The authority is not a sovereign national government but an administrative entity similar to a county or municipal government in charge of public safety, education, utilities and public health. The Palestinian authority may not conduct foreign policy, pursue treaties with foreign governments, mint money, or trade freely with neighbors. Israel controls all border crossings in the West Bank and Gaza, all Palestinian air space and all trade into or out of Palestinian Authority-controlled areas. Nevertheless, some 120 nations, pre-dating the establishment of the authority, recognize a Palestinian state, including diplomatic status.
The Palestinian Authority's geographic jurisdiction is limited to less than 20% of the Palestinian territories under Israeli occupation. The Gaza Strip was under the jurisdiction of the PA until 2007, when Hamas expelled the authority. The majority of the West Bank remains under direct Israeli control. It is either occupied by more than 100 Israeli settlements or expropriated by Israeli military edict. Palestinian territory in the West Bank formerly under the limited control of the PA has been further eroded by the Israeli separation fence, or barrier, on West Bank land.
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.
As the Palestinian Authority has weakened, its mere existence was questioned by late 2009. In November 2009, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced he would not run again for the presidency in elections he called for early 2010. That led to speculation that the Palestinian Authority itself was in danger of collapsing.
"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, told The New York Times, referring to Abbas. "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?"
