Ghassan Khatib
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was born out of the Oslo agreements signed between Palestinians and Israelis 30 years ago. The interim authority was created with a resolution of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Council on October 12, 1993. It has survived due to two factors: the will of the Palestinian people, who saw it as a step towards freedom and independence, and the recognition, support, and financing from the international community, including Israel, who saw it as a factor in stability.
Three decades later, many of the foundations of the PNA are crumbling. It seems that it is losing the reasons for its existence and the factors that guarantee its survival.
The most dramatic transformation effecting the PNA has been the sea change in the policies, strategies—and very nature—of Israel. Israel under the leadership of Labor leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, the signers of the Oslo agreements, anticipated that the PNA would serve two functions. One was political; Israel at that time needed a political counterpart, especially one that did not rule out a territorial compromise. The other function was to provide Palestinians with services, thus releasing Israel from the ethical and legal burden of directly occupying and governing another people.
The core of the negotiations strategy designed by Rabin and Peres was to keep all options open. Israel neither accepted nor rejected the two-state solution as an end to the peace process, but rather pursued an open-ended position. In this way, Israel benefited from the PNA’s dual service/governance and political roles while not making the difficult sacrifices of land that Palestinians required.
Later, under the leaderships of both Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, and as a result of Israel’s transition to increasingly right-wing norms, Israel gradually began confining the PNA. It became little more than a service provider, keeping the lights on and the economy running. Israel strenuously resisted an independent political role for the PNA and its representatives and punished their political activities.
Natural Conclusions
Thirty years later, today’s Israel led by far-right figures Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, and Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer employing an open-ended strategy concerning the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel has made up its mind. In the new Israel there is no longer any critical mass—neither among the public nor the political elite—that is willing to give up control of any part of historical Palestine/Greater Israel. This new Israel is leaving the PNA with only one of two possibilities, either to fit with or quit this new reality. The pressure to fit is suffocating it to near-collapse.
This new Israel is leaving the PNA with only one of two possibilities, either to fit with or quit this new reality.
The resulting decline in the PNA’s ability to fulfill its political and governance role has made it gradually less relevant to the Palestinian public. The relentless continuity of Israeli settlement expansion, which caused the effective failure of the PNA’s political project of ending the occupation through peaceful negotiations, has chipped away at the PNA’s public support. Moreover, the combined decline in international donors’ financial contributions and the loss of Palestinian tax revenues that Israel deducts (effectively stealing them) is bankrupting the PNA. While the United States, which was one of the biggest donors to the PNA until 2017, has continued financing Palestinian security organs, it has cut aid for all other needs, distorting official structures and contributing to bad governance. As a result, public trust in the PNA has plummeted, with polls by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre showing trust in the PNA at 80% in 1996, dropping to a paltry 50% in 2022.
Because the PNA does not exist in a vacuum, its gradual weakening has played into the hands of the main opposition, the Islamic movement Hamas. Hamas gained enough strength to take control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, and appears to be leading the resistance against the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, thus increasing its popularity and making the PNA look impotent.
If this vicious circle continues—the weakening of the PNA by Israel and indifferent international donors, leading to a deterioration in performance, thus leading to declining public support, and then more de-legitimization—then the PNA is doomed. This last remaining tangible outcome of the Oslo Accords is itself on the verge of collapse.
The collapse of the PNA will not happen soon or suddenly. It might take some time. What is breathing life into the PNA yet are the narrow circles of government higher-ups, security elites, and the private sector—each with strong vested interests in the PNA’s survival.
What could cause this house of cards to come crashing down? The sudden absence of the president might have such an impact. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as one of the last of the PNA’s founders and elevated by international recognition and internal legitimacy, may be able to prop up the PNA as long as he is alive.
This is why the current heated debate on succession in the PNA is completely irrelevant. Its current president will likely be its last. The persistent factional divisions between Fatah and Hamas strengthen this prognosis. Palestinian law states that once the president dies, the speaker of the parliament (effectively non-existent due to riven factional politics) should assume the position of the president for two months, during which an election is held.
Without a speaker to serve temporarily, the only other path to presidential succession is for the leaders of Fatah to agree upon a successor or successors. Experience tells us that our leaders are more likely to disagree rather than agree. Without the will of the Palestinian people to hold it up, the PNA is much more likely to pass out of existence—much like the Oslo accords and the Israeli political culture that made them possible.
Ghassan Khatib served as Vice President of Advancement and lecturer of international studies and cultural studies at Birzeit University and held several positions in the Palestinian Authority. He authored Palestinian Politics and the Middle East Peace Process: Consensus and Competition in the Palestinian Negotiation Team (U. of Durham Press). He also founded and directed the JMCC.
The Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre was established in 1988 by a group of Palestinian journalists and researchers seeking to provide information on what was happening in the occupied Palestinian territories.