Inside the Palestinian Authority’s struggle to cling to power in the West Bank

Officials have spoken about the security challenges facing the agency, which launched one of its biggest raids last week

An officer of the Palestinian Authority prepares for a raid on militants in the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on December 16. AP

In the past week, the Palestinian Authority has made its most intense show of force in years. Its security forces have surrounded and are attacking the occupied West Bank city of Jenin and its refugee camp, long centres of Palestinian resistance.

At least three militants have been killed, including commander Yazid Ja’aysa, and one civilian, while about 20 people have been injured. The people of Jenin are familiar with deadly fighting, but almost exclusively at the hands of Israelis, not Palestinians.

The operation is viewed as a test or a sign of desperation for an organisation that has fast been losing legitimacy among its people, particularly in the north of the West Bank. It faces accusations of corruption and helplessness in the face of escalating violence from the Israeli military and settlers.

The Palestinian Authority is “trying to demonstrate to the Americans that they have full control and are able to do what they were mandated to do … particularly if annexation is looming,” Tahani Mustafa, Crisis Group’s senior Palestine analyst, told The National about the latest operation. “This is more of a stunt that the PA trying to get to grips with things on the ground.”

In recent months, The National has spoken to Palestinian Authority officials who deal with security and visited their base of operations. In Nablus, a city neighbouring Jenin that is surrounded by many Israeli settlements, Palestinian Authority governor Ghassan Daghlas spoke about the increasing difficulty of keeping order in his city.

“There are 440,000 inhabitants in Nablus governorate. They suffer the most of anyone in the West Bank from Israeli violence and settler attacks,” he said.

Israeli forces recently killed four men inside a car next to a busy market in broad daylight. Mr Daghlas was still shaken by the killing. The men, former militants from a refugee camp in the city, had been in his office hours before their deaths, negotiating their surrender to the Palestinian Authority.

This was part of an arrangement that has long been in place, viewed as an effective way for the Palestinian Authority to get men away from violence. In exchange for their weapons, the Palestinian Authority gives them jobs in security and tells the Israelis that they no longer bear arms.

“The Israeli raids really weakens us as an authority and the ruling power here. The four guys that were assassinated last week – an hour before they were killed they were sitting here in my office. They were here to solve an issue. They didn’t have a single weapon on them when they were killed,” Mr Daghlas said.

“Israel is embarrassing us with their raids. Embarrassing us and weakening us. We are trying to makes achievements and Israel is destroying everything we worked on.”

From officials to officers and senior generals, all agree that the situation has never been more complex.

At Al Istiklal University in Jericho, more than 700 of the Palestinian Authority's latest generation of officers marched around a sprawling campus of parade grounds, sports facilities and living quarters. Discipline was high and cadets quickly salute senior officers.

Ali Ayaydeh, deputy chairman of the university, said the institution’s mission is to create officers who embody “peaceful resistance according to the vision of [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas”.

“What we teach here is to meet the needs and security demands of Palestine, whether in the West Bank or Gaza.”

Once the cadets leave, many will go to areas like Jenin and the rest of the north of the West Bank, where the most acute security issues are found.

“We work not on physical strength but on intelligence, how to think, to work and to see things, particularly because we are in a very sensitive situation as officers working under occupation,” Dr Ayaydeh said.

Officer cadet Riad Darraj from Ramallah agreed. “We come here to support Palestine and its society. Some young people go abroad but we say no, we’re staying here to support our land and nation,” he said.

Cadet Darraj and his many young colleagues were clear about the danger of joining an organisation that might include a role in postwar security in Gaza, likely a very dangerous task that the young recruits said they were ready to take on, as if managing the West Bank was not hard enough.

But despite their determination in the pristine campus, problems were clear. Brig Gen Zaher Sabah, deputy chairman for military affairs at the university, spoke at length about the difficulty of providing an education. “One of the biggest challenges is the checkpoints that face us and our students,” he said.

The general, like many Palestinian Authority employees, had been on a significantly reduced salary for months given an economic crisis and financial disputes with Israeli authorities who collect tax revenue on behalf of the body.

The far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu, in power for almost two years, has many members who would happily watch the Palestinian Authority collapse. The events of October 7 last year that cost 1,200 Israelis their lives heralded a heavy Israeli security presence in the region and spurred unprecedented settler violence.

Another challenge for the Palestinian Authority came in November, when Donald Trump won the US presidential elections. He is a staunch pro-Israel supporter with a clear determination to quickly end the war in Gaza, perhaps by permitting Israel’s annexation of the West Bank, which would lead to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.