Alternatives to the Palestinian Authority

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

A number of Fatah members have expressed their conviction that dissolving the Palestinian Authority would provide a way out of some of the predicaments the Palestinian people are going through, saying that the Authority cannot protect the Palestinian people and that it more closely resembles the “village leagues” that Sharon initiated together with Menachem Milson in 1981 to manage the daily affairs of the Palestinian people. I do not feel comfortable with this call, especially since someone like me faced many attacks from Fatah members over precisely this argument. Many were those who said that the Palestinian Authority was not far removed from the village leagues, nor foreign to the logic of the South Lebanon Army, and that the agreements had conscripted Palestinians into the service of Israeli security rather than Palestinian security. As far as Fatah was concerned, such statements were considered malicious and serving the Zionists, and only those working against the national interest would say such things. We were convinced that personal interests dominated the behavior and statements of many of Fatah’s leaders.

Now comes the call to dissolve the Authority after Hamas’s victory, which is itself cause for discomfort. In any case, I am in favor of dissolving the Authority — but why, and how?

The greatest sin we committed was accepting a Palestinian authority under Israeli occupation. This was precisely the philosophy of the village leagues, which we always described as treachery, and their operators as traitors. And this had been the Israeli demand since 1967, because Israel was concerned that it not be described as a state occupying others, and because it wanted to rid itself of managing the daily affairs of the Palestinians. But the problem now is that we have become entangled. Entangled in what?

We have become entangled in administering the affairs of citizens without having a state of our own, and without having independence even in administrative matters. There are tens of thousands of employees and hundreds of thousands of people who find their daily bread through the Authority’s salaries, and there are hundreds of institutions that oversee and manage people’s daily affairs — so is it right for us to suddenly abandon this administration? If we were to do something of this kind, more chaos would spread across the Palestinian arena, and we would leave people wandering aimlessly, economically, socially, financially, culturally, and politically. Wisdom dictates that we provide an administrative alternative to take the place of the existing Authority.

It is possible, indeed it is a duty, for us to work immediately to dissolve the security services — apart from the police force — and to gradually redirect their personnel into other lines of work, so that they do not lose their source of livelihood. These services were not established, fundamentally, in order to defend Palestinian security, but rather to pursue militants and mujahideen, or to defend Israeli security. This is why Israel permitted our services to carry certain personal weapons that pose no harm to the Israeli army. Moreover, the locations of the security services expose our young men to danger, given their inability to defend themselves if Israel wishes to storm them or arrest the personnel inside them. We have lost a great deal because of the existence of these services, which have drained our material resources and turned us into a laughingstock before the world — not to mention the quantities of information these services have supplied to Israel.

Regarding the Authority, I believe there are alternatives that should be subject to deliberation. I put forward the following:

…these two matters, and it [Israel] is happy about that.

On another note, it is easier for Israel to pursue the Palestinian resistance so long as the claim exists that there is a Palestinian entity. This has enabled it to use its various military machinery, including aircraft and tanks, and has justified its continuous incursions, and many states have stood by it on the premise that its military and security operations amount to self-defense. A return to direct occupation would strip Israel of many of the advantages of military and security maneuver, and would negatively affect its scope for pursuing the Palestinian resistance.

Second: calling on Jordan to rescind disengagement and return to the logic of unity. This may be the easy, practical solution, since Jordan exists as a state and would need only some simple administrative measures to run daily life in the West Bank and Gaza. But would Jordan accept it?

If Jordan were to accept, it would set as its condition the representation of the Palestinians, while the Palestinians would set as their condition the representation of the Palestinian people wherever they are found, as well as the continuation of Palestinian resistance with freedom to operate from within the state that lost the West Bank. Jordan will not accept Palestinian resistance under the political system currently in place, and it will hesitate a great deal before finding a new unity formula between Palestine and Jordan. Or would Jordan accept concerning itself only with the daily affairs of the Palestinians, leaving the other issues to a Palestinian leadership or to the Palestinian factions and parties?

Third: a Palestinian shift toward popular administration, gradually transferring institutions into neighborhoods and villages, and abandoning fixed institutional addresses. This too is a reasonable solution, but it requires a Palestinian national culture far removed from the factional culture currently prevailing, one that does not distinguish between the professional and the partisan, and that divides citizens according to their political affiliations. The Palestinian mind has not yet grasped that administration requires professionalism, and that this has nothing to do with partisanship or tribal fanaticism. We can only succeed in this field if administrative matters are left to independent professional experts with a national commitment.

This alternative requires mastery of electronic work, such that a large portion of administrative business shifts onto computers, which ought to be spread throughout the various neighborhoods. Within this framework, employees would carry out their work at home or at popular centers. This is a revolutionary and creative solution that we have not yet tried to adopt. We attempted popular administrations in the eighties and seventies, but most of our work then was not systematic and was marked by improvisation and slapdash effort. We now have before us an opportunity for development.

Fourth: insistence on resistance and expelling the occupation by force. This is a strategic alternative that requires mobilizing Arab and Islamic energies, and it requires a Palestinian culture of a different kind from what exists today. And when we defeat Israel in the West Bank and Gaza, we will have defeated it throughout all of Mandate Palestine. For this to be possible, we have no choice but to become strategic planners and develop means and methods very different from what is followed today.

Are there other alternatives? We certainly await something from those who have one to offer.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “بدائل السلطة الفلسطينية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.