Palestinian Authority faces crisis amid Gaza violence and West Bank crisis

Canberra: As the world watches, and often turns away from the violence in Gaza, mass violence in the other occupied Palestinian territory, the West Bank, has brought life to a standstill for much of its population.

Violence from illegal Israeli settler communities, the dispossession of Palestinians from their homes and clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces continue to ratchet up as the death toll in Gaza climbs.

Sitting in partial control of the West Bank, along with Israel is the Palestinian Authority (PA), the remnants of a resistance movement turned political authority, that finds itself more marginalised than ever as Palestinians endure the deadliest and most destructive episode since the Nakba of 1948.

Israel's war on Gaza has resulted in the near-total destruction of the strip, the killing of at least 41,000 Palestinians, and the displacement of another 2 million.  The West Bank has also experienced its bloodiest year since the 1967 occupation, with Israeli forces and settlers killing at least 600 Palestinians, alongside widespread destruction and mass displacement. Fourteen Israeli settlers and soldiers have been killed in the West Bank in 2024.

Despite these unprecedented events of the past year, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has yet to directly address the Palestinian public about the war, while the newly formed PA government, established in March 2024, has been conspicuously silent neither holding a press conference or appointing a government spokesperson.

This silence is not merely a failure of communication — it reflects the PA's broader political paralysis.

Limited authority Established under the 1993 Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel, the Authority was initially conceived as an interim governing body, tasked with laying the foundation for an independent Palestinian state within five years. That was 31 years ago.

Now, the PA functions primarily as an administrative entity with limited authority over the fragmented West Bank territories — at best — and, at worst, as a colonial subcontractor complicit in managing the occupation of its people.

Perhaps no group understands the limitations of the PA more intimately than Palestinians living in the West Bank.  Home to at least 3.5 million Palestinians and an estimated 700,000 Israeli settlers (including in East Jerusalem), the West Bank has become a fragmented and suffocating landscape, punctuated by a labyrinth of checkpoints, roadblocks and military gates that severely restrict movement.

Settlement activity dictates nearly every dimension of life for West Bank Palestinians, from determining which roads they can access, to controlling the flow of goods and services between towns and villages.  Settlement municipal borders, which now encompass 40 percent of the West Bank, effectively strangle any possibility of economic or political autonomy for Palestinians.

The settler movement, once perceived in the West as a fringe element, has now firmly entrenched itself within the mainstream of Israeli politics.

In September 2023 and 2024, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented maps at the United Nations General Assembly that depicted Israel as a unified state, encompassing both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

In 2016, Yair Lapid, Leader of the Opposition in Israel and former Prime Minister (2022), openly declared" "My principle says maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians." In October 2023, Gideon Sa'ar, a former Israeli minister and a leading candidate for the role of Defence Minister, asserted, "Gaza must be smaller at the end of the war … it's the price of loss that the Arabs understand." Silence and appeasement In the face of this Israeli accelerated colonisation, the Palestinian Authority's strategy has been one of silence and appeasement.

The PA has focused on proving its worth to international donors rather than addressing the existential threats facing Palestinians.

Last month, the newly appointed Palestinian Prime Minister published an article in The Washington Post, outlining the PA's "day after" plan for Gaza. However, this plan clings to the same discredited framework of the Oslo Accords, a strategy that has been rendered irrelevant by Israel's continued land grabs and the PA's own crumbling legitimacy.

Abbas' popularity has plummeted to dismal levels, with 84 percent of Palestinians calling for his resignation and 66 percent perceiving the PA as a burden on the Palestinian people.  Among Palestinians, particularly the younger generation, the authority is increasingly seen as little more than a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation.

It is also no longer capable of co-opting young Palestinians through public sector employment, with international donors diverting funds away from PA coffers and Israel regularly suspending or pirating Palestinian tax revenues.

Since October 2023, Israel has been withholding $75 million per month from Palestinian tax revenues. In total, since 2019, Israel has withheld or deducted over $1.4 billion, citing various pretexts.

The authority now teeters on the brink of financial collapse.

Meanwhile, as the Israeli military systematically obliterates public infrastructure in areas ostensibly under PA control, it is methodically dismantling one of the last pillars of the PA's legitimacy further eroding the PA's already fragile governance.

Leadership has lost touch The Palestinian Authority stands at a crossroads, caught between maintaining its current path or confronting the hard truths of its decline.

Its continued silence amid the destruction of Gaza and the relentless expansion of Israeli settlements suggests a leadership that has lost touch with the people it claims to represent.

The PA's future — and the future of the Palestinian national movement — depends on whether it can transcend its passivity and embrace a bold rethinking of its role.

What is needed is a shift from the failed paradigm of state-building to a focus on decolonisation, a reimagining of the struggle that would require abandoning the Oslo framework and, with it, Abbas' long-held vision for the PA and the PLO. But this is a price that neither Abbas nor his inner circle seem ready to pay. (360info.org)