Abbas & the PA, part 2
One of the main reasons for the resounding rejection of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza (other than the assassination of many of its leaders and supporters by Hamas) in the 2006 elections that followed Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the territory was the widespread corruption that is known to be endemic in the PA. The PA itself was created in 1994 after the signing of the Oslo Accords, as a new branding for the PLO, also known to have been rotten to the core in terms of financial and administrative corruption in the form of nepotism and embezzlement (see further below). In Gaza in 2006, Hamas promised “change and reform” as its platform. We’ve now seen how that has worked out.
Hamas grew in strength and numbers while the Palestinian Authority ruled Gaza from 1994-2007. The PA allowed weapons to be smuggled in, and terror attacks to be launched against Israelis from the enclave. Similarly, under the PA in the West Bank, new terrorist groups have formed there and have become active in attacks against Israelis.
The PA is no different in terms of corruption now than it was in its previous incarnation as the PLO. Abbas is in the 18th year of a 4-year term of office. His authoritarian rule is known for human rights abuses. The PA continues to pay out stipends to the families of those who have “martyred” themselves for the Palestinian cause (i.e. died while trying to kill Israelis). They have refused to condemn Hamas for the October 7th slaughter. They continue to blame the existence of Israel for everything that is wrong in the lives of Palestinians and in the region as a whole. But even with all that, their popularity in the West Bank is at an all-time low.
The history is complicated, but I'll do my best to simplify it (this means that I'm leaving a lot out; if you want a fuller story, there are plenty of histories available online). The PA was formed in 1994 in an agreement between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel, as a temporary (5 year) interim governing body with control over the majority of the West Bank. After Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the PA was granted control there too but lost it when Hamas took over. The PLO had been founded back in 1964 with a mission to annihilate the state of Israel and establish an Arab state in the territory instead; this was an outgrowth of the Fatah paramilitary organization co-founded with the same agenda by Yasser Arafat in the 1950s. Arafat become Chairman of the PLO in 1969. In 1974 the PLO became the official representative of the Palestinian people to the UN and still enjoys that status today, despite the PA rule in the West Bank and Hamas rule in Gaza (I told you it was complicated). In 1987 the US designated the PLO a terror organization because of its sponsorship and endorsement of violence against Israel and Israelis. According to a 1993 report, the PLO was the wealthiest of all terrorist organizations, with $8-10 billion in assets and an annual income – “from donations, extortions, payoffs, illegal arms dealing, drug trafficking, money laundering, fraud, etc.” – of $1.5-2 billion (the equivalent of over $4 billion per year today). Also in 1993, the PLO recognized Israeli sovereignty in the Oslo 1 Accord, changing its mandate (officially) to seek Arab statehood only in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and (officially) renounced violence and terrorism against Israel… and then proceeded to financially, ideologically, and militarily support the Second Intifada against Israel from 2000-2005. In 2018, the PLO officially changed their mind about the recognition of Israel, pending an Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 borders. In the meantime though, after the Oslo Agreements, the PA came to replace the PLO as the primary political representative of the Palestinian people – although as I mentioned, the PLO is still the official representation in the UN. But such replacement is really only true on paper; Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO since 1969, became head of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. And although he had formally renounced terrorism, he encouraged Hamas back in 2000 to launch “military operations” against Israel in the wake of declining support on both sides for further peace negotiations; this resulted in the slaughter of 29 Israeli civilians (many elderly) celebrating Passover in March 2002, as well as a variety of suicide bombings throughout Israel (over 1000 Israeli civilians were killed during the Second Intifada from 2000-2005, and another two thousand injured). Arafat also authorized funding for al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed terrorist wing of Fatah, responsible for killing Israelis and anyone seen as collaborating with Israel (including journalists) to this day. In this they have long worked closely with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah, among others. In terms of his own funds, in 2003 it was reported that he had a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion, with the conclusion that “although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat.” He was also known to have used millions of dollars of aid money to buy weapons and support terrorist groups. Arafat is the one who appointed Mahmoud Abbas prime minister in 2003, and after Arafat’s death in 2004, Abbas became the de facto leader of the PLO as well as the PA.
The idea that the PA constitutes the most moderate of Palestinian political options should be even scarier now, in the aftermath of October 7th, than it should have been back when the Oslo Accords were signed.
So Netanyahu’s outright rejection of the Palestinian Authority ruling Gaza after the war can be better understood with this background on the PA’s leadership. And presumably when Biden speaks of a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority governing in Gaza after the war, he is hoping for a PA that is no longer led by Mahmoud Abbas.
