The Palestinian Authority is Failing the Palestinian People

14 August 2015

By Khalid Amayreh

When the Palestinian Authority (PA) was created following the scandalous Oslo Accords in 1993, many Palestinians hoped that the new reality would eventually give them a semblance of freedom from the sinister Israeli occupation.

Now, 22 years later, most Palestinians feel betrayed, disappointed and disillusioned by the gigantic fiasco of the PA, nearly at all levels.

Politically, Israel has effectively killed any remaining realistic prospects for the establishment of a viable and territorially-contiguous Palestinian state worthy of the name. Jewish settlements are ubiquitous all over the West Bank and it is highly unlikely that a peace-minded government would appear in Israel in the foreseeable and intermediate future as the Israeli Jewish society continues to drift toward fanaticism, racism and fascism.

Economically, a majority of Palestinians feel they were better off before the conclusion of the Oslo Accords than they are now. A growing number of Palestinian families are joining the legions of the poor.

As to the Israeli occupation, it is clear that its grip on various aspects of Palestinian life has become tighter than ever before.

Today, the Israeli factor is more insidious, more vicious and permeates all walks of life. Even, simple tasks that people elsewhere would take for granted are formidable challenges for Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

And while a manifestly sadistic Israel enjoys persecuting and tormenting our people in a variety of ways, the PA continues to bask in its own powerlessness and even irrelevance.

Indeed, the PA contents itself with merely playing the role of message courier between the Israeli Shin Beth agency, which functions under the rubric of the so-called Civil Administration, and the helpless Palestinian citizens.

According to insiders, in many cases even this subordinate role is abused by PA operatives due to corruption and mediocrity.

Betraying the people

The PA leadership claims it is concentrating on achieving strategic goals, such as preparing for Palestinian statehood, which we are told is consuming its time and efforts.

However, it is clear that the PA cannot be given the benefit of the doubt for many plausible reasons.

First, as mentioned above, the establishment of a genuine Palestinian state is no longer possible in the realm of reality. We who live in the heart of reality in the West Bank know better. We know deep in our hearts that it is too late for Palestinian statehood. I know we cannot prevent the big mouths and little brains in Ramallah from keeping up dreaming.

But we all know that the PA and the hangers-on have been dreaming too much and for too long, with manifestly disastrous consequences on the Palestinian people and their enduring just cause.

Second, it is really hard to believe that the PA will be able to wrest a real state from Israel at a time when the PA cannot get Israel to allow a Palestinian from the West Bank stranded in the Gaza Strip to return home.

Today, Palestinians are being tormented, persecuted and humiliated not only by Israel, but also by some Arab regimes considered close to the PA, such as the Sissi regime in Cairo.

Attempting to curry favor with one of the worst human-rights violator under the sun, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas remarked earlier this year that that Sissi took Egypt from darkness to light.

The utterly mendacious sycophantic statement was particularly scandalous as Egypt is finding itself in the grip of a fascist junta that murders its own citizens in broad daylight under the rubric of fighting terror.

Beholders might be prompted to think that Abbas is getting something in return from the Sissi junta for his unctuousness and sycophancy.

He is not.

In fact, Abbas has utterly failed to get the bloody Cairo gang to treat Palestinians stranded at the Cairo airport with any modicum of respect and dignity.

Abbas has also failed to get the man who "got Egypt out of the darkness " to reopen the Rafah border crossing for a few days to get thousands of Palestinians on both sides of the borders to either return home or travel abroad.

So where is that special relation between Sissi and Abbas? And where is that special relation between "the big sister" and Palestine?

Let us not fool ourselves. A regime that torments, murders and humiliates its own people will not behave in exemplary manner toward the Palestinians.

This is the truth that neither Mahmoud Abbas nor the band of hypocrites and sycophants around him are willing to come to terms with.

Needless to say, the inescapable conclusion from all of this is that the PA is part of the problem facing the Palestinian people.

This bitter and painful reality can only change when the PA starts feeling and caring for the Palestinian people.

Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and current affairs political commentator living in Occupied Palestine 

 

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