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Corrupt, discredited: could a reformed
Palestinian Authority run Gaza?
The west’s preferred vehicle to govern a Gaza shorn of
Hamas is a body whose authority has been undermined by all sides
Patrick
Wintour
Patrick
Wintour Diplomatic editor
Mon 27 Nov
2023 07.00 GMT
Western
diplomats have turned to the previously neglected Palestinian Authority to fill
the political vacuum likely to be created by the planned destruction of Hamas
in Gaza, but know their chosen rescue vehicle is unpopular, deemed corrupt, and
badly in need of a new generation of leaders that no one has yet been able to
identify.
The west’s
placement of the PA at the heart of post-conflict governance in Gaza has also
been rejected by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, causing
consternation in the Biden administration.
Indeed,
Israel is so hostile to the PA that it banned the authority’s foreign minister
from travelling this month to Bahrain to speak to a conference attended by US
and Arab leaders on its post-war plans.
The PA –
established in the 1990s as part of the then peace process to run areas in the
West Bank and Gaza under Palestinian control – has said it is willing to play a
role in Gaza, from where it was expelled by Hamas in 2006, but only if it is
part of a clear, comprehensive peace plan with Israel that also includes the
West Bank. But many doubt its ability to do so, even if there were such a plan.
Nasser al-Qudwa, a nephew of Yasser Arafat tipped as future PA leader, said: “I
think the current authority, in its present form and with the men leading it,
is unable to even set foot in the Gaza Strip, let alone handle the major tasks
required at this time.”
Other
observers, such as former Israel negotiator Daniel Levy, counsel the PA against
entering Gaza if security remains an Israeli preserve, as Netanyahu has
insisted it will. “I don’t think it would be wise for any Palestinian movement
to say: ‘We will do this under the watchful eye of Israel,’” he said.
These
hurdles mean western policy-makers face a huge challenge in transforming the PA
into a body that is acceptable to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, as
well as to an Israel prime minister who has spent 15 years reducing the
organisation’s influence. It also requires clearer understanding than at
present on how security and politics will be handled postwar.
At present,
some diplomats, such as the US Middle East envoy, Brett McGurk, speak of a
reformed or revitalised PA to run Gaza and the West Bank. Josep Borrell, the EU
foreign affairs chief, said: “Who will be in control of Gaza? I think only one
could do that. The Palestinian Authority.”
More
vaguely, some speak of the need to back “peace-loving Palestinans”, a phrase
recently used by the former UK foreign secretary James Cleverly.
That
implicitly means removing Hamas from Gaza, including debarring its supporters
from standing in any future elections. The Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman
Safadi, however says Hamas is an idea and argues that it has deeply embedded
itself in Gaza since winning Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, then
violently ejecting Fatah, the dominant party in the Palestinian Authority, from
Gaza.
The truth
is no one knows what political mood will emerge from Gaza at the end of the
conflict, but Emmanuel Macron, the French president, and many Arab leaders feel
it is a heroic assumption to think that “peace-loving Palestinians” are going
to stumble out from underneath the rubble of Gaza.
To assess
whether the PA will be capable of taking on this task in Gaza, and is
reformable, some explanation for its current parlous state is required. That in
turn has to start with an acknowledgment that those calling for a “revitalised”
PA are precisely the same actors who have resisted such steps for many years.
There are
many reasons for the PA’s weakness, some self-imposed, some not. Corruption is
widespread, although Palestinian diplomats say it is not endemic. But it has
been financially crippled by a US-led donor strike, occasionally supported by
the EU. In 2013, external grants at nearly $1.4bn (£880m) accounted for a third
of total PA expenditure. By 2022, this had fallen to less than $350m (£305m) or
just under 3% of total PA expenditure, according to a report this year by the
UN Middle East envoy. Israel in 2023 was slated to withhold Palestinian import
taxes worth $800m. The consequences in terms of poorer schools and hospitals
was evident.
