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In his book The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After, Edward Said tells the story of Yasser Arafat pleading for the Israelis on the eve of signing one of their agreements to let him hold the title of “President” and to allow him to put his picture on postal stamps. The Israelis didn’t grant him these formal, personal requests. Arafat — better known in the Arab world as Abu Ammar — wound up signing the agreement anyway, with the humiliation of being denied his rightful place.
This story reads almost like a joke, but it is not. Rather, it is a very small part of a general picture painted by Said, and others whose knowledge, intellect and moral integrity we can trust, of the early days of the Palestinian Authority, the self-governing body ruling the territories.
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The image that has been perpetuated over the years is that of a rambling, corrupt authority that relies on terrorizing and isolating its opponents, and buying them off or silencing them. It has become a small caricature of the worst Arab regimes, bearing all its characteristics, including cooperation with the occupation.
Said had exposed some of the darker aspects of the authority under Arafat, even accusing them of corruption, including Arafat himself. Still the noted Palestinian-American scholar was convinced that Abu Ammar was the best person to present the Palestinian cause to the international community in the 1980s. That was when their common goal was for the Palestine Liberation Organization to overcome the crisis of its exit from Beirut, to renew itself, and let the Palestinian National Council regain the reins of collective power.
The irony that many forget is that Edward Said wrote the most important profile about Abu Ammar to present him in a new light to American public opinion, which had only knew of “Arafat, the terrorist.” Moreover, Said offered key support to Arafat’s project in the Palestinian National Council in Algeria in 1988 to take historic steps by declaring the independence of the State of Palestine and recognizing Israel.
But the two men split at the beginning of the Oslo process to the point that prompted Said to declare that “no one dares to say out loud that the Palestinian Authority, deep down, is characterized by some features of the mafia, as many men in authority conclude various types of deals that benefit the narrow circle of Arafat’s men, which necessarily excludes competent and honorable people.”
Arafat, meanwhile, described Said’s Peace and Its Discontents: Gaza – Jericho, 1993-1995 as a “frivolous book,” quite a characterization of one of the world’s most influential thinkers in the second half of the 20th century.
Kiss of life, Stab of death
Incompetence, ignorance, arbitrariness, and personal ambitions led the Palestinian Authority through three decades of decline even more tragic than the errors of its early days. It has been reduced to an administrative body that works under Israel’s orders in governance and financial matters, but also in security matters. In some areas of the West Bank, it has become nothing more and nothing less than an instrument of occupation.
Over these recent turbulent months, I remembered the story of the postal stamp, and this real-time picture of an authority isolated in small cantons, surviving thanks to the protection of a few thousand policemen, and Israeli oversight. One day on the eve of Spain’s recognition of the Palestinian state, I was watching a joint press conference between the Palestinian Prime Minister and the Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares — and I realized I didn’t know the Palestinian leader’s name. Though I live in Spain, I follow Palestinian affairs very closely; and now, as I write this article, I had to use Google to find his name: Mohamed Moustafa.
If Arafat’s jokes got laughs in the early 1990s, the jokes of his heirs can’t even raise the hint of a smile.
As for Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, who took over after Arafat’s death, we only remember the laughable moments, such as his screaming in one of the meetings without realizing that the session was recorded, with obscene insults directed against China, Russia, the U.S., and “all the Arabs.”
If Arafat’s jokes got laughs in the early 1990s, and many turned a blind eye to them because of his history before Oslo, the jokes of his heirs can’t even raise the hint of a smile.
October 7 trigger
The Al-Aqsa Flood operation — Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack — and Israel’s response with a genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and the repression and killing campaign in the West Bank, gave the self-governing Palestinian Authority a temporary kiss of life, but will ultimately also be the final stab of death for their leadership.
Adding the adjective “national” to its name, the Authority used the moment to remind some European and Arab parties that it still existed. They saw it as an alternative to the “terrorist” Hamas.
