The Legitimacy Crisis in the Palestinian Arena

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

From time to time, talk resurfaces on the Palestinian scene about the Palestinian government and the possibility of reshuffling it, sparking political analyses and speculation about the nature of the government and the people who might become members of it.

Barely any significant time passes before talk of ministerial changes or reshuffling the government returns, while the Palestinian street continues listening to news about it that mostly does not concern it and leaves no mark on its actual daily life.

Local Palestinian media, and some Arab media, have recently been preoccupied with this matter because of talk of dismissing the government or the possibility of its resignation. The question usually raised: what will happen if the Palestinian government is reshuffled, and how will the Palestinian reality change if this happens?

A Government That Does Not Govern

If we want to answer the question of the Palestinian government’s impact on Palestinian reality, we must confront the reality of the Palestinian government as it actually is, otherwise we will keep spinning in a vicious circle without obtaining a convincing answer. The successive Palestinian governments do not govern — they are mostly not the ones holding actual decision-making power, entirely stripped of will by two parties: the first is Israel, or the agreements concluded with the Zionist side, and the second is the president of the Authority, who controls the government according to what fits with the agreements with Israel.

The president of the Authority is forcibly bound by the agreements with Israel, and does not seem to possess the will to break free of this constraint, and the formation of the government is tied to its president’s and members’ agreement to the agreements and their implementation. And since it is Israel that dominates the interpretation and implementation of the agreements, it holds the upper hand and decides what Palestinians must do. This is why the Palestinian Authority’s leadership is always preoccupied with the Zionist entity’s satisfaction, so as not to issue decisions that might provoke the Zionists into cutting off funds. In other words, there is no sovereignty for the government or the president of the Authority — sovereignty belongs to Israel.

This is why, throughout the series of successive Palestinian government formations, we have found no initiatives undertaken by these governments to uplift the Palestinian people at every level of life. The successive governments have never once had implementable plans and programs to provide security for Palestinians, or to reclaim land on a broad scale, or to establish housing and afforestation projects preserving the land, or to preserve Palestinian culture in the face of consumer culture or the culture of normalization and Zionization.

Indeed, we have found local policies that negatively affect the educational level in schools and universities, and we have noticed a disregard for respecting teachers, media manipulation that raises the level of Palestinian confusion, a deepening of political and social divisions, a deterioration in Palestinians’ sense of security, and a rise in the level of corruption, especially regarding nepotism, favoritism, and the exploitation of public positions.

This means the successive governments have not offered solutions to the problems of the Palestinian people in the West Bank at least, and have inflicted great harm on the various fabrics of society — security, military, cultural, social, economic, and so on. It is quite possible that the government’s absence would not be harmful — indeed, it could reflect positively on the people. In other words, the Palestinian people would be in a better state had there been no government at all, contenting itself instead with institution directors managing daily affairs without obligations toward the Zionists. At the very least, the Palestinian people could have saved enormous sums of money now paid as salaries to those who have held ministerial positions.

The Hamdallah government was supposed to mend the internal Palestinian rift, since it was named the “national consensus government,” but it did not, and could not have. The Palestinian factions bear part of the responsibility for this failure, but the president of the Palestinian Authority himself bears the greater share of responsibility, because he always acts factionally, favoring one side over another, and cares a great deal about Zionist reactions.

The president of the Authority himself doomed the government to failure before it even began its work, when he said it was “his government,” and that it had to commit to two things: security coordination with the Zionists and adherence to the agreements with Israel. These two things are the cause of internal Palestinian infighting and divisions, and by insisting on them, he insisted on keeping the Palestinian arena in a state of paralysis.

What is unfortunate is that the government’s members — even though many of them are university professors who teach their students national ethics — agreed to both things, casting aside everything they had led their students to believe over the years. It was clear the members and their president preferred positions over adhering to national moral values, and this perhaps reflects one manifestation of the weakness of Arab morals and their collapse before the temptations of position, money, and sex.

The Legitimacy Crisis

Who initiates the formation of the Palestinian government? Presumably, the president of the Palestinian Authority, who presents it, once formed, to the Palestinian Legislative Council. The Legislative Council is closed, banned from convening, and it is said the keys to the Council’s halls are in Abbas’s hands, and he is the one preventing the Council from convening. In any case, the Palestinian Legislative Council is no longer legitimate, because its four-year term has ended, and elections for a new council are supposed to be held. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is likewise illegitimate, because his own four-year term ended in 2009 as well.

