What is the Palestinian Authority and what does it do?

BarcelonaSince the Palestinian attacks of October 7, 2023, the European Union and Arab countries have been seeking to transform the Palestinian Authority into an alternative government in Gaza to replace Hamas. This is what lies behind the two-state conference sponsored on Monday in New York by France and Saudi Arabia, at which several countries allied with Israel took the step of formally recognizing the Palestinian state. This is an international refloating of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), a body completely discredited among Palestinians due to its lack of democratic guarantees, corruption, and nepotism. This is why French President Emmanuel Macron is pushing for a reform of the Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas. However, what is far from clear is whether refloating it is part of the plans of Benjamin Netanyahu's government, which is already preparing the annexation of the other Palestinian territory, the West Bank, where the PA still exercises some administrative functions while the Israeli occupation intensifies.

The PA, created in the 1990s following the Oslo Accords, was meant to be a transitional body to guide the Palestinians toward their own state. With the collapse of the process and the practical disappearance of the two-state solution, the PA lost its purpose and has become a hollow institution. Reduced to managing public services, schools, and hospitals, it has also become increasingly violent against Palestinians who dare to confront them. Furthermore, international donors have been cutting its funding: while foreign aid represented a third of the budget in 2013, it would only represent 3% in 2022. Israel, for its part, withholds taxes collected from Palestinians and imposes restrictions that have further weakened the Authority. Furthermore, with Gaza subjected to a genocidal military operation and the West Bank economically stifled, Ramallah's role is little more than a floating acronym in the air.

Before the attacks from Gaza, 80% of Palestinians already considered the PA to be corrupt. For years, it has been seen as a kind of Israeli security subcontractor, repressing opposition movements in the West Bank and arresting hundreds of Palestinians under the pretext of fighting terrorism. This has further undermined its legitimacy, which plummeted last winter when its special forces, in collusion with Israeli authorities, carried out a brutal crackdown on refugee camps in the northern West Bank, including killings, sieges, and mass arrests. The Abu Mazen Authority presented its credentials to Israel and its international allies as a means of offering to control Gaza, but resistance to the camps continued, and it was Israel that finished the job by emptying Jenin and Tulkarem, which became small-scale replicas of the Gaza Strip. The PA attempted to silence the discontent over those operations by banning Al Jazeera broadcasts in the West Bank.

Twenty years without elections

Mahmoud Abbas, 88-year-old president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) since 2005, is a deeply unpopular figure. His mandate expired in 2009, and no elections have been held in Palestine since then. The last, the 2006 legislative elections, were won by Hamas, a result rejected by the major powers and Israel. Since then, attempts at reform have failed. The absence of a clear leadership has favored the internal deterioration and fragmentation of the Fatah movement, the party Abbas inherited from the iconic Yasser Arafat and which was the most important group in the Palestinian national movement, with a secular and democratic program. Other more left-wing alternatives, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front, have been annihilated by repression.

Several names appear as possible successors to Abbas, but none have a consensus. Hussein al-Sheikh, the PLO's executive secretary, is favored in Washington for his experience and connections with Israel. Marwan Barghouti, imprisoned since 2002 for his involvement in the second intifada, remains highly popular and would likely defeat both Abbas and Hamas in an election. That's why Israel keeps him behind bars. Mohamed Dahlan, the former Fatah leader in Gaza, has roots in the Strip but is marked by his ties to the United Arab Emirates, an ally of Israel. Other figures, such as Nasser al-Qudwa, Arafat's nephew, have been expelled from the party for challenging the presidential authority.

The result is a discredited organization, without resources, without a vision, and rejected by its own population. The increase in violence in the West Bank and the victories of pro-Hamas blogs in university elections show the extent to which the discredit of the PNA has opened up spaces for other alternatives. The Paris-Riyadh plan to become the governing alternative to Hamas seems to exist only on paper. And it's clearly not part of Netanyahu's plan.