The cynicism that the Israelis have deployed to wreck the latest round of supposed peace talks backed by US Secretary of State John Kerry cannot be without consequence. The Israelis think that they can continue to get away with the status quo indefinitely and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is happy to continue doing almost anything to distract any talks from the core issues of land ownership in and military control of the Occupied Territories.
It is a measure of the Palestinians’ deep frustration that President Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to disband the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) during a long and heated meeting with the advisory council of his own party, Fatah, which is one of the constituent members of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). The PLO was the original Palestinian body that managed the liberation struggle decades ago and more recently has been the negotiating party with the Israelis when the Oslo Accords and subsequent agreements set up the PNA.
The PNA was constituted as an interim structure designed to manage local affairs in the Occupied Territories where the Palestinians achieved a limited amount of self government. It was not designed to be the governing body for a full Palestinian state, which would follow when a final peace agreement would be achieved. Sadly, the Israelis made sure that the final agreement never happened, but have used the PNA as a scapegoat for all sorts of issues over which it has little authority.
Nonetheless, even if flinging away the PNA will be a dramatic gesture by the Palestinian leadership, and a grave admission of how little the Oslo Accords achieved in the end, it will cause a political storm in Palestine, where Abbas’s own political position is not that strong. His mandate as president ran out in 2009. He now governs by presidential decree and the deep division between Fatah and its rival, Hamas, has continued for far too long. So desperate is the situation on the West Bank that the most likely scenario is for the deep frustrations of the Palestinians to erupt into a third and more violent Intifada.
