has usually been on the forefront of that campaign, at one level calling for the PA to be “dismantled”.
“The Israeli authorities is ready for the pretext to destroy the Palestinian Authority,” mentioned Nazzal. “I don’t suppose they see it as a part of the long run. They wish to eliminate it as a result of they don’t need any type of political consultant for the Palestinian individuals”.
Many Palestinians, nonetheless, hardly really feel represented by the PA. With the struggle nonetheless raging in Gaza, there may be little house to ascertain a political future however those who do, query whether or not the PA ought to play a job in it in any respect.
“The Palestinian Authority shouldn’t be a consultant physique… It doesn’t have a mandate from the individuals, it doesn’t govern on account of elections”, mentioned Hawari, of Al Shabaka. “Its shelf life is coming to a really close to finish”.
What is going to come after is a query on most Palestinians’ minds, whilst many are too exhausted by the final yr to grapple with it totally.
“The Palestinian persons are not at this second in a situation the place they’re centered on something aside from the horror that continues to rain down on them from all instructions”, mentioned Munayyer, from the Arab Heart.
“And we’re not seeing a response from PA management. It’s roughly enterprise as regular, the identical previous statements, the identical previous conferences with officers, UN resolutions, this type of stuff.
“In the meantime, every little thing is on hearth throughout.”
