Death of PA foretold – again
This posting has 4 items:
1) Haaretz: Israeli Ministers Hold Marathon Meetings on Possibility of PA’s Collapse, what’s new this time reports Barak Ravid, is that Israel’s security cabinet is seriously considering letting the PNA collapse – with what consequences for Israel?
2) Times of Israel: The Palestinian bubble is about to burst; Professor Naomi Chazan, former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, assesses the options open to Abu Mazen (written before his UNGA address), September 2015
FROM 2012
3) IPS: Palestinian Bubble Set to Burst; Jillian Kestler D’Amours (former Gaza correspondent) points to the World Bank’s report that the Palestinian economy is unsustainable while Israel maintains its restrictions.
4) Arutz Sheva: Palestinian Authority Economist: PA on Verge of Collapse, this settlers’ publication picks up some quotes from the above report but leaves out the critique of Israel’s role.
Palestinian police in raids across the West Bank on April 17 this year in which 60 people were arrested. Photo by ActiveStills
Israeli Ministers Hold Marathon Meetings on Possibility of PA’s Collapse
Netanyahu convenes security cabinet meetings after Kerry’s visit, with information that Abbas is planning new efforts in international arena; several ministers argue that the PA’s collapse could serve Israel’s interest.
Barak Ravid
November 27, 2015
The diplomatic-security cabinet held marathon discussions over the last two days about the possibility that the Palestinian Authority will collapse and how Israel would deal with such a development, according to three sources who either attended the meetings or were briefed on them.
Several ministers argued that the PA’s collapse could serve Israel’s interests, so Israel shouldn’t try to prevent it, a senior official who attended the meeting said.
The minister’s discussion of the PA began Wednesday afternoon and continued until late at night, then resumed yesterday evening for another several hours.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened the meeting after Tuesday’s visit by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry failed to achieve any progress on the Palestinian front. The senior official, who asked to remain anonymous, said Netanyahu called the meeting because information had reached Jerusalem that the Palestinian Authority was planning new steps against Israel in the international arena, in light of Kerry’s failure to obtain any Israeli concessions.
One move the PA is considering, the official said, is presenting a resolution in either the UN Security Council or the General Assembly (the latter a venue where the United States lacks a veto), demanding international protection for Palestinians in “the occupied State of Palestine.” A more extreme step being considered is revoking the Palestine Liberation Organization’s 1993 decision to recognize Israel – a decision that formed the basis for the Oslo Accords.
All three sources said the possibility of the PA collapsing arose in the context of the ministers’ discussion about how Israel should deal with such steps mooted by the PA. But a senior official briefed on the meeting said the concern wasn’t that PA President Mahmoud Abbas might dismantle the authority, as that’s not something he is seriously considering. Rather, the discussion focused on the possibility that Israeli military pressure, the economic crisis and Abbas’ eroding legitimacy among Palestinians could combine to cause the PA’s collapse.
Senior Israel Defence Forces and Shin Bet security service officers are very worried by the possibility of the PA collapsing, and warned the ministers of the consequences for both security and civilian affairs.
Nevertheless, several ministers argued that Israel might reap more benefit than harm from such a collapse, and therefore shouldn’t try to stop it from happening, said an official who attended the meeting. These ministers, whom the official declined to name, also argued that Palestinian moves against Israel, both internationally and locally, may be more harmful to Israel than the PA’s collapse.
The scenarios discussed by the diplomatic-security cabinet on Wednesday were very similar to those raised by Kerry during some of his meetings in Jerusalem and Ramallah the day before. A few hours before the forum met, Kerry arrived home in Boston and warned publicly that if both sides didn’t take positive action quickly, the Israeli-Palestinian crisis was liable to spiral out of control.
Both Israeli officials who met with Kerry and American officials said he left the region deeply frustrated by both sides. Netanyahu and Abbas both doubled down on their positions and refused to take even the most minimal step to restore calm, these officials said.
Kerry and his aides were stunned that Netanyahu, who had come to Washington just two weeks ago with a package of gestures he said he was willing to offer the Palestinians, reneged on all of them.
An Israeli official listed three reasons for Netanyahu’s U-turn. First and most important was the terror attacks in Paris, which made Netanyahu think he wouldn’t come under serious international pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians. Second was the series of attacks in Israel in the days before Kerry’s visit, in which eight Israelis were killed.
Third was the heavy pressure by Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who told Netanyahu that his Habayit Hayehudi party wouldn’t agree to any gestures toward the Palestinians as long as the attacks continued. Bennett also said that even if the attacks stopped, his party would oppose granting building permits to Palestinians in Area C, the part of the West Bank under full Israeli control.
Netanyahu, like he has many times in the past, told Kerry that his coalition problems prevented him from making gestures to the Palestinians. Later, Kerry met with opposition leader Isaac Herzog to find out whether the Labour Party would consider joining the coalition, but Herzog said no.
“There’s zero sign of any change in Netanyahu’s policies or approach,” Herzog said. “In this situation, there’s no chance or reason for us to join the government.”
Kerry’s meeting with Abbas was no better. Sources briefed on it said Abbas refused to take even minimal confidence-building measures like condemning stabbing attacks, or at least not voicing support for the perpetrators. Abbas kept asking what Kerry had brought him from Netanyahu, and when he realized the answer was nothing, he began threatening to turn the keys of the PA over to Israel or start new diplomatic and legal campaigns against Israel at the United Nations.
Afterward, Kerry phoned Netanyahu while en route to the airport and told him, “I’m out of ideas,” a source briefed on the conversation said.
The White House had already concluded that Netanyahu and Abbas were a lost cause, but now, Kerry’s aides are coming to the same conclusion. “Our begging and pleading isn’t helping,” one American official said. “Maybe what’s needed is simply for the situation on the ground to force the sides to take action.”
The Palestinian bubble is about to burst
By Naomi Chazan, blog, Times of Israel
September 27, 2015
This week, almost twenty years to the day after the signing of the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza (commonly known as Oslo Two) on September 28, 1995, the Palestinian leader who signed the Oslo Declaration of Principles two years earlier, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), is set to address the United Nations General Assembly in what is already being described as a game-changing speech. Speculations as to its content are rampant in diplomatic circles and in the press both in the region and in capitals throughout the world. And although eyes are currently riveted on events in and around Syria, it is already clear that the unacknowledged but nevertheless extraordinarily robust status quo that has governed Israeli-Palestinian relations since the effective collapse of the Oslo process fifteen years ago is about to undergo a seismic shift.
The distress of the Palestinian Authority and its leader has been obvious for quite some time. For years, Abu-Mazen has attempted, unsuccessfully, to achieve Palestinian independence by diplomatic means. During his tenure, the division between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has been formalized — and with it the rivalry between the Hamas and the PLO. In recent months, the rift between the PA and its constituents has reached a nadir, with only 16 percent expressing support for the current government. (In Gaza, Hamas has been faced with demonstrations by a frustrated population unable to cope with infrastructure failure and ongoing scarcities). Despite the attainment of non-member state status at the United Nations, this erosion of legitimacy has been coupled with growing international disinterest following the collapse of the talks brokered by John Kerry in April 2014.
Since then, the situation on the ground has deteriorated. During the last year, frustration has focused primarily — but by no means exclusively — on Jerusalem. Friction surrounding the Temple Mount has reached a new peak. Spontaneous acts of defiance against Israeli overrule have exacted a price in Israeli lives and been met by growing Israeli repression. The strong-arm tactics recently instituted by the Netanyahu government (including the announcement last week of harsh minimum sentences for stone-throwers and the reduction of restrictions on the use of firearms against Palestinians) have only exacerbated the situation.
Abu-Mazen has been signalling for some time that, like so many Palestinians, he has given up hope on reaching a negotiated settlement on a bilateral basis. He has also made it clear that at the age of eighty-one he wishes to be relieved of the mantle of leadership. His resignation from his positions at the helm of the Fatah and the PLO this past summer is but a prelude to what promises to be a much deeper change in the parameters of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The new contours, however, are still unclear.
Some conjectures about future directions are currently being aired: the most obvious is the cessation of security co-operation between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Although this collaboration has contributed to the relative quiet that has prevailed in recent years, it has not improved the lot of most Palestinians. Its abandonment may worsen their situation even more.
A second possibility — one with more far-reaching consequences — involves the official renunciation of the Oslo accords and with it the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority. Such a move would shift the burden of overseeing everyday life in the West Bank back to Israel. But it, too, would hardly advance the Palestinian goal of self-determination or hasten the termination of forty-eight years of Israeli occupation.
Certain pundits are anticipating a formal declaration of independence (although for all intents and purposes Palestine possesses many of the trappings of a sovereign entity without possessing de facto control over its territory). This will enable the Palestinians to claim that they are a state under occupation and to demand international protection. Such a step alone, however, would not necessarily compel any international action.
A variant of this scenario is more intriguing. It is not inconceivable that Mahmoud Abbas may ask — in his last appearance before the United Nations — for the assumption of a UN trusteeship over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This idea was bandied about in the 1980s, before the Oslo talks, and is being revived today in light of the internationalization of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Two notable precedents exist for such a move. The first is the case of South-West Africa (present-day Namibia). In the late 1960s the United Nations abrogated the South African mandate over the territory and in 1973 it recognized SWAPO (The South West Africa People’s Organization) as the official representative of the Namibian people. In 1978 the Security Council took responsibility for overseeing the transition of Namibia to independence from South Africa — completed in 1990 under the auspices of the UN Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG). The second example is that of Timor-Leste (East Timor), formerly a Portuguese colony annexed by Indonesia in 1976 following the withdrawal of the colonial power a year earlier. In 1999 the United Nations assumed full responsibility for East Timor, establishing the UN Transition Administration for East Timor (UNTAET), which oversaw the move to independence in 2002. In both instances — which, admittedly, differ in several respects from the Palestinian situation — the international community did directly intervene to terminate foreign control over neighboring areas and guarantee the emergence of independent states in their stead.
All of these options can be set in motion by the Palestinian leadership, which already has made substantial overtures to European countries. France is still considering a Security Council resolution to expedite negotiations. Together with other European countries committed to labeling settlement products, it is exploring the possibility of convening an international conference to promote an Israeli-Palestinian agreement within the framework of the Arab Peace Initiative. All these measures are being weighed without active Israeli involvement.
Indeed, Israeli officialdom, to date, has scoffed at the prospect of any substantive change in the nature of the current situation, dismissing Palestinian moves as “a charade” of “mere brinkmanship”. They might be well-advised to begin to take matters more seriously. By the end of this week, Israel — along with the rest of the world — may in all likelihood be facing a new reality. Its government cannot continue to act as if it were a mere bystander without any direct connection to unfolding events. This time, however, Israel cannot afford to find itself ill-prepared. If there ever was a time to shift gears and proactively seek new ways to end the conflict, it is now. With or without Israeli cooperation, the status quo is about to change dramatically.
Ramallah looks lively, but most consumers are dependent on the PNA which is itself dependent on foreign aid. The World Bank report said ‘removing Israeli restrictions on market access and to natural resources is the necessary first step in expanding the Palestinian private sector, and that the PA must stem its reliance on foreign aid’. Photo by JKD/ IPS
Palestinian Bubble Set to Burst
By Jillian Kestler-D’Amours, IPS
August 05, 2012
RAMALLAH, West Bank, “It will collapse, and the collapse will be harder when it happens later,” says Tareq Sadeq, Palestinian economist and professor at Birzeit University, about the financial bubble building up in the Palestinian Authority government.
“It will mean that people will lose their homes. They will lose their cars. They will lose their land sometimes because of the collapse of the bubble. This will affect the whole economy and will also reflect on the Palestinian Authority. So this may be a collapse of the PA itself,” Sadeq tells IPS.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has announced it is facing a funding crisis; it is now relying on donor aid to cover a budget deficit of 1.1 billion dollars and cash shortfall of 500 million dollars.
“The Palestinian economy has become more and more dependent on wages, on salaries, for the whole economy, not just for the public sector; around 70 percent of all employees are wage employees. As a result, there is no production in the Palestinian economy. People consume and consume and consume and there is nothing to produce,” Sadeq says.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) turned down an appeal from the Israeli government in early July for a 1 billion dollar loan to fund the PA. The West Bank economy is almost entirely upheld by international aid; in 2011, donors promised the PA 1 billion dollars in support, of which 800 million dollars was transferred.
“The whole economy is constrained to financial aid from international donors, which created more vulnerability in the Palestinian economy,” Sadeq says.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has nevertheless pushed economic development and investments in the private sector as a means to secure Palestinian independence. To date, most international economic bodies and foreign governments have praised Fayyad’s approach, pointing to Palestinian gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates as a measure of its success.
Palestinian GDP grew 7.7 percent between 2008 and 2011. In its 2011-2013 development plan, titled ‘Establishing the State, Building our Future’, the Palestinian Authority (PA) estimated the GDP would grow by 12 percent in 2013.
But a World Bank report released Jul. 25 found that the Palestinian economy is unsustainable.
“The Palestinian Authority has made steady progress in many areas towards establishing the institutions required by a future state but the economy is currently not strong enough to support such a state,” economist John Nasir, lead author of the study titled ‘Towards Economic Sustainability of a Future Palestinian State: Promoting Private Sector-Led Growth’ said in a statement announcing the findings.
The report said that removing Israeli restrictions on market access and to natural resources is the necessary first step in expanding the Palestinian private sector, and that the PA must stem its reliance on foreign aid.
“This has been in our face ever since Oslo started: you can see that the economy is not sustainable,” says Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American businessman. He says that in his experience, the biggest obstacle to economic development is Israeli control over Palestinian human capital.
“If you go into the private sector today and ask them what’s your biggest issue, it’s that we can’t find the people we need. Israel controlling all the points of entry and exit not only for goods but for people, basically regulates the pace of our development through the blockage of human resources,” Bahour tells IPS.
Israel and the Palestinian leadership signed the Paris Protocol in April 1994, as part of the Oslo Accords, a 1993 political agreement that outlined relations and responsibilities between the two parties and created the Palestinian Authority. The Paris Protocol set up a framework for economic relations between Israel and the PA. Under the agreement, Israel began collecting import taxes on goods and transferring taxes to the PA on goods destined for the occupied Palestinian territories.
In turn, the PA was given authority to impose direct and indirect taxes, build an industrial policy, provide public sector jobs and establish a monetary authority. Palestinian trade with other countries was still handled through Israeli ports or Israeli-controlled border crossings, however, and continues to cause significant economic losses.
According to Bahour, Israeli control over the Palestinian market and the resulting economic and social challenges Palestinians now face has led to what he called the “Americanising of the Palestinian population.”
“When the economy is hurting and the donor involvement is basically dominating and driving the economy and people are being indebted even further, people become very individualistic and are out to make the best for themselves,” Bahour says.
The unemployment rate in the West Bank during the first quarter of 2012 was approximately 20 percent, data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) found. The PCBS also found that a quarter of Palestinians in the West Bank lived below the poverty line in 2011, while almost 13 percent of Palestinians lived in deep poverty, in a West Bank Palestinian population of approximately 2.6 million.
According to economist Tareq Sadeq, the Palestinian leadership needs to acknowledge the realities of building an economy under Israeli occupation and change its policies in order to alleviate the financial burden many Palestinian families now face.
“The gap is growing. There is frustration in the street but what matters for people now is that they don’t want to lose; they want to get their salaries and they want to keep their homes and the things that they bought,” he says.
“The Palestinian economy is under occupation. We have to think about our own policies of development under occupation and to think how to help people sustain and stay in their lands and resist occupation.”
Palestinian Authority Economist: PA on Verge of Collapse
The Palestinian Authority is on the verge of collapse, says a PA economist. “The collapse will be harder the later it occurs.”
By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, Arutz Sheva
August 06, 2012
The Palestinian Authority is on the verge of collapse, says a PA economist, who warns that the later it happens, the harder it will be.
“It will mean that people will lose their homes. They will lose their cars. They will lose their land sometimes because of the collapse of the bubble,” Birzeit University economist Tareq Sadeq told the global InterPress Agency. “This will affect the whole economy and will also reflect on the Palestinian Authority. So this may be a collapse of the PA itself.”
He blamed the administration under PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, which he says needs to change its policies in order to alleviate the financial burden many Palestinian families now face.
“The gap is growing,” he explained. “There is frustration in the street but what matters for people now is that they don’t want to lose; they want to get their salaries and they want to keep their homes and the things that they bought.”
The Palestinian Authority has been relying on massive foreign aid ever since it was created as an entity under the ill-fated Oslo Accords, which literally blew up with the Second Intifada in 2000, also known as the Oslo War. Corruption, PA policy against working in Israel, discrimination against women in the work force and preoccupation with avoiding peace instead of reaping its benefits are some of the reasons for the bankruptcy.
“The Palestinian economy has become more and more dependent on wages, on salaries, for the whole economy, not just for the public sector; around 70 percent of all employees are wage employees. As a result, there is no production in the Palestinian economy. People consume and consume and consume and there is nothing to produce,” Sadeq says.
The International Monetary Fund two weeks ago warned that the Palestinian Authority “economy is currently not strong enough to support” itself as an independent country.
The PA Gross Domestic Product grew 7.7 percent between 2008 and 2011, but its official development plan estimates a grossly optimistic growth of 12 percent in only two years, a rate that is huge even for emerging nations.
As usual, the “occupation” is being blamed by many for the Palestinian Authority’s economic problems. InterPress quoted PA-American businessman Sam Bahour as saying, “If you go into the private sector today and ask them what’s your biggest issue, it’s that we can’t find the people we need. Israel controlling all the points of entry and exit not only for goods but for people. [It] basically regulates the pace of our development through the blockage of human resources.”
Sadeq concluded, “We have to think…how to help people sustain and stay in their lands and resist occupation.”
Israel maintains that the PA economy has grown because of Israeli cooperation. The Paris Protocol in 1994, past of the Oslo Accords, created a system whereby Israel collects and hands tax revenues over to the PA on goods shipped to Judea and Samaria.
The tax revenue occasionally has been frozen following the Palestinian Authority’s frequent violations of the Oslo Accords, particularly its failure to stop inciting terror and incitement.