The Palestinian Authority (PA) has always had a complicated relationship with Israel.
In August 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) agreed on the first round of the Oslo Accords, in which Israel formally recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians and the PLO agreed to stop engaging in violence (which the PA repeatedly violated).
Both parties also agreed that Palestinian elections would be held to establish the PA as an interim, democratically elected Palestinian body that would govern the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Elections were held in January 1996, and Yasser Arafat and his Fatah party won 58% of the seats in the Assembly, giving them dominance over the PA and cementing Arafat’s leadership.
And, while Fatah dominated these elections, there were groups that sought to challenge Fatah. One of them was Hamas.
Founded in 1988 with the express desire to destroy Israel, Hamas was – and still is – an organization that is committed to open, ongoing violence against Israel. This made Hamas not only an enemy of Israel, but also of Fatah.
Because Arafat agreed to nonviolence in the Oslo Accords and engaged in peace talks with Israel, Hamas condemned the Oslo Accords and Arafat. Hamas carried out suicide bombings in order to sabotage the deal and did not participate in the 1996 elections.
And, while they began as a small player in comparison to the PA, Hamas grew as the PA’s early failures came to light.
Corruption and Failure
First and foremost, the PA was unable to bring the Palestinians a sovereign state. This can be attributed to several factors, including the consistent terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other groups in the mid-to-late 1990s, subsequent Israeli reprisals, and the refusal of Arafat to condemn the terror.
This culminated in Arafat’s decision to reject the Camp David Accords, and President Bill Clinton, who mediated the accords, blamed Arafat for its collapse. Instead, Arafat, who previously committed to nonviolence, initiated the Second Intifada, a five-year terror campaign that killed more than 1,000 Israelis.
In addition to the failure to secure Palestinian statehood, Arafat’s leadership was plagued with corruption. For instance, Arafat stole over $1 billion in Palestinian tax revenue, and in 1997, a Palestinian audit found that 40% of the PA’s budget, $326 million, was unaccounted for.
Hamas effectively used the corruption and failures of the PA as campaign platforms in the 2