This is embodied in the scene of the Palestinian Prime Minister, who does not have any real authority on the street where his office is located, whether on the Palestinians or the Israelis, speaking at the headquarters of the European Commission with the Spanish foreign minister. Might we imagine that the worn-out Palestinian Authority, which lacks any popularity, is the party capable of taking over power in Gaza? Can we imagine them sitting at the table for future dialogue and negotiation with Israel, so that we can all achieve our beautiful dream of two states and Middle Eastern peace?
As for the final stab of death, it is the curse that befell her in two successive chapters. The curse of the first chapter was embodied by comparing it to Hamas, which is capable of taking action and causing pain to Israel. The curse of the second chapter was that the Palestinian Authority did not do anything about the genocide against Gaza’s people. It was content to be a party watching a conflict that did not concern it, between the Palestinian people and the resistance forces on the one hand, and Israel on the other hand.
On the Day After
Opening this article with a story from the times of Oslo, Arafat, and Edward Said is a quick return to that defining moment. The moment of the beginning of the catastrophe that many are trying to ignore in our time, whether in their attack on Hamas and portraying it as if it were ISIS, or in their “objective” talk about the self-governing authority that resulted from the Oslo process, as if it were a parallel, equal, or alternative party to Hamas and the resistance factions.
The self-governing authority is now being invoked under the pretext of a vacuum that needs to be filled, in a future negotiating process on the same terms as Oslo.
While the real vacuum that must be filled is that of the unified leadership of the Palestinian people, and the project of an alternative entity to the State of Israel in its current form, which is exposed for the first time in its history to real dangers.
This requires that we question the Palestinian Authority’s rule, and ask which political forces are best qualified to react to the moment, and exploit the large cracks in the wall that is Israel.
Israel has never wanted to negotiate seriously for a real solution.
This process is different than the common but unanswerable question of what happens the “Day After.” Even the regional and international presidents and leaders who met in Jordan’s capital, Amman this month to discuss the reconstruction and assistance of Gaza do not know how this reconstruction will take place, and they do not have the ability to bring in a single aid truck without Israel’s permission. Indeed, Israel itself is also without an answer to the Next Day question.
But there was plenty the Palestinian Authority could have done to help prepare for the future. It should have started by withdrawing its old recognition of Israel, at least as a response to comments of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government that a Palestinian state would be “terrorist in nature.”
Between the kiss of life and the stab of death, Abu Mazen’s authority sits on the spectators’ benches in the dark hall, watching the long bloody movie, hoping to be summoned to play any role at any moment, even merely the role of an extra.
What those who follow the Palestinian cause know is that the old path of a peaceful settlement under Israeli and American conditions has ended forever. Any new path has become impossible for many years after all this blood and destruction.
There are no parties capable of sitting on the negotiating table. The main actors today; Hamas and the resistance forces are not accepted as a party at the international level, and will only agree to negotiate a real solution to the Palestinian cause. The other actor, Israel, does not by nature want, and has never wanted, to negotiate seriously for a real solution.
Hamas’ role
It is difficult to exclude Hamas from any future equation concerning the Palestinians, let alone eliminate it, even if it suffers a clear military defeat in Gaza. There are other Palestinian forces, with diverse orientations and intellectual perceptions, that realize that ending the presence of Hamas is not in their interest. That includes sectors of the Fatah organization running the Palestinian Authority, outside the Abbas faction, which know the Oslo process has brought disasters upon the Palestinian people.
There is no escape, then, from reviving and renewing the Palestine Liberation Organization, or building a new entity that includes everyone, with a realistic vision, and not the destructive defeatist one that Arafat called realistic. It’s a vision that represents all the rights of the Palestinian people historically, and puts them at the forefront.
Most importantly, it should restore the political unification of the four sectors of the Palestinian people: in Gaza, in the West Bank, within the State of Israel, and in the diaspora. But that will require that the new organization takes a vitally important step: disengaging from the Arab regimes.
