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State of Failure

Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Unmaking of the Palestinian State

Palgrave Macmillan

Collapse or Statehood?

The Palestinians are pushing for full recognition of statehood. They call their campaign "Palestine 194," a reference to their goal of becoming the 194th state in the United Nations. Under the leadership of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Mahmoud Abbas, also known by his kunya (Arabic teknonym) Abu Mazen, the campaign is well under way.

Critics of the campaign — notably the United States, Canada, and Israel — said that the move was counterproductive because the Palestinians were shirking their responsibilities, as stipulated in the 1993 Oslo Accords, to negotiate bilaterally with Israel over every aspect of the future two-state solution. This push for the recognition of Palestinian statehood is unilateral, critics argue, and it should therefore be punished with aid cuts and diplomatic downgrades.

By contrast, proponents of the campaign say that Palestinian statehood is long overdue. They argue that the PLO needs no seal of approval from the United States or Canada or Israel to fulfill its dream of statehood. They further argue that as long as Israel unilaterally builds settlements in the West Bank — land the Palestinians claim for their national project — there is no reason to negotiate. Though diplomacy with Israel resumed in July 2013, the Palestinians made it clear they could return to this strategy at any time.

The effort officially began in September 2011, when Mahmoud Abbas stood before a buzzing UN General Assembly in New York City and announced his intention to achieve recognition of statehood for the Palestinian people. He forwarded an official request to the UN Security Council, but his bid stalled due to a lack of strategic direction on the part of the Palestinian leadership, coupled with pressure from Washington. The United States, as a permanent member of the Security Council, had vowed to veto the request, but it was unclear whether Abbas had even successfully lobbied for the requisite votes needed.

Following the defeat, the Palestinians appeared to have given up on the strategy. But in early 2012, the PLO announced that the Palestinians were gearing up for another diplomatic push. Only this time they noted that they would not seek official recognition through the UN Security Council. This time, they said, they would merely seek a "diplomatic upgrade" through the UN General Assembly, where an overwhelming majority of the states supported the PLO's initiative.

This move, Abbas acknowledged, would not lead to Palestine 194. Rather, it would grant the PLO nonmember observer state status. It would bring the Palestinians one step closer to their dream but also potentially arm Palestinians with new diplomatic weapons — such as accession to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which could enable the Palestinians to sue Israel for war crimes or establish legal claims on West Bank lands where Israel was building.

Commentators lauded the Palestinians for pursuing a legal rather than a violent approach. To be sure, Abbas deserves credit for eschewing violence after decades of terrorism perpetrated in the name of the Palestinian cause. But the real genius behind his strategy was that it marginalized the United States. No country, not even the United States, can veto a General Assembly measure at the United Nations. And the Palestinians, who had been quietly lobbying in capitals the world over for the better part of seven years, had secured the support of the vast majority of the 193 UN member states.

However, the timing of the effort was not ideal for the Palestinians, given all of the Middle East drama of 2011 and 2012: the Syrian civil war, the power struggles in Egypt, the race for nuclear weapons in Iran. Nevertheless, the Palestinians were determined to continue their quest. They continued to broadcast their intention to return to the United Nations. The United States threatened to cut off aid. The Israelis threatened to withhold the tens of millions of dollars they collect each month in Palestinian taxes. Yet Abbas was unmoved. On November 29, 2012, with the world watching, the snowy-haired Palestinian leader went back to the United Nations and secured nonmember observer state status for Palestine.

Abbas returned to a hero's welcome in Ramallah, the interim Palestinian capital just a few miles east of Jerusalem. But that was only part of the picture. On the international stage, the outpouring of support was overwhelming.

"We wholeheartedly welcome the recognition of Palestine as an observer state by the United Nations," said renowned human rights activist Desmond Tutu. "Sixty-five years after the UN recommended the establishment of a Jewish state and an Arab state side by side on former Mandatory Palestine, the world has finally taken an important step on the Palestinian part of its promise."

Former US president Jimmy Carter was no less enthusiastic. "The international community now has a duty to turn this significant step by the UN into lasting peace in the Middle East. ... The UN vote can be a catalyst for genuine negotiations between Israel and Palestine on a more equal footing," he said.

Even former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert endorsed the move. He asserted that it was "congruent with the basic concept of the two-state solution. Therefore, I see no reason to oppose it. Once the United Nations will lay the foundation for this idea, we in Israel will have to engage in a serious process of negotiations, in order to agree on specific borders based on the 1967 lines, and resolve the other issues."

