International community has totally failed the authority, claims PA spokesman
BEFORE DISPATCHING his letter to Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas admitted that the Palestinian Authority (PA) had “no authority”, without shocking or surprising most Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. They fully agree with his assessment that Israel has stripped the PA of any “meaningful jurisdiction in the political, economic, territorial and security spheres”.
Palestinian government spokesman Ghassan Khatib said that, although Abbas “likes the idea of stepping down and dissolving the PA”, he is not in a position to take the drastic step of returning to Israel the administration of Palestinian population centres where local affairs are run by the PA.
Palestinians are not prepared to cede the limited autonomy they enjoy in 40 per cent of the West Bank. Furthermore, a threat to take such a drastic step was reportedly met by counter-threats from the US of a halt to financial aid and from Israel a stop to the transfer of tariffs and taxes collected by Israel on behalf of the authority. This would have left 180,000 Palestinians employed by the PA without any livelihood.
Abbas’s decision to challenge Netanyahu to halt settlement activity and enter serious negotiations is intended to justify fresh “Palestinian action on the international level” if Israel fails to meet Palestinian demands, according to Khatib.
He said the PA could go ahead with applications for membership of international organisations, as it did successfully with Unesco, in spite of Israeli and US objections.
Khatib said the PA would also “fight Israel in the international legal arena”, adopt activities to “complement non-violent resistance to the occupation”, promote academic and trade-union boycotts, and urge divestment from Israeli firms.
“The PA has got to be more courageous” by calling for a boycott of all Israeli goods rather than just those from settlements, he said.
In his view, the PA is in serious danger of “collapse”. “The [current] financial crisis is the most serious in the history of the PA”, which cannot meet the needs of Palestinians in the West Bank.
“The absence of elections and the legislative council means there are no checks and balances” in the Palestinian system of governance, making the “executive branch too powerful”, he said. Khatib added that reconciliation between the Fatah-dominated PA and Hamas, which rules Gaza, had failed, as had “the peace process on which the PA has gambled since its establishment . . .The situation can only get worse.”
Khatib said the international community had “totally let down the PA because no serious attempt has been made to hold Israel to its commitments”.
Europeans, who could exert considerable pressure on Israel, “cannot go beyond verbal criticisms” because of domestic politics and US pressure.
The Arab Spring and the Iran crisis had “completely marginalised the Palestinian cause”, he added.
Khatib agreed with Palestinian analysts that the “two-state solution” involving the emergence of a Palestinian state alongside Israel was “nearly finished” or “finished”.
Asked why Palestinians did not stage a new uprising against Israel in the context of the Arab Spring, he replied: “There used to be springs here and there will be springs in future. People here operate by a different dynamic . . . Today we have a growing non-violent resistance movement. We hope it will flourish.”
