One year ago the world watched Jerusalem as an ‘intifada of individuals’ brought violence once again to urban areas of Israel/Palestine. Then, unlike now, the world took it as a matter of reassurance when the Palestinian National Authority’s (PA) president, Mahmoud Abbas, publicly denounced the possibility of a third intifada. However, despite Mr. Abbas’s increasingly centralized rule, and despite the PA’s close security collaboration with Israel, since October of last year the West Bank has erupted in wave after wave of extremist lone-wolf attacks.
While much of the focus regarding the occupation falls upon Israel’s sustained military occupation and continued settlement expansion, less attention has been paid to Palestinian administrations themselves. Of course, in doing so, we must first acknowledge the role of the occupation in hindering the development of healthy and robust political and civil societies within the occupied territories. These are necessary and yet lacking components of maintaining the rule of law, accountability, and transparency of representative institutions. The purpose of this article is to raise the discourse on Palestinian independence by critically reflecting on the current state of Palestine self-administration. Indeed, many critics of the Palestinian independence point to the discord between the PA, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas as evidence of nascent institutional corruption and ineffectiveness. That, with the continued and valid criticism of these institutions as undemocratic and unreformed, only detracts from their claims of ‘sole-legitimate representatives’ of the Palestinian people. I do not hope to take a reductive view of the conflict. The issues across the Green Line and on the coast of the Red Sea are complex and distinct in their own right, and lie beyond the scope of what will be addressed here
Since 1967, the occupied West Bank operates under two separate legal systems. On the one hand, Palestinians living in the occupied territories are subjected to Israeli military courts where they face a statistically disproportionate likelihood of conviction. On the other hand, Israeli settlers in the West Bank are subjected to the Israeli judicial system, with more robust civil protections. While Arab-Israelis, whom are the Palestinians on the other side of the Green Line, still face various formal and informal barriers to equal treatment under the law, it is the Palestinians within the occupied territories lacking similar rights that are made victim to the application of law and order.
The implicit assumption of the Oslo Accords and the self-administration that came with the establishment of the PA was that formal negotiations with Israel and the establishment of Palestinian institutions would lead to a lasting peace between Israel and the PLO, ending the era of armed struggle and terrorism. However, this assumption has been short lived. Reeling from the repercussions of the Second Intifada, indigenous Palestinian institutions seem to have lost touch with their original purpose. Abbas’ Fatah party has for years continued to resist internal and external pressures of reform, centralizing his rule by suspending forums of democratic governance. All the while, the PA has increased its crackdown on dissidents in the West Bank, arresting not only journalists but also citizens for critical articles and Facebook posts.
The Palestinian security forces under the administration of the PA were created as a consequence of the Oslo Accords, with the nominal purpose of bolstering Palestinian state building. Initially, the existence of those forces were understood by the population as a source of defence, however, since 2003, this understanding has evolved. Following the Second Intifada, the PA security forces undertook a security-sector reform, which has seen an increasing amount of repressive tactics employed upon the population at large.
The de-facto application of the criminal, legal, and policing systems in the occupied territories has led to the increasing disillusionment of the Palestinian people from their official representatives. Gone are the days when the PA claimed itself as the ‘sole legitimate representative’ of the Palestinians, while maintaining the support of the Palestinians themselves. Rather, the operation of the PA security forces in enforcing the legal system reinforces the occupation itself—as well as the corollary losses of land and liberty.
Indeed, there has been a large increase in violations documented by various press-freedom organizations since the start of October—the beginning of this most recent iteration of extremist violence. According to the Palestinian Centre for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA), the first ten months of 2015 saw 361 violations against Palestinians, 100 of which occurred in October alone. While Israeli security forces account for the majority of these violations, the PA has also been responsible for cracking down on press freedoms in recent months. MADA documented 110 PA violations against Palestinian journalists in the first six months of 2015, relative to the 114 violations documented in 2014 as a whole.
The purpose of any security force is the maintenance of law and order, with the primary and proximate goal of protecting the communities they police. And yet, the indiscriminate application of laws by the PA security forces has embedded a new layer to the reality of life under occupation. The PA security forces employed at the behest of the Israeli state is only slightly preferred than the forum provided by Israeli military courts. Indeed, the operation of the PA security forces in the West Bank has aided reinforcement of popular support for Hamas, taking up the standard of Palestinian resistance, self-rule and ongoing rejection of de-militarisation.
The PLO and PA need to become responsive to the demands of its representatives, rather than fulfilling a reified role of diplomatic representation. On the ground, Palestinians under Israeli occupation require a police force whose prime objective is the maintenance of international law and order accountable to the people, not Israeli state and not the PA. The opponents of peace will remain content to see an unreformed PA continue its path of disillusionment from the Palestinian people. Such a circular state of affairs only guarantees that peace remains illusive. We cannot have a vibrant civil society without a truly responsive political society. There can be no tenable security if Palestinians do not have their basic rights. As UNSG Ban Ki-moon remarked this month, “It is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.”
Our Palestinian leaders have a responsibility to their people, they must hold elections and overcome technocratic and internalized conflicts, and they must cease incitement of hatred and abandon their appeals to victimhood. Challenging the status quo requires critical discourse, but what is it to be critical without being self-critical as well. To bury our hopes in the contingent future is only to perpetuate the present. We cannot effectively confront the occupation if we oppress ourselves.
The imperative of liberation is nothing less than a call for discourse; the more we write, the more we are heard, and the more we are listened to. We must do what we can when we can. What politicians, activists and advocates should emulate is the attitude of solidarity and resistance. Internal unity is required amongst Palestinians at all levels, between diplomatic representatives and the people they represent, between those on either side of the Green Line, and between those subjected to the daily lived experience of occupation and those in the diaspora.
