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from https://www.newsweek.com/no-partner-peace-fantasy-moderate-palestinian-authority-opinion-1854268

No Partner for Peace: The Fantasy of a Moderate Palestinian Authority |
Opinion
Dec 20, 2023 at 12:58 PM EST

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Bombs at the Border: Israel Threatens Offensive on Another Front
By Joseph Epstein
Analyst
FOLLOW
11
Two months after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in Israel, Palestinians
paraded through the streets of Nablus with the charred corpse of a
teenage would-be terrorist who blew himself up in a planned bombing. The pallbearers were members of the Palestinian Authority's paramilitary wing.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been resisting pressure
from President Joe Biden to empower the PA to govern Gaza. He has good
reasons to do so.

The dream of a new Palestinian state next to Israel, governed by the PA
is wishful thinking at best.

Unrest on the West Bank
Palestinian demonstrators hurl rocks toward Israeli troops during confrontations with them in the West Bank town of Al-Ram on Jan. 27, a
day after a deadly Israeli raid on the Jenin camp.
AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

The PA has proven too ideologically extreme and inept to govern the West
Bank, much less Gaza. It spreads, the same radical, revolutionary
ideology as Hamas and is unpopular among Palestinians due to its
crippling level of corruption. A recent poll found just 17 percent of Palestinians are satisfied with the rule of PA President Mahmoud Abbas
and 63 percent believe the PA is a burden on the Palestinian people.

The PA was not always so disliked. Following the 1993 Oslo Accords, Palestinians embraced the newly founded government under Yasser Arafat,
who had previously led the terrorist Palestinian Liberation
Organization. Yet as the PLO transitioned into a government, its
popularity dissipated as it became clear that the only Palestinian
winners from the Oslo Accords were PA officials who enriched themselves
by embezzling international aid. In 1997, the PA was scandalized when an internal audit showed it "lost" a quarter of its budget to corruption
and mismanagement.


The stark contrast between PA officials and Palestinians is visible on
the streets. PA officials live in mansions while regular Palestinians
struggle with unemployment. During government cutbacks, the Ramallah
government purchased a $50 million private plane for Abbas. His sons,
Tareq and Yasser, own a business empire worth hundreds of millions of
dollars while the average daily wage in PA-controlled territory is just
over $30.

READ MORE
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Although Ramallah occasionally announces probes into corruption, there
have been no systematic reforms. There is a complete lack of
transparency in state institutions and no political will to hold the
corrupt accountable.

Corruption has caused Palestinians to take to the streets multiple times
in the past few years, despite the harsh suppression of demonstrations
by PA security forces.

To save its last shred of legitimacy with the Palestinian people, the PA resorts to extremist policy and rhetoric to paint its members as
champions of the Palestinian struggle. Over two decades, the PA has
doled out over $300 million to the families of convicted terrorists,
including those who have killed Americans. When the United States
threatened to cut funding to the PA until it scrapped the martyr payment program, Abbas said if the PA budget contained only one penny, it would
go to the program.

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Violent incitement is an everyday reality in PA-controlled territory.
PA-run schools, summer camps and children's TV programs promote
antisemitism and indoctrinate Palestinian children against Israel,
encouraging martyrdom. An independent Israeli research institute
partially attributed a surge in teenage terrorism earlier this year to
PA indoctrination.

PA extremism only worsened after Oct. 7. Following the massacre, eight
PA-run schools celebrated with speeches, statements and arts and crafts displays. Last month, the PA issued an official statement accusing
Israel of killing its own civilians with attack helicopters at the
Supernova music festival. The statement came one day after President Joe
Biden voiced support for a "revitalized" PA governing Gaza. In the past
month, Jibril Rajoub, the Fatah Central Committee chairman who is seen
by some as Abbas's potential successor has called on all Palestinians to
join Hamas in battle against Israel and even threatened Israel with
another Oct. 7 in the West Bank.

Many proponents of the PA argue that Ramallah must dabble in extremism
to keep favor with a radical Palestinian public. It also goes a long way
toward distracting from their own corruption and ineptitude. Considering
that 83.1 percent of Palestinians supported the Oct. 7 massacre, this
may be true. But this logic is a self-fulfilling prophecy: extremist
policy further incites Palestinians and then the radicalized
Palestinians drive more extremist policy.

But there is another reason Ramallah pursues extremism. The PA's
kleptocratic and lazy leadership has realized that by keeping its
population as underdeveloped and radical as possible, it can attract
more in international aid that it can then embezzle without having to
govern. For the Palestinian cause to remain relevant and profitable, the Palestinians must be as miserable as possible.

In short, the PA has no incentive to change its destructive policies.
But while PA leaders criticize Israel, they need Israel to exist to
maintain security over their domain to cash in on international aid as
the legitimate "moderate" representative of the Palestinians. Israel has
been happy to play that game in exchange for security cooperation.

Many in the Israeli security services reason that the PA may be bad, but
the chaos without them will be worse. This short-sighted logic of
preserving a terrible status quo is what led to Oct. 7. Clearly the PA
is crumbling with no possibility of reform or redemption. Currently, it
doesn't even have control over swaths of the West Bank, including areas
of Jenin.

Israel may have finally learned its lesson. Last Tuesday, Netanyahu
reiterated that the PA could not govern Gaza post-Hamas. That clarity
received an immediate rebuke from the Biden administration, which
suggested that pressure from Netanyahu's far right coalition was the
cause of Israel's rejection of the PA.

But when it comes to opposing PA-rule in Gaza, the Israeli right and
left are united. Last Wednesday, opposition leader Yair Lapid tweeted,
"no one in the world... thinks that Gaza should be handed over to [Abbas]."

U.S. supporters of PA sovereignty over Gaza are well-meaning but
delusional. Their hope for a two-state solution has propagated the
fantasy of a "moderate PA" since Oslo, but 40 years ago, the PA was the
same as Hamas. Today, the PA is just Hamas tethered to the pockets of
the international community.

Joseph Epstein is a legislative fellow for the Endowment of Middle East
Truth (EMET).

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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About the writer
Joseph Epstein
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Comments include

Dave Heston
17 hours ago

Excellent article. It's quite unlikely that Israel will ever know peace
as long as they are bordered with fundamentalist Muslims who worship the jihadist words in the Quran and of Mohammed. Even an internationally
installed and monitored government with free elections in Gaza wouldn't
last. Absent rapid economic success and a corresponding rise in the
quality of life, Palestinian voters would ensure that it reverts to
extremist fundamentalism in a very short time. The Quran and Mohammed
always win over intelligence and common sense. This is a conflict with
no end.


Scott Anderson
9 hours ago

Many people and the Biden Administration are delusional. They assume
everyone wants peace and that people are willing to work together for
peace. It is politically convenient for us to think that way. But humans
are not always logical. A lot of blood has already been spilt. Iran has
always worked to destroy any breakthrough that could lead to peace.
Arafat rejected the land for peace deal when Clinton was President since
he had promised his people that they could take everything away from the Israelis. It is unclear how long this war will go on. The Israelis are defeating Hamas though. But fighting with Hezbollah is increasing.


Gilbert Pangyarihan
17 hours ago

We can't force two different groups of people to become Siamese twins.

ully Present
13 hours ago

So true.

The U.S. and others do not want to face its out-of-touch idea with the
reality of what is going on in the Middle East.

It would make more sense to help the good people of Israel leave the
area and let the rest of the Middle East country's terrorist groups
destroy each other.

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