Dissolving the Palestinian Authority

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

22 August 2006

A number of Fatah members have expressed their conviction that dissolving the Palestinian Authority represents a way out of some of the impasses the Palestinian people are going through, and have said that the Authority is unable to protect the Palestinian people and is little different from 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 numerous 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 alien to the logic of the South Lebanon Army, and that the agreements enlist Palestinians in the service of Israeli security rather than Palestinian security. As far as Fatah was concerned, such statements were considered malicious and serving the Zionists, said only by those working against the national interest. We were convinced that personal interests were what governed the conduct and statements of many Fatah leaders.

The call to dissolve the Authority now comes from Hamas, after it found itself unable to manage the situation. This is evidence of the odious factionalism from which the Palestinian arena suffers. When I wrote the original article on 17 March 2006, Hamas was angered by it, considering that it pulled the rug out from under its feet. It is now clear how each of the two large movements tries to flee from scholarly logic into odious factional logic.

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 those who ran them as traitors. And this was the Israeli demand ever since 1967, because Israel was concerned not to 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. In what?

We have become entangled in managing the citizens’ affairs without having a state of our own, and without 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 overseeing and managing people’s daily affairs — so is it right for us to suddenly abandon this administration? If we were to do something of that sort, further chaos would spread through the Palestinian arena, and we would leave people wandering aimlessly, administratively, economically, socially, financially, culturally, and politically. Wisdom requires that we provide an administrative alternative to take the place of the existing Authority.

It is possible, indeed it is a duty, that we work immediately to dissolve the security apparatuses — apart from the police force — and gradually transfer their personnel to other work, so that they do not lose their source of livelihood all at once. These apparatuses were not established in the first place to defend Palestinian security, but rather to pursue militants and fighters, or to defend Israeli security. This is why Israel permitted our apparatuses to carry certain personal weapons that pose no harm to the Israeli army. Moreover, the locations of the security apparatuses expose our young men to danger, since they are unable to defend themselves should Israel wish to storm them or arrest personnel inside them. We have lost a great deal from the existence of these apparatuses, which have drained our material resources and made us a laughingstock before the world through them — not to mention the quantities of information these apparatuses have supplied to Israel.

Regarding the Authority, I believe there are alternatives that ought to be up for discussion, and I put forward the following:

First: leaving an administrative vacuum, which might push direct occupation to return and take hold of the administration of the West Bank and Gaza. I do not think this alternative will materialize, because Israel will not wish to return to being preoccupied with our daily affairs, nor to appear before the world once again as an occupying state. The agreements have spared it both of these things, and it is content with that.

On the other hand, it is easier for Israel to pursue the Palestinian resistance while there exists the claim that there is a Palestinian entity. This has enabled it to use its various military instruments, including aircraft and tanks, and has justified continuous incursions for it, and many countries have stood by it on the grounds that its military and security operations amount to self-defense. The return of direct occupation would strip Israel of many of the advantages of military and security maneuvering, and would negatively affect its scope for pursuing the Palestinian resistance.

Second: calling on Jordan to reverse the disengagement and return to the logic of union. This may be the easy, practical solution, since Jordan already 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 impose a condition of representing the Palestinians, while the Palestinians would impose a condition of representing the Palestinian people wherever they are present, 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 its existing political system, and it will hesitate greatly over finding a new unionist formula between Palestine and Jordan. Or would Jordan agree only to concern itself with the daily affairs of Palestinians and leave other issues to a Palestinian leadership, or to the Palestinian factions and parties?

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

This alternative requires mastery of electronic work, such that a large part of administrative business is shifted onto computers, which ought to be distributed across the various neighborhoods. Within this framework, employees would carry out their work at home or in community centers. This is a revolutionary and creative solution that we have not yet attempted to adopt. We did try popular administrations in the seventies and eighties, but most of our work then was not methodical, and was marked by improvisation and muddling through. We now have the opportunity to develop it properly.

Fourth: insisting 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 now. And when we defeat Israel in the West Bank and Gaza, we will have defeated it across the whole of Mandatory Palestine. For this to be possible, we have no choice but to become strategic planners and to develop means and methods very different from what is followed now.

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