"PA President Mahmoud 'Abbas's speech [last Wednesday] was disappointing," writes Hani al-Masri in the leading Palestinian daily al-Ayyam.
Not only because of what he said, but also because it avoided any answers to the challenges and threats that endanger the Palestinian cause. The speech said nothing about the transfer of power after he departs, or how to achieve national unity, or how to provide the means for sustaining and developing the current intifada wave, or how to transform it into an all-out intifada with a clear leadership and specific aims, together with boycotting Israel and pursuing it for its crimes at all international levels and forums.
Instead of answering the question 'What is to be done?' in light of Israel’s escalating aggression, settlement activities, racism and extremism, the speech focused on reviving the political process via an international conference that will produce no change unless the balance of power that led to our current condition changes.
In his speech, the president moved from threatening to dissolve the PA and handing over its keys to the occupation to describing its existence as a national achievement that will only change with the establishment of a state. But the president did not explain the reason for altering his position. Is it because the tactic of threatening to dissolve the PA has achieved its aims and can do no more? Or is it because this option was never serious from the start? Or is it because the president discovered that this tactic was mistaken to begin with?
For a long time now, the demand has not been for the dissolution or collapse of the PA, but for altering its character, form and mission by constructing a complete alternative that should ensure that it changes from being a partner to the occupation within the context of a political process, to being an authority that resists the occupation or at least cohabits with the resistance. That could lead the occupation to dissolve it, of course, but the national alternative would be ready in such a case.
Did the retreat from the threat to dissolve the PA result from Arab, international, Fateh and Palestinian rebukes, that produced this U-turn of moving from threats to deeming the PA to be an 'achievement'? Bear in mind that amidst this U-turn, the PLO's Central Council's resolutions that were adopted by the PLO's Executive Committee, have either been ignored or are now no longer applicable. For it is not possible to combine viewing the PA as an 'achievement', even though it is bound by political, security, and economic commitments to Israel, and a radical reconsideration of the relations with the occupation. For that requires putting an end to the security coordination [between the PA and Israel] and to the PA's economic dependency on Israel, leading up to the withdrawal of the [PLO’s] recognition of Israel unless the latter recognizes a Palestinian state – as required by these resolutions.
The change in Palestinian discourse, from viewing the PA as 'an Authority without authority' to viewing it as 'an achievement,' means that keeping the PA alive has become an end in itself. It means that the PA is no longer a tool for ending the occupation and establishing a state at least in the current phase, and until conditions permit a resumption of the political process that has halted and that is likely to be extended for the foreseeable future.
Limited self-rule cannot be the Palestinian goal. It is Israel's goal, permitting it to manage the conflict rather than resolving it, and to use this so as to cover up the completion of the de facto situation and fait accompli on the ground.
One could claim that the president's description of the PA as 'an achievement' indicates continued confusion and a policy that stands on its head rather than its feet. Usually, when taking decisions, they are first studied, then adopted, then implemented. With us, decisions have been taken, then subsequently studied, then not implemented. This is because study has proven that despite the wish to deny the facts, the implementation of such decisions entails a cost that the PA is unable to pay. After all, the PA depends on the tax returns that Israel collects on its behalf, on the salaries of Palestinian workers in Israel and settlements, and on the monies from donor countries that continue to donate to the PA as long as the political process continues.
Putting an end to security coordination – which is the PLO's Central Council most important resolution– has long been a demand from the first moment it began to appear that there was no genuine political process that could end the occupation and lead to the establishment of a state, and that what we have been dealing with is really only a great deception that is being used as a cover for the confiscation, Judaization and settlement of more lands, and tightening the noose around the Palestinian people's neck to drive them to emigrate 'voluntarily' and calmly, waiting for the appropriate moment to force them to emigrate in large numbers.
Has the PA regained its authority for it to suddenly become an 'achievement' despite the fact that the Netanyahu government has warned against its possible collapse and has undertaken to do everything in its power to prevent such collapse and even though this is the same government that has brought it to the brink of collapse in an attempt to ensure that it remains subject to Israeli pressure and blackmail?
Of course, if the PA were to collapse or be dissolved, Israel would try to reconstruct it in a way that ensures that it will be more compliant with the requirements of its settler-colonial project. This is clear from [Israeli Defense Minister] Moshe Ya’alon’s words, who said that throwing away the PA's keys will drive many Palestinian hands in Fateh and elsewhere that are ready to pick them up.
Very sadly, there may be some truth in what Ya’alon is saying because the 20 years or so that have passed since the establishment of the 'Oslo PA' have created political, economic, and cultural conditions and vested interests that are ready to fight for the PA's survival and reconstruction in case it collapses or is dissolved. This is in addition to Israel's influence, first and last, and the influence of the Arab, regional and international parties that fear the consequences of the PA's collapse.
Does the above mean that the PA should persist with security coordination so as to ensure that it is not dissolved, since it is an ‘achievement’, since its dissolution will be the price it will have to pay if it ends the security coordination?
Of course not. Ending security coordination should be placed within the context of a new and comprehensive vision that aims to offer and build alternatives to the PA's political track. This is necessary if the PA's dissolution or collapse is not to lead to anarchy and a security breakdown, or to a vacuum that many parties and forces will try to fill.
In other words, those wishing to end security coordination should engage in a comprehensive process of change. An ailing patient in intensive care cannot fight the world's heavyweight boxing champion; nor can he fight before he recovers and prepares himself for war. Similarly, the Palestinian leadership cannot declare all-out war on Israel by ending security coordination while remaining at the occupation's mercy.
"Nor can it do so while continuing to lack most of the cards it abandoned as it panted after the illusion of establishing a state via negotiations, good behavior, trying to prove that it is qualified, trying to build state institutions and placing the PLO's institutions under the occupation's control," concludes Masri.
Ends…