Yet there is absolutely no basis for thinking that this will make a difference. Prior to its amendment in the wake of the Oslo Accords, the PLO Charter stated: “Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.” What has changed, now that the illusion that Arafat and his disciples ever had any serious intention of implementing a 2-state solution has been shattered for good? This basic, foundational ideology is no different in its premises or its conclusions than Abbas’ continued anti-Israel and anti-Jewish speeches and actions.
But what are the alternatives? When Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas took over because the majority of voters felt that the PA and its ilk were irredeemably corrupt, hadn’t gone far enough in their attacks on Israel’s legitimacy, and had failed to push the agenda for a full Palestinian return to the land. For more than 75 years, generations of Palestinians have been educated by the likes of Abbas, and under both the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, the UNRWA has endorsed and actively promoted the same Jew-hatred and illegitimacy of the state of Israel in the education of the latest generation of Palestinians.
Biden wants the Palestinians to “have a determining voice” in who governs them, and this is obviously desirable in most polities where the west would like to see democracy develop and flourish. The problem is that this imposition of western ideals assumes a basic foundation of western values. But there is no reason to assume this. Opinion polls in the West Bank taken before October 7th actually demonstrate the opposite: if there had been an election in September, Palestinians would have elected a government more extreme and violent than the PA in its attitude toward Jews and Israel, a terrorist regime, just as they did in Gaza 18 years ago. And since October 7th, Hamas’ popularity has only increased.
It is hard to say whether the abject failure of the west (governments, intellectuals, journalists, and the marching masses) to comprehend the complete cultural differences between the democratic and liberal values –- i.e. life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to name a few -- of the west, shared by most Israelis (though not all of its current government members), and the ideological underpinnings of Palestinian leadership throughout the 20th century (I include here the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, responsible for inciting pogroms against Jews in Palestine before it became Israel and who eagerly allied himself with Hitler’s Nazis), is just wilful ignorance. (Gad Saad refers to it as “narcissistic cultural imperialism.”) Much as we would all like to see civilian casualties vastly minimized in Gaza, that will not happen with a ceasefire. And much as many of us would like to see the Palestinians govern themselves in the West Bank and Gaza going forward, who would comprise the kind of government that will be deemed legitimate by the Palestinian people raised on Jew hatred and Israel-denial and that won’t simply devolve into another corrupt terrorist-supporting entity? The cultural and political realities on the ground here make both of these aims fraught with challenges that can’t simply be left out of the discussion. One would think that after repeated failures of the west to try to impose our values and principles on the Middle East in the last 20 years alone (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt’s US-supported Arab Spring), after watching the oppression and slaughter of civilians by governments in Syria, Turkey, Iran, Yemen, and the majority of Israel’s other neighbors in the region, one would think that leaders of the free world might at some point have the bright idea that Israel (and not the UN) needs to manage this war because not only is its existence at stake, but it actually knows its neighbors better than most (I’m noting ironically that the UN is largely dominated by those neighbors who know exactly what they’re voting for when they urge ceasefire). And, as Biden has already said, Israel's current government needs to change as well.
(And China & Russia’s clear support for any government with values that oppose ours should be obvious, along with their reasons for cozying up with Iran. A future post, perhaps. Certainly I will have a lot to say about Russia and antisemitism before this blog is through.)
President Biden has been alone in his support for Israel because he seems to have a grasp on some of these basic facts on the ground; the cultural and political differences as well as the importance of unequivocal moral condemnation of October 7th and the need for complete eradication of Hamas. These are based on his western cultural values, and unlike other western ideologues who think they’re avoiding cultural imperialism by siding with “the oppressed” (looking at self-righteous and smug Trudeau, among others) Biden’s moral stance is not relativistic. But while the President’s call for a “revitalized” PA is a good start in terms of thinking about what happens next, it doesn’t go far enough in its recognition of the absolute lack of cultural and political support for a 2-state solution among any of the current Palestinian leadership candidates (and the recently huge loss of support for it by the Israeli public, but that’s a separate story). I’m sure that there are Palestinians who long for peace, stability, and prosperity and may be willing to forego the mission to annihilate Israel if it means a better future for their children (this has been the case in the past). But even they have been raised to deny Jewish history and to fear and hate Jews; those who don’t, have a terrible uphill battle to fight within their own societies, and are certainly not likely to gain widespread support for governance of a future Palestinian state. Theirs are the voices that the US needs to be propping up and promoting, not the PA’s.