What is unfortunate — indeed, what makes one’s brow sweat with shame — is that the years pass while he continues sitting on the seat of the Authority’s presidency without shame or trepidation. Free peoples do not accept this, and free men do not accept for themselves remaining in positions that are not theirs. Likewise, the PLO’s councils — such as the National Council, the Central Council, and the Executive Committee — are not legitimate, because all of them violate their own internal bylaws, whether regarding the periods of convening or their composition.

One of the farces related to this matter is that the Central Council, which the Authority considers legitimate, made a decision to end security coordination with Israel, and the president of the Authority did not implement it, which shows the extent to which the executive authority disregards legitimacy, and the extent to which the PLO’s presidency disregards the organization’s own institutions. The organization also operates without a charter, and let us imagine how a displaced people whose land is usurped can achieve liberation while unable even to draft its own constitution or charter organizing relations between people, and between people and institutions, so that every individual knows his responsibilities and national obligations. Note that the Palestinian National Charter was annulled at the request of Israel and America, without any replacement.

It appears the only legitimacy in force in the West Bank is the legitimacy of the sons of Zion, the American consul, and the American security coordinator between the Authority and the Zionists. This is confirmed by the fact that the names of the Hamdallah government were presented to Israel and America before being announced to the Palestinian people, and were only announced after obtaining their approval. In other words, the Palestinian people is illegitimate, and its presence on the land of Palestine is illegitimate, and Palestinians must gather their belongings and leave, abandoning the country to whoever wreaks corruption and despotism upon it.

There are no legitimate decisions in the Palestinian arena, because they are issued by illegitimate people. And because of arrogance and insistence on stealing legitimacy from the people, the Palestinian government did not go before the Legislative Council to request a vote of confidence, even though it was named a “consensus government.” And because of the government’s positions on Gaza regarding reconstruction and employee salaries, and its position on elections, it deserves to be named a “government of discord,” not consensus.

The Twin Crises of Identity and Distribution

Beyond the legitimacy crisis, the Palestinian arena suffers from two other crises: a crisis of identity and a crisis of distribution. People in the West Bank specifically live in a state of confusion and disorientation, not knowing precisely where they are headed, nor how matters might develop in the future regarding the Palestinian cause.

Of course, no one can precisely predict where the Palestinian cause is heading, but peoples always find in their intellectuals, thinkers, and political, economic, and social leaders a vision offered to people to light their way. Peoples find those who clarify matters for them, who affirm their goals, ambitions, aspirations, and hopes, and who offer various programs for achieving accomplishments.

The illegitimate Palestinian leadership possesses no vision, no strategy, and no philosophy, and offers no programs the people could follow according to their requirements. All Abbas possesses is an ideology of continuing failed negotiations that inflict great harm on the Palestinian people. So who are the Palestinian people now? Are they West Bankers or Gazans? Fatah supporters or Hamas supporters? Leftists or rightists? Friends or enemies of the Zionists? Soldiers for Israel or for Palestine? Arabs, Muslims, or Palestinians? The Palestinian has been strangled to the point that he no longer knows who he is, what he wants, where he is headed, and how and when. America gnaws at his bones, Israel treats him with contempt, his factions are blinded by self-interest, and many of his intellectuals and academics have turned into brokers of the homeland, some even offering their expert services to the homeland’s enemies.

The distribution crisis is also suffocating. It is no wonder to find someone academically backward, or a spy for Israel, occupying vital administrative positions, while the excellent and the patriotic are cast into a distant corner, unable to find themselves a job. Connections are readily available for failures, for thug “za’ran,” and for the backward, while creative people suffer marginalization and exclusion. In Palestine, some inherit and some do not, according to which faction a person belongs to, and according to his capacity for hypocrisy, deception, lying, and manipulation.

Justice in Palestine is lost — it is a land that has fallen to those who have earned wrath, the unjust who do not hesitate to harm people and broker the homeland and its citizens. Injustice is as widespread as corruption, and no one is stopping the wheel of decline. In Palestine, there are those who enjoy every pleasure of life, and there are those who cannot even find treatment for their illnesses.

What is repulsive is that Gaza suffers from every evil of life and from the siege of enemies, while the West Bank luxuriates in American money, living a consumer life at a level far higher than the level of consumer life in many Arab and Islamic countries. There are those who plunder the money of the poor and needy, taking pleasure in the pain of their own people, who have never once held back from offering sacrifices so that everyone might have dignity and honor.

Three crises besiege the Palestinian human being, paralyzing him materially and morally, while Palestine’s leadership still searches for new labyrinths to further burden the already burdened. What is disgraceful is that the cultural and academic leaderships, who are supposed to carry the people’s concerns and raise the banner of resisting injustice, despotism, and corruption, are instead mired in the mud of indifference, constituting a great support for the corrupt oppressors.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “أزمة الشرعية في الساحة الفلسطينية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.