Tony Blair,
in his eight years as special envoy for the Quartet of international powers
seeking a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians from 2007, also
tried hard to construct a functioning Palestinian Authority, built on a growing
economy, and largely failed for the familiar reasons that the Israeli-imposed
blockade strangled the Palestinian economy. The US, which now champions the PA,
has withheld any payments to it since 2017 in protest at the paying of benefits
to families of Palestinian prisoners and those killed in the conflict,
including militants implicated in attacks against Israelis. The US Congress on
a bipartisan basis calls this “pay to slay”, as does Israel.
But the
PA’s biggest weakness is that it has had to operate on a false assumption. When
the PA itself was created in 1994, Palestinian leaders promoted it as a
transitional body in a diplomatic process after the Oslo accords that would
lead to statehood. Yet the collapse of any worthwhile peace diplomacy and the
dwindling prospects of a two-state solution have deprived the PA of its raison
d’etre.
With
bilateral diplomacy blocked off from 2001, when newly elected Israeli prime
minister Ariel Sharon refused to meet PA president Yasser Arafat and amid a
second intifada led by Palestinian militant groups, the PA focused on other
ways to prove its relevance and to show a strategy of non-violence could
produce results. Above all it sought status and purpose through the UN.
Thus
Mahmoud Abbas, succeeding Yasser Arafat, started a campaign to seek full
recognition for the state of Palestine at the UN. US opposition doomed it to
failure, leaving it only with UN observer status. It managed to gain membership
of Unesco, but even a modest attempt to join the UN’s tourism body was
abandoned due to US pressure.
In its big
play, the PA in 2015 requested permission for the international criminal court
to open an investigation into war crimes committed by Israel in the West Bank.
After five years of deliberation, the ICC agreed in 2021 it did have
jurisdiction. But this led to the US and UK coming down on the PA like a ton of
bricks. In a letter dated April 2021 announced not to parliament but to the
Conservative Friends of Israel, then prime minister Boris Johnson said: “We
oppose the ICC’s investigation into war crimes. We do not accept that the ICC
has jurisdiction in this instance given that Israel is not part of the statute
of Rome [that established the ICC] and Palestine is not a sovereign state.” He
added: “This investigation gives the impression of being a partial and
prejudicial attack on a friend and ally of the UK”.
Similarly,
the US led by Donald Trump opposed any ICC scrutiny of Israel. The Trump
administration said: “Palestinians do not qualify as a sovereign state and
therefore are not qualified to obtain membership as a state in, participate as
a state in, or delegate jurisdiction to the ICC.” The Trump team attacked the
PA’s use of the court as a “unilateral judicial action that exacerbates
tensions and undercuts efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution”.
Joe Biden
has not changed the US stance. When the US president met Abbas in Ramallah in
2022 he urged him to drop the ICC investigation, but Abbas refused, saying it
was one of the few non-violent routes available to opposing Israeli
settlements.
In some
ways the UK opposition was the more jarring for the PA, since the UK is, unlike
the US, a supporter of the ICC. Moreover, the UK had not submitted any
observations to the pre-trial chamber of the ICC when the prosecutor referred
the issue to it.
It left a
frustrated Palestinian ambassador in the UK, Husam Zomlot, to complain: “Boris
Johnson’s position rules out any legal avenue to seek accountability and
redress for crimes perpetrated against our people, leaving Palestinians to ask
what does the British government expect them to do?”
Another
legal nonviolent avenue pursued by the PA was to go to the UN’s international
court of justice, the top court for dealing with disputes between countries. In
December 2022 the UN general assembly had voted by 87 to 26 to request an
advisory ruling on the status of the occupation from the court in The Hague.
But no sooner did the PA lawyers turn up in The Hague than so did US and UK
government lawyers, again saying this was an improper legal avenue for the
Palestinians to pursue. Oral proceedings are due in February next year and the
US is now telling the PA to pull out if it wants Israel’s agreement to let the
PA into Gaza.
Nor could
the PA convince its supporters much benefit came from lobbying western
politicians that the expansion of Israeli settlements would set back the chance
of a viable two-state solution.
