Why Should We Support the Palestinian Authority?

Palestinian Authority Coat of Arms

Written by
Michael Warschawski,
Alternative Information Center

On Saturday, 12 January, Palestinian police
forces brutally attacked peaceful
demonstrators who protested the
visit of US President George W.
Bush to Ramallah. Among the
beaten demonstrators were several
senior PLO members. The fact that
the US President was not very
welcome by Palestinian society
should not surprise anyone: for
years, Bush has behaved as an
enemy, supporting the most aggressive
Israeli initiatives and openly opposing
the implementation of international law
concerning the illegitimacy of the
Israeli occupation and colonization. For Bush, Palestine belongs to the axis
of evil and should be treated accordingly.

The Ramallah incident was not the first attack on peaceful
demonstrators protesting the politics of their leadership, yet it
reflects a qualitative turn in the political stand of the
Palestinian Authority.

Since the Oslo agreement, the Palestinian Authority, under the
leadership of Yasser Arafat, combined the continuation of the
national liberation struggle with a policy of compromises with
the Israeli occupation. These compromises often provoked
popular opposition, but were never perceived as a betrayal of
the national struggle. The diplomatic efforts of the PLO
leadership didn’t always enjoy unanimous support, but
they were considered to be part of the national aspiration
for freedom and statehood. Like the PA political leadership,
the Palestinian police force were composed of former liberation
fighters and saw their job as a continuation of the struggle to
liberate the Palestinian people from Israeli occupation.

The suspicious death of Yasser Arafat and his replacement
by Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) mark the end of an entire
chapter in the history of the Palestinian national liberation
movement, and the autonomization of the Palestinian
Authority from the PLO. Since the dismantling of the
Palestinian National Unity government and the forced
separation of the West Bank from Gaza, both conducted
with American encouragement, the Palestinian Authority
has become neither the expression of the PLO nor the
democratic choice of the Palestinian population.

As harsh as it may sound, the Palestinian government and
administration are US-Israeli tools, lacking in Palestinian
legitimacy—except the election of Mahmud Abbas to the
presidency—an event that will not happen again.

This qualitative change affects every level of the Palestinian
Authority: the Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, was imposed
by the US administration, directly from the International
Monetary Fund; he has never been a member of Fatah, and
his first move was to fire thousands of PLO activists from the
PA administration, replacing them with technocrats who have
no past in the national movement. Under the direction of US
General Keith Dayton, who has become the US proconsul in
Ramallah, his most important mission became to “rebuild” a
strong Palestinian police, after obliging the old guard to resign.

These new police forces were trained in Egypt and have no
connections with the old national guerilla organizations; they
are composed of mercenaries without any national consciousness
or tradition, ready to obey any order coming from their superiors.

A few weeks ago, a news report about the new Palestinian
police force was broadcast on Israeli television. In the first
section of the report, one was shown the trainees learning…
Hebrew (“to communicate with the Israeli colleagues,”
explained one of them); in the second, they were in action,
brutally raiding a supposedly Hamas run bookshop; in the third,
the “interrogation” of the old bookshop owner, a pathetic copy of an
ISS interrogation. No wonder that in this program, the Israeli journalist
was very sympathetic to the renovated Palestinian police.

The time has come to call the situation by its real name:
a neocolonial domination by way of a proxy indigenous
administration of collaborators, receiving their orders and
armament from Washington and Tel Aviv.

When the late Edward Said called Yasser Arafat “Pétain”
and the PA “collaborators,” I had a long argument with him,
and I think I convinced him that these definitions were not
appropriate. The refusal of Arafat to accept Barak’s diktats
in Camp David and his imprisonment in the Muqata confirmed
that he was not Pétain. Unfortunately, what was incorrect
concerning Yasser Arafat is now true regarding the new
Palestinian leadership, which has become an instrument
serving Israeli occupation/colonization, and lacks any
accountability to the Palestinian people and its
national organizations.

This is indeed an important turning point and it should become
a major concern for the Palestinian civil society and national
movements. The strategies of yesterday are not relevant
anymore: the political situation looks less and less “Algerian”
and more and more “South African,” and for years to come,
the main challenge will be to adapt the political objectives
and the timing to this new reality.