Palestinian Authority, Never Authoritative, Is Near Collapse

It never Flew Very High: A lone Palestinian flag in the West Bank, where Israel ensures that Palestinian flags, let alone rights, never flutter too assertively. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

Really. Is anyone surprised? The Palestinian Authority, never intended by its Israeli and American midwives as more of a symbolic toy with which to placate Palestinian nationalists until Israel could make their claim to the West Bank risible, is on the verge of collapse, now that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas won't run again in the 2010 elections and other Palestinian leaders may follow in his resigning footsteps.

"I think he is realizing that he came all this way with the peace process in order to create a Palestinian state, but he sees no state coming," Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, tells The Times. "So he really doesn't think there is a need to be president or to have an Authority. This is not about who is going to replace him. This is about our leaving our posts. You think anybody will stay after he leaves?"

Erekat may be misjudging the attraction of nearly $900 million in U.S. aid alone to the Palestinian Authority, which tends to give many an incentive for people to stay. It's not as if the jobs are raining on the West Bank outside the PA's version of Tammany Hall. Still, Erekat has a valid point, if not fear.

The authority was designed as a semi-autonomous stepping-stone government on the way to Palestinian statehood and full sovereignty. But statehood was conditional on Palestinians and Israelis resolving fundamental issues--the right of return for Palestinian refugees on the Palestinian side, the removal of Israeli settlements in the West Bank (or a formal agreement over their existence) on the Israeli side, and, for both sides, an agreement over the status of Jerusalem, which both sides claim.

None of that has happened. Yasser Arafat in 2000, at Camp David negotiations mediated by President Clinton, may have missed the best chance for Palestinian statehood in three generations by turning down an imperfect but relatively solid offer of autonomy over most of the West Bank and Gaza. Since then, Israeli intransigence and a mixture of American inaction, mixed signals and overt favoritism toward Israel have damaged the Palestinian Authority's legitimacy in Palestinian eyes, undermined the validity and sincerity of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, and fueled more radical movements such as Hamas, which never recognized the Oslo accords. Hamas' appeal translated in electoral victories for Hamas in the Palestinian parliament in 2006--and Hamas' control over the Gaza Strip in 2007.

It's a wonder the Palestinian Authority has managed to last this long. It was never an instrument of Palestinian authority or self-respect, but a sort of allowance for Israelis, and to some extent for Americans, to manipulate at will, permanently delaying the promise (and, in international law's eyes, imperative) of a Palestinian state. Abbas has had enough, it appears.

Read the full FAQ, "What Is the Palestinian Authority?"

See Also:

• How Obama and Clinton Caved On Israel's Settlements
• Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Quitting Act
• It's the Settlements, Stupid
• Israeli Settlements in the West Bank - Numbers, Statistics and Law
• Hillary Clinton's West Bank Blind Spot
• What Is Zionism?
• What Is UNRWA?