Sitting statesmen also argued that Abbas's maneuver was a small yet symbolic measure to right a historic wrong. They decried the many reported Israeli injustices against the Palestinians, which have long characterized the Palestinian narrative.

Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davuto g?lu, stated, "We have gathered here for correcting a historical injustice against the Palestinian people. We all believe and cherish the vision of a just, peaceful, and harmonious future. For that future we should altogether have to stand behind the Palestinian bid to become a 'non-member observer state.' This is a moment of truth for all of us."

China, via a foreign ministry spokesman, also indicated that the move was a way for Palestinians to recover "their national and legitimate rights and interests."

Many also saw Abbas's UN upgrade as a binary equation. Supporting Palestinian rights, in their view, went hand in hand with challenging Israel or even punishing it.

The Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, for example, lauded the UN maneuver because it "provides the Palestinian people with the appropriate legal tools to deter and confront the crimes committed by the occupying power, and hold the perpetrators of those crimes accountable before international justice."

Roger Waters, the famed vocalist for the rock band Pink Floyd and now a political activist, implored the international community to "[s]eize this historic moment. Support the vote today for Palestinian enhanced observer statehood status as a step towards full membership. And declare Israel's continued membership of the UN to be dependent on reform of its illegal apartheid regime."

LOST IN ALL OF THE HOOPLA was one crucial question: Are the Palestinians prepared for this next step? Is the Palestinian Authority (PA), the interim body created in 1994 to govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip, an efficient, transparent, or financially viable authority that is prepared to function as a government for the Palestinian people? This book will explain why the answer, unfortunately, is "no." The reason: the PA and its antecedents have been beset by bad governance.

Many critics point to the consistent use of terrorism and political violence as a black mark on the Palestinian cause. This, of course, is a valid concern. Violent groups continue to litter the Palestinian political landscape. But let us for a moment suppose that the use of violence is now a thing of the past. How do the Palestinians function on a political level?

The Palestinian government, as it is currently configured, is mired in dysfunction. Not only are the Palestinian territories (West Bank and Gaza Strip) divided between two warring factions (Fatah and Hamas), it is also undeniable that both cantons have failed to function well as governments.

For the purposes of this book, we will not address the political and economic challenges associated with the Hamas government in Gaza. Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections, earning the terrorist group the right to forge a government. With Western support, the PLO and Fatah faction leaders refused to allow this to happen, ultimately prompting a civil war in 2007 that led to Hamas's violent takeover of Gaza, where Hamas has remained firmly entrenched. Although Hamas maintains an iron grip on Gaza, an Israeli and Western embargo on the tiny coastal enclave has hindered Hamas's political and economic prospects greatly. But it would be disingenuous to blame Hamas's failures on the embargo alone. Report after report indicates that the de facto government in Gaza is ruled by draconian laws, while outside actors such as Iran, Turkey, and Qatar continue to try to heavily influence decision making.

Hamas may yet declare independence for the Gaza Strip. But it is unlikely to do so through diplomacy or the United Nations. The West Bank regime, by contrast, seeks to speak for all Palestinians and to press for full Palestinian independence. This book is an attempt to explain why the Palestinian government run by Mahmoud Abbas will very likely become steeped in crisis, if not fail, if and when such a state is created.

TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM, one must first look back at how the PA was born. Created as a civilian caretaker government in 1994, the PA was the unlikely offspring of a terrorist organization, the PLO. The PLO, in turn, had emerged from Fatah, a terrorist group founded in Kuwait in the 1950s. Yasser Arafat, perhaps the most famous Palestinian the world has ever known, controlled both groups.

The road to the PA was not an easy one. Arafat made the reluctant strategic decision to renounce terrorism in the late 1980s, which ultimately paved the way for him to become the leader of the nascent Palestinian self-rule polity, the PA.

But even after Fatah and the PLO transitioned from terrorism to politics, Arafat obstructed outside efforts to bring transparency to Palestinian institutions as they changed shape. Under Arafat, in fact, the PA funneled untold amounts of international donor funding to a select group of insiders and did little to forge economic solutions that would create jobs or new opportunities for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. As a result, the PA failed to inspire confidence among the people.

Despite all of this, the PA made some strides in the 1990s. Thanks to the determined efforts of stakeholders in the peace process, the Palestinian self-rule project gained ground in fits and starts. The PA took on increased responsibility for daily governance. But this all came to a jarring halt in September 2000 with the outbreak of the second intifada, a low-level Palestinian war marked by suicide bombings and other guerrilla tactics. While the uprising originally targeted Israel and was a response to the lack of progress toward a final status peace agreement to end all grievances with the Jewish state, it also exposed some critical fissures within Palestinian society. The most glaring of these was the lack of transparency and accountability in governance.

