Paralysis of the Palestinian 'Authority': What's to be done?

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5805.shtml

Protests have erupated throughout the West Bank and Gaza as thousands of Palestinian Authority employees have not received wages for months (Rima Merriman)

The paralysis of the present Palestinian Authority has simply highlighted to the world and to the Palestinians themselves, who are persistently in denial about this, the real Wizard-of-Oz nature of their Authority and public institutions.

For over a decade now, since the Oslo Agreement signed by the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1993, the Palestinians, along with much of the world, have been laboring under a couple of misapprehensions. One is that, with Oslo, Israel had at long last recognized their aspirations, even if only partially. The other is that their leaders, as embodied by the presidency and the government that arose, had the wherewithal to move them towards a full-fledged Palestinian state on the 1967 borders in the face of Israel's grand plans and intentions in the region. It's the classic syndrome of desperate people believing what they want to believe.

The Palestinians and the international community then proceeded to be hoodwinked by the trappings they erected -- some of which, like the government buildings in Ramallah, looked solid and well-furnished enough thanks to foreign aid. But a few days ago, the government seat, a gleaming white stone building, was burnt down and looted by the Palestinians themselves, who have been reduced to worrying not about a state, but about feeding their children.

The media is interpreting this act of vandalism as the result of the divisiveness between Hamas and Fateh, but in reality, it is the inevitable result of the political and economic architecture that Israel had the upper hand in constructing with the Palestinians since Oslo and that the US has been consolidating and tightening, as in a noose, rather than honestly brokering peace.

The powers of the Wizard of Oz, in the well-known American novel by that name, are revealed at the end to be special effects. In spite of the Wizard's connection with the Good Witch of the North, he turns out to be a wizened old man with neither the power nor skill to provide anyone with brains, courage or heart - let alone a munchkin state.

Paralysis of the Palestinian 'Authority': What's to be done?

The Palestinian Minister of Social Affairs argues with angry employees (Rima Merriman)

The current paralysis of the Palestinian Authority highlights its true nature by showing up its special effects for what they are, a brave attempt at wishful thinking. I am referring to things like public institutions, passports, stamps, country internet domains and car plates; and to gestures like naming the occupied territories as the occupied "territory" to disguise the lack of geographic contiguity between the Gaza
Strip and the West Bank; like adding the word "National" to "Palestinian Authority", to declare that the Palestinian Authority is the embryo of a future state, like proclaiming "the State of Palestine" on some government buildings and websites.

But the reality is that the Palestinian Authority's elected officials at all levels can be kidnapped by Israel with impunity. The Palestinian authority lacks control, not only over external borders, but also over movement from one Palestinian city to another for itself and for its citizens. The Palestinian Authority has no sovereignty over its borders or over its population registry. It has no control over whether Israel can establish hundreds of Jewish settlements in its heart and expropriate Palestinian lands and exploit Palestinian resources.

The current paralysis of the Palestinian Authority also shows up the governance structure, as defined by Oslo to serve the security interests of Israel, to be itself a problem for Palestinians, and to be, in fact, the primary cause for the failures in PA governance to date - i.e., lack of democracy, rent-seeking and corruption.

The economic challenges facing the Palestinians after Oslo were enormous and were compounded by the fact that the occupied territories or the "quasi-state" constructed after Oslo had the economy of a developing country with all the challenges such an economy faces. The fiscal base of the Palestinian economy was dependant on income and customs taxes collected by Israel; its trade was dependent on Israel; the movement of goods and people were dependent on Israel, and Israel, naturally, took full advantage of these conditions to serve its interests, riding roughshod on Palestinian aspirations.

A poster pasted on the doors of the Ministry of Planning in Ramallah that reads "This is how the Palestinian government negotiates with its sons" (Rima Merriman)

What is remarkable, as economists point out, is that the advent of the PA did usher economic growth and private investment in spite of the uncertainties, and did reduce dependence on aid by approximately 10 percent of GDP.

However, just as the PA was building its administration, financed primarily by aid, Israel was building its illegal settlements, its checkpoints and its internal borders to protect its illegal settlements. Israel thus gained the ability to shut off entire Palestinian cities at very short notice, a power that it has used since the second Intifada to reduce the Palestinians to a basket case.

Now that the Palestinians have been sealed shut and starved, now that they are beginning to kill one another and to set fires in PA buildings, their representatives are readying themselves to speak with the enemy again on the enemy's terms, as they did in Oslo. The chances for a better deal for them are slim, given that the rosiest scenario on the far horizon, the Road Map, replicates the Oslo formula.

What is to be done? That's the million dollar question.

Israeli forces kill four, including two boys riding bicycles, in Gaza
Report, PCHR, 1 October 2006

Relatives of Husam Fayez Ghayyad and Basam Salama Bin Hamad, killed in an Israeli air strike, mourn during their funeral in Rafah Refugee Camp, southern Gaza Strip, 1 October 2006. (MaanImages/Hatem Omar)

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have committed two new war crimes in the Gaza Strip over the past two days, resulting in the death of four Palestinian civilians. Two of the victims were children brothers, and were killed when IOF fired a surface-to-surface rocket at them without any justification. The other two were killed in Rafah in an extra-judicial execution crime, which also resulted in the injury of two others, one of them a child.

PCHR's preliminary investigation into the first crime indicates that at approximately 9:15 on Friday, 29 September 2006, IOF deployed inside the Gaza Strip near Nahal Oz checkpoint, east of Gaza City, fired a surface-to-surface rocket at two children riding their bicycles near El-Shawwa Gas Station on Salah El-Deen Road west of Beit Lahia. The two children, who are brothers, suffered a direct hit, and their bodies were dismembered. The children were later identified as Anwar Abdel Ghani Hamdan (16) and his brother Hammam (13), residents of the town of Jabalia.

The Center's investigation indicates that the two children passed near an abandoned rack used to launch a homemade rocket against Israeli targets at an earlier time.

PCHR's preliminary investigation into the second crime indicates that at approximately 22:00 on Saturday, 30 September 2006, an IOF drone fired a rocket at two activists from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, who were walking near the eastern martyrs' cemetery in El-Salam Quarter in Rafah. They suffered a direct hit, killing one of them instantly and the other a few hours later from shrapnel injuries. Two bystanders were injured by shrapnel, one of them a 16-year old child. The two killed victims are Bassam Salama Bin Hamad (30) and Husam Fayez Ghayyad (22).

PCHR strongly condemns IOF killing of Palestinian civilians, and considers these actions to be a form of reprisal and collective punishment, which violate Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. PCHR condemns these two crimes, and:

# Points out that the IOF policy of extra-judicial executions against Palestinian activists increases tension in the region, and threatens to cause more casualties among Palestinians;
# Expresses serious concern over the lives of Palestinian civilians due to the escalating use of force by IOF against civilians;
# Reminds of the past IOF crimes against civilians, and the continued failure to discriminate between civilians and combatants by IOF during operations; and
# Calls upon the international community and High Contracting Parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention to intervene immediately and effectively to protect Palestinian civilians.