Samir Ghattas* contemplates the inexorable decline of the Palestinian authority and its alternatives As Palestinians celebrated the International Court of Justice's ruling pronouncing the racist separating wall Israel is constructing in the West Bank illegal, the international spotlight turned from Israel's predicament as a result of that ruling to the unfolding crisis of the PA. What remains of the PA, after the four years of attrition Sharon has wrought upon its material infrastructure and domestic and international status, appears to be set on self-destructing. The ICJ ruling could have marked a turning point in Palestinian domestic politics. It could have galvanised Palestinians into readjusting the course of their Intifada, giving it new vitality and helping it overcome those pitfalls and weaknesses that have only aggravated the crisis within the PA. It is regretful that the Palestinians and Arabs have not given sufficient attention to the grave and chronic deficiencies that bubbled to the surface so tragically last week, as if in confirmation of widespread predictions of the PA's imminent collapse. Perhaps for this reason it was not appropriate for the Palestinians to have treated the UN Special Envoy to the Middle East Teri Roed Larson quite as rudely as they did for having stated in his report to the Security Council that the PA had failed to promote domestic reforms. Reform has long been a Palestinian demand and the envoy's criticisms against Arafat for dragging his heels on this demand, particularly as regards the reorganisation of Palestinian security agencies, were valid. Indeed, Arafat only issued a presidential decree for restructuring the security agencies when faced with the breakdown in security that culminated in a spate of kidnappings of PA officials and the wave of resignations of intelligence and security officials If the PA ultimately indicated that it accepted Larson's conclusions, this was only after having lost much of its credibility and having had to cave into the pressures of armed Palestinian groups. As was anticipated, the sluggishness in instituting reforms opened the door to violence and force of arms as the means to impose opinions and policies on the PA and Palestinian society, creating yet another indicator of the gravity of the PA crisis and the likelihood of its collapse. It was neither politically astute nor morally sound to have treated Larson in such an embarrassing manner, especially given that he can hardly be accused of being pro-Israeli. In fact Israel once accused him and his wife of taking bribes from Arafat and, in March 2003, it declared him an undesirable for having accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity in Jenin. It should also be added that Larson's report on the PA was not the first of its kind. Only two months earlier the head of the EU monitoring commission issued a report that was even more explicit in its criticisms and that warned of the possibility of the PA's collapse within a year. Neither can the author of this report be accused of a pro-Israeli bias. His record of support for the Palestinians is well documented, having personally led protest demonstrations in favour of the PLO and condemning the Israeli occupation. If anything, therefore, his report was testimony to his pro-Palestinian bias, as well as to his personal and professional integrity. Clearly, the PA's refusal to heed these reports, as well as the Palestinian people's repeated demands for reform, is one of the major causes of the crisis that is currently threatening its demise. The dire impact this demise would have on the Palestinian people and their cause and upon the entire region makes it imperative to take a closer look at the constituent factors of the PA crisis. Few people today remember those golden promises Yasser Arafat issued some ten years ago. Palestine would become a new Asian economic tiger, and Gaza would become the Hong Kong of the Middle East, he vowed. What Palestinians do remember, very clearly, is their bitterness and dismay at the disaster-ridden experience of their first governing authority after more than a quarter of a century of occupation. In many ways the PA experience is an extension of the failure that has plagued most Third World liberation movements in making the transition from revolution to rule and laying the groundwork for a modern democratic state. True, the establishment of the PA was linked to continued Israeli occupation, which still exercised direct control over most of the territory over which the PA was supposed to have authority. The PA was also encumbered at the outset by the refusal of a significant segment of the Palestinian opposition to recognise its legitimacy. There is no denying that opposition organisations -- Hamas and Jihad, in particular -- frequently worked to undermine and topple the PA, and that their actions in this regard played into the hands of Israel, also determined to destroy the PA. These facts, however, do not exonerate the PA from its dismal performance within Area A. The PA was charged with governing the affairs of a society that had just emerged from occupation and that was severely deficient in structures of civilian rule and social services. However, instead of enhancing the scope of civilian rule, the PA instituted a form of militarised rule which, by definition, is anti-democratic and breeds various forms of tyranny and corruption. The phenomenon of militarisation not only manifested itself in the spread of Palestinian security agencies but also in the militarisation the opposition movements imposed on important sectors of Palestinian society. As was the case in other Third World countries, the cult of personality dominated the dynamics of the PA. President Arafat, drawing on his lengthy record of leadership and his popularity as a symbol of the Palestinian struggle, conferred upon himself most of the powers of rule. So much authority vested in a single individual, even one of the stature of Arafat, is unjustifiable. If this hampered the development of democratic civilian government, so too did the distribution of power within the PA, which relied primarily on juggling the balance between various PLO power bases. Then, in order to expand its base of support, the PA drew on and strengthened bonds of regional/ kinship affiliations, thereby creating a form of parallel authority which, in turn, encouraged the type of power wielding increasingly exercised by the armed opposition groups over important segments of the population. There is an integral causal relationship between the above-mentioned facets of the PA crisis and the Palestinian crisis in general, and the growing crisis within Fatah, the largest Palestinian faction, which had been expected to play the role of ruling party. In all events, a number of factors contributed to the perpetuation and aggravation of the situation. For one, the international community and donor countries in particular turned a blind eye to the rampant corruption in the PA and its refusal to implement any reform programmes in the first seven years of its existence. Israel encouraged, if not actively participated, in this trend. Israeli strategists believed that a PA mired in political and financial corruption and security incompetence would be far easier to bend to their dictates or to shunt aside and destroy if need be. From a legal standpoint, the PA's sell-by date expired on 4 May 1999, the date stipulated in the Oslo accords. This makes it all the more imperative to proceed, without delay, towards creating an entirely new PA on the basis of direct general elections. It may be obvious that Israel is directly responsible for much of the PA's current plight. However, this does not exonerate important sectors of Palestinian society from the major part they played in the self-destruction of the PA and the Palestinian national project. The prospect of the collapse of the PA evokes a bleak picture. As is the case with the collapse of any central authority, it would unleash chaos and facilitate the intervention of outside powers in Palestinian affairs, increasing the likelihood of a devastating civil war. The Palestinian collective memory still recalls the horrifying scenes of the April 1970 massacres in Jordan and the appalling bloodshed during the civil war in Lebanon. Recent events in Palestine have revived these images. Only two weeks ago, a weak and fragmented PA was compelled to declare a state of emergency in Bethlehem, following the tragic outbreak of sectarian fighting, and soon afterwards another state of emergency in Gaza after gunmen opened fire on the UNRWA commissioner and kidnapped the head of the police authority as well as four French aid workers. This is only a miniature version of what Palestinians will experience the day after the PA collapses, the prospect of which has given rise to two equally dire predictions. The first is that Palestine will be "Somalised", which is to say plunged into a war between militias. The second foresees the rise of a "Palistan" on the model of Afghanistan under the Taliban. Regardless of which of these scenarios arises in the wake of the fall of the PA, the Palestinian people will be the victims of a major catastrophe, the Palestinian cause will suffer a momentous setback and the national security of the states neighbouring "Palestine" will be gravely imperiled. The primary, perhaps only, approach to averting these perils is to urge the operative players in the Palestinian arena to reach, as quickly as possible, a national consensus over a formula for rescuing the PA. By PA I am not referring to the current authority but to what we might term a single and uncontested governing body for the Palestinians. Such a body must be pluralistic in nature, representative of all factions and express their common national purpose. After all, there is not a single example in history of a liberation movement that brought victory to the cause of its people before it united and incorporated itself in a single political entity representative of both the people and their cause. In all events there are not many options open to the Palestinians at present. Either the current PA could summon the sufficient will and resolve to stop the process of self-destruction by implementing a radical and comprehensive reform programme, under the supervision of an autonomous judicial and civil body. Or, if it were courageous enough, the PA could call for internationally monitored general elections, to be held within no more than six months. This could be preceded by efforts to reach a national consensus over the creation of an interim authority, representative of all shades of the Palestinian political spectrum, and that would assume responsibility over the conduct of national affairs until general elections are held. Another alternative is for the PA to dissolve itself within the framework of a Palestinian-Arab initiative, instituted in coordination with the EU, the UN, Russia and perhaps the US and placing all the Palestinian territories occupied in June 1967 under an international protectorate for a year. The protectorate would terminate with a referendum over the options for self-determination and internationally supervised elections for the creation of a new authority or government. Yet another possibility is for the Palestinian people to take the initiative and form something along the lines of a democratic national congress, representative of grass roots organisations and committees, which would organise peaceful civil disobedience until the current PA resigns. The congress would then either call for new national elections, or vote to place the territories under international guardianship as described above. Some believe that the Arab League should play a more integral part in resolving the Palestinian crisis and that, in so doing, it will also work to resolve its own crisis. Others are of the opinion that the only way out of the current predicament is to launch a new initiative for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, based on the creation of a single bi- national democratic state. Whichever alternatives, if any, are followed, it appears that Egypt, in particular, has little time to wait for others to act. In the interest of promoting higher Arab aims and aspirations Egypt should take the initiative today, rather than tomorrow. * The writer is director of Maqdis Centre for Political studies in Gaza.