If there was any silver lining to the PA's challenges after the collapse of the peace process, it was the growing public support to address these problems. This paved the way for the rise of Salam Fayyad, the institution-building finance minister who succeeded in shaping a more transparent financial system and established, for the first time, a single treasury account through which all taxes and donor funds would pass.

This is not to say that Fayyad's job was easy. All along the way, the PLO and Fatah, the traditional loyalists from the two most powerful Palestinian institutions, worked assiduously to torpedo his efforts. In many ways, Fayyad was dismantling the system that had sustained these groups since 1968.

Fayyad also inspired the creation of the Palestine Investment Fund (PIF), a sovereign wealth fund intended to enrich and empower the Palestinian people. Fayyad's unenviable job was to identify, with the help of a team of accountants, the assets Arafat had amassed over years of militant activity across the Middle East and Europe and to bring them up to Western accounting standards. This was a herculean task. Fayyad's team painstakingly investigated secret holdings around the world and integrated them into the Palestinian treasury.

But Fayyad's successes were fleeting. After Arafat's death in 2004, Mahmoud Abbas rose to power, largely due to the unwavering efforts of former US president George W. Bush, who believed that Abbas was committed to peace with Israel. Abbas was roundly lauded as the antithesis of Arafat: nonviolent and a stalwart against corruption.

But it soon became clear that Abbas was not the man Bush believed him to be. From the moment he assumed office in 2005, Abbas moved aggressively to consolidate political and economic power. The nepotism and political patronage that characterized the Arafat era again became the norm. Abbas undermined some of the PA's own laws and systematically denied power to Fayyad and other political competitors. He co-opted or weakened institutions that promoted transparency and accountability.

Unfortunately, the West further encouraged Abbas's consolidation of power after the Palestinian civil war of 2007, when Hamas overran the PA government in the Gaza Strip. Fearing a complete terrorist takeover of the Palestinian territories, Israel and the Western donor community, led by the United States, propped up the Palestinian leader with weapons, intelligence, and cash. The message was clear: stay in power at all costs, and don't let Hamas take over.

With the international community overwhelmingly concerned about the continued survival of the government in the West Bank, Western governments abandoned all expectations of Abbas as a leader. Discussions no longer revolved around efforts to create an independent state with a viable public authority. The goal was simply to keep the West Bank out of the hands of Hamas.

With the end of expectations came the decline of the nascent political system the Palestinians had tried to build. Among other things, Abbas ensured that Fayyad's office lacked the power to do anything more than receive donor checks and allocate funds to the Palestinian bureaucracy. This ultimately led to Fayyad's resignation in April 2013. Other political figures found themselves cornered and unable to mount a challenge, let alone engage in open political debate. Meanwhile, Abbas also detained reporters who criticized him and shut down websites that highlighted the alarming lack of transparency in the PA.

THERE IS A REAL AND GROWING PROBLEM in Ramallah today. To be sure, Israel's continued military presence and its accompanying restrictions have contributed to it. But the problem, at its core, is about good governance. Whatever recognition the Palestinians earn for their national project, if a viable Palestinian state is ever to emerge, its government must undergo substantial reform. Without cleaning out the ossified institutions that revolve around one powerful figure and weigh down the current system, the future state of Palestine may simply collapse under its own weight.

Right now, however, world leaders have made no such demands on the Palestinians. Too many decision makers remain dangerously silent on the problem. And that silence could smother the fledgling nation in its cradle. These leaders seek to project foreign policies that appear "pro-Palestinian." But as this book will make clear, nothing could be further from the truth.

The failure to address the issues besetting Palestinian governance is a byproduct of the way Palestinian supporters approach their cause. There is simply too little introspection. The focus instead continues to be on Israel and its policies vis-à-vis the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In some cases, the focus tends to be on Israel as an illegitimate colonial state that must be destroyed so that a Palestinian state can be built on its ashes.

Again, this is not to deny that Israel has, throughout the course of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, contributed to the plight of the Palestinians. It undoubtedly has. Whether through the conquest of land or the imposition of restrictive policies in the name of security, Israel has set back the Palestinian cause. This is a deeply regrettable outcome of the conflict between these two peoples.

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Excerpted from State of Failure by Jonathan Schanzer. Copyright © 2013 Jonathan Schanzer. Excerpted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan.
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