The former
UK Middle East minister Alistair Burt recalls in office being confronted by a
Palestinian delegation with a list of his comments on various Israeli
settlements. “They read it out and they said: ‘Mr Burt, on such and such a
date, you said you were “very concerned” about settlements. And on this date,
you said you were “gravely concerned”, and on this occasion you said you were
“most concerned”. And here you said you were “extremely concerned”’. And they
went through the list of different adverbs, and they pointed out that there was
no action taken by the international community in terms of settlements. And it
was a fair charge.”
He added:
“The PA was not well served by the Israeli government, who were quite happy to
keep it going, but not be particularly effective. And the leadership of the PA
rather went along with that so by and large there was a sense of stasis in the
whole area.”
As a
result, the PA ended up being viewed by Palestinians increasingly as a security
sub-contractor for Israel, and in the name of fighting terrorism often imposed
arbitrary justice in the West Bank. Lawyers for Justice, a group that documents
just such arbitrary justice cases, estimated that in 2022 alone the PA arrested
more than 500 Palestinians for anti-Israeli offences. The alternative, the PA
argued, would be a third intifada and the collapse of the PA.
This has
all taken a massive toll on the PA’s reputation. Respected opinion polling by
the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research shows that days before
the Hamas assault on Israelis 80% of Palestinians considered the PA corrupt,
and 62% viewed it as a liability rather than an asset. None of its main
institutions enjoys popular legitimacy.
The
increase in violence in the West Bank this year has only weakened the PA
further, playing into the hands of West Bank militants that offer West Bank
youth a chance to confront Israeli settlers and security forces. Recent student
university elections saw the Hamas-affiliated Islamic Wafa bloc defeat Fatah in
a run of hotly-contested votes.
The worry
is that, in seeking to make the PA the centre of a post-war Palestinian
politics in the West Bank and Gaza, the US may be backing the wrong horse, and
underestimating the resilience of Hamas in Gaza.
Certainly,
Abbas as the champion of a reformed Palestinian politics seems a ridiculous
proposition. Biden, no spring chicken himself, came away deeply unimpressed
when he went to see Abbas in Ramallah in 2022 and was subjected to a 25-minute
rambling opening statement. The 88-year-old Abbas is in his 18th year of a
four-year presidential term – no elections having been held since a 2010 round
was postponed.
The
jockeying to succeed Abbas has been under way for years, making the
factionalism even worse.
Hussein
al-Sheikh, as secretary of the PLO executive committee, is favoured by the US
because he is at least seen as practical. He speaks fluent Hebrew, and knows
senior Israeli military officers and politicians well.
Marwan
Barghouti would be a more plausible candidate, except he has been in prison
since 2002, serving a life sentence for murder after leading the second
intifada. He would probably have beaten Abbas in the cancelled 2021 elections
for PA president, and according to recent polls would also beat the Hamas
leader Ismail Haniyeh 60% to 37% – Abbas would not.
Another
Abbas rival is Mohammad Dahlan, the former leader of Fatah in Gaza, who has the
benefit of being born in a Gaza refugee camp. He is however seen as a creature
of the UAE, one of the countries that normalised relations with Israel,
something that Abbas regarded as a betrayal. Abbas expelled Dahlan from the
Fatah movement in 2011, and has refused to reconcile with him despite pressure
from Egypt and Jordan.
Those that
challenge the authority of Abbas pay the price. Nasser al-Qudwa, Arafat’s
nephew, was removed from Fatah’s central committee in May 2021 after he said he
would form a joint list with Barghouti to challenge Abbas.
Similarly,
the one internally generated attempt at PA reform – launched in 2010 and
entitled Last Stretch to Freedom – ended in disaster for the then prime
minister Salam Fayyad. His attempt to root out corruption ended with him being
rooted out in 2013. He now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Borrel is
convinced there is a residual Fatah presence in Gaza on which to build. He
said: “There are 60,000 people in Gaza who receive a salary from the
Palestinian Authority: 30,000 who were employees of the Palestinian Authority
before Hamas took over, and another 30,000 pensioners.”
Western
diplomats are not exactly clueless in Gaza about the path ahead, but the task
might seem less daunting if they had not simply watched, or worse connived, in
the PA’s slow atrophy.
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