The biggest irony about the Palestinian cause these days is how the US keeps boasting of having a “Deal of the Century” to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict while everyone remains in the dark about its content. With regard to the Arabs, the more amazing irony is how they all underscore the centrality of the cause while surrendering to the attitude: “Let's wait and see what ideas come out of Washington, so that we can study them.” The Arabs/Palestinians have not had one unified concept for dealing with situation regionally (at the Arab regional or Middle Eastern levels) since the tumult that was set into motion with the “Arab Spring”. One of the rare attempts to evaluate current Palestinian circumstances came from Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Centre for Political and Survey Research (PSR) in Ramallah, who produced a policy brief with the title, “The PA in 2019: Challenges and Sources of Threat”. Published 6 March, the brief offers a subtle and very realistic analysis of the current Palestinian condition and recommends to Palestinians, in general, possible steps to take to contend with “a situation unparalleled since the end of the second Intifada at the end of 2004”. The paper discusses three essential points: the challenges facing the Palestinian cause, the main sources of threat, and recommendations for how to emerge from the current predicament. Despite the precision, perception and force of his assessment of the current challenges and threats, when the brief comes with the solutions we find ourselves at the same shores on which the Palestinian cause has run aground for decades. The paper describes four challenges, all essentially stemming from the failure of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to attain its goals of liberation and the establishment of an independent state. The first is that it is in the position of confronting an until now fictional peace plan that comes after measures that Israel took to alter realities on the ground and after measures that the US took, leading the Palestinian Authority to boycott the Trump administration which, in turn, retaliated with sanctions that have weakened Palestinian economic capacities. The second challenge is internal and relates to the inter-Palestinian rift triggered by Hamas. The paper describes how this rift has deepened so severely that it has generated a new reality, gradually propelling towards the separation of the West Bank from Gaza. The unprecedentedly severe financial and economic straits are the source of the third challenge. Palestinian resources are depleting by the day and if the US initiative fails it will heap additional economic sanctions on the Palestinians that will both exacerbate the trend to separation of the West Bank and Gaza and throw the domestic situation into turmoil. This will immediately aggravate the fourth challenge: the declining legitimacy and slide to authoritarianism of the current Palestinian Authority at a time it is clashing with Hamas, clashing internally within Fatah, and clashing with Palestinian civil society. One can only begin to imagine how the question of succession in the PA will aggravate all these problems. Challenges of such a magnitude inevitably generate threats to the Palestinian cause. Shikaki, in his brief, enumerates six: three external and three internal. In the former category, the first threat comes from Israel, which is not only increasing settlement expansion in the West Bank but also intimating that it will annex parts or all of Area C and impose further restrictions on Palestinian rights to move freely, to build or to reside in Jerusalem. The US is a second major source of external threat. Parts of this threat have already been carried out in Jerusalem, and with respect to Palestinian refugees, but more looms through Washington's influence over international organisations and the possibility that it will withdraw recognition of the Palestinian passport. Thirdly, there are threats from regional actors such as Iran, which relies on a Palestinian faction, Hamas, as a means to expand its influence and therefore arms it and consolidates the Palestinian rift. The internal threats are no less dangerous. An armed and militant Hamas creates conditions conducive to war with Israel and, simultaneously, averse to Palestinian reconciliation. The PA's responses to mounting internal and external pressures, such as its decision to dissolve the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), have undermined the rule of law and eroded the constitutional legitimacy that brought it to power. These have ultimately combined to eliminate constitutional options for contending with current or future Palestinian contingencies. The foregoing paints an alarming and accurate picture of the Palestinian condition. But when the brief reaches the question of how to deal with it, it falls back on the familiar. Still, to be fair, it leaves the door open to the possibility of a joint Palestinian-Arab plan to serve as an alternative to the Trump plan, in the event one actually exists. Shikaki recommends concluding Palestinian “reconciliation”, holding presidential and legislative elections, and strengthening relations with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan as a means to rectify the current balances of power which are skewed in favour of Israel and in order to produce and assert the alternative Palestinian-Arab plan. Unfortunately, the problem is that reconciliation has become impossible in light of Hamas' past record with the PA and its ongoing refusal to accept an essential prerequisite of statehood which is that there can only be one authority with the right to monopolise the legitimate recourse to arms. As for the Palestinian-Arab plan, it is no longer sufficient to speak of just the Arab Peace Initiative. It is import to consider how it can be expanded to become part of a strategic vision for regional security that capitalises on applications that are already in effect in order to deal with security-related issues on the ground between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. For example, it might be possible to rid the already existing “customs union” between Palestine and Israel of its deficiencies, which place it entirely under Israeli control, and transform it into a concrete platform that could open the doors to a single state or to a confederation, or to another such solution that would offer, on the one hand, independence to the Palestinians and, on the other, security and acceptance to the Israelis. In addition, the entrance of Palestine, Israel and Jordan (as well as Cyprus, Greece and Italy) into the East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF) could make it possible to delineate the maritime boundaries between Israel and Palestine for the first time in history and it could pave the way to forms of cooperation in other fields. Perhaps the most important aspect of Shikaki's paper is that it is an invitation to study and analyse the concrete issues of concern to the Palestinian cause and, on the basis of the findings, to formulate an Arab peace plan with strategic, political and economic dimensions. Perhaps now is the time to overcome that old Middle Eastern custom of putting the keys to a solution in the hands of the US alone, or the US plus Russia and the EU. The times in which the Arabs won their undiminished rights were those set into motion by former president Anwar Al-Sadat's initiative from Egypt and king Hussein's initiative from Jordan. The principles applied on these occasions were direct action, speaking face-to-face, and talks at both the official and unofficial levels. Frankly, the way to confront the “Deal of the Century” is not with the clamour of refusal and boycott but rather with a more comprehensive plan, on the one hand, and on the other, necessary steps such as securing a pledge from Israel not to annex occupied Arab territories in the Golan or in Area C as well as a commitment to release Palestinian prisoners and Marwan Barghouti in particular. As such steps build trust with Israel they may also prove to the Palestinians' advantage. 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The writer is chairman of the board, CEO and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.
