weekend eye
Last week, Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas gave an interview to a local Israeli TV channel that cemented the widespread view among Palestinians, and those sympathetic to their cause, of his weakness against Israel.
He insisted that he is not its “employee” or “agent”, but sounded exactly like one by saying: “Give me responsibility for the Palestinian territories, and test me.... If Israel has specific intelligence information, give it to me and I’ll handle it.
“If I don’t handle it, [Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu] can come and do it.”
In other words, Mr Abbas answers not to the Palestinian people, but to Israel’s prime minister.
Mr Abbas warned that the PA is on “the brink of collapse”, echoing warnings from Israeli officials in recent months. In the absence of fundamental reforms to the PA, or any elections for a presidency that Mr Abbas has held on to despite his term ending seven years ago, perhaps it is best that the PA collapses. This is by no means a radical or fringe view.
According to a November poll by the Center for Opinion Polls and Survey Studies (COPSS) at An Najah National University, 46.9 per cent of Palestinians support dissolving the PA, while 41.7 per cent reject it. This follows a December 2014 poll in which 55 per cent said it had become “a burden on the Palestinian people”. These findings are striking given that the PA is the largest domestic employer.
Such public disillusionment is hardly surprising, however, because since its creation almost a quarter of a century ago, the PA has utterly failed to achieve its missions and fulfil its responsibilities towards its people. Of course Israel has worked tirelessly to subjugate the Palestinians, but the PA is also culpable. So too is Mr Abbas, who has presided over the Authority for almost half of its existence.
Instead of working to end the longest military occupation in modern history, the PA is managing it for Israel via “security coordination”. This involves clamping down on Palestinian resistance, armed and peaceful.
Last week, Mr Abbas reiterated that “I want to cooperate with the Israelis”. This despite opinion polls showing the vast majority of Palestinians opposed to this, despite Israeli forces and settlers killing hundreds of Palestinians in recent months, and despite the relentless colonisation of their land.
Security coordination has continued more than a year after the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) announced its suspension – a decision that should have been binding on the PA.
Mr Abbas and his foreign minister Riad Malki have even given grotesque assurances that there will be no uprising against Israel under the president’s watch. So the PA, which is supposed to be part of a national liberation struggle, seems willing to put down an uprising by its own people against their subjugation on Israel’s behalf.
Indeed, Mr Abbas warned last week that “if we give up on security coordination there will be chaos here”. His concern was not for his own people, but because “there will be rifles and explosions and armed militants popping up everywhere and rushing at Israel. Without coordination, a bloody intifada would break out.” His warning of the PA’s collapse is expressed in terms of its inability to protect Israel, not how it will affect Palestinians.
Furthermore, the Authority, which is meant to safeguard Palestinian rights, serially abuses them.
For example, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented “police beatings and arbitrary arrests of demonstrators”, “excessive force”, “repressing critical news reporting and demonstrations”, “suppressing dissenting views”, and “serious rights abuses, including credible allegations of torture”, for which “no security officials were convicted”.
As such, the PA is not only failing to curb Israeli abuses, but is busy perpetrating its own, all under Mr Abbas’s watch. It is also seen as corrupt, a view held by 79 per cent of Palestinians, according to a poll last month by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR).
Mr Abbas has often expressed his opposition to armed resistance against Israel. However, he is an architect of a peace process that has only provided cover and time for Israel to entrench its occupation and colonisation of Palestine, to the extent that 61 per cent of Palestinians believe a two-state solution is no longer practical due to settlement expansion, according to the same poll.
He is also against peaceful means of resistance, most strikingly a boycott of Israeli goods and services. This despite the PLO’s binding decision last year “to boycott all Israeli products”, despite a growing number of Israeli officials and their foreign allies acknowledging that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement represents the biggest threat to Israel, and despite 84.2 per cent of Palestinians supporting a boycott, according to the COPSS poll.
Given all this, it is no surprise that there is so much public dissatisfaction with Mr Abbas. Two-thirds of Palestinians want him to resign, according to the PCPSR poll, and only 16 per cent trust him, according to an August poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre.
Nonetheless, his position is relatively secure in the absence of presidential elections on the horizon, and his sidelining of critics and potential challengers (most recently former PLO secretary general Yasser Abed Rabbo and former PA prime minister Salam Fayyad last summer). This means he effectively embodies the Authority, making it a tool to maintain and further his political power rather than to emancipate the Palestinian people.
His warning of the PA’s collapse, just months after rejecting similar Israeli warnings, may be designed to shore up his position by garnering support for the Authority, thereby enabling it to quell mass unrest that is likely to target the PA as well as Israel.
Last year, the PLO rightly said that “Israel, the occupying power in Palestine, must assume all its responsibilities in accordance with its obligations under international law”. This can only be done with the dissolution of the PA, because its collusion with Israel allows the latter to shirk those responsibilities.
Little wonder, then, that Mr Netanyahu said in January: “We must prevent the Palestinian Authority from collapsing if possible.” What better reason for its dissolution than its backing by those responsible for the Palestinians’ plight?
Sharif Nashashibi is a journalist and analyst on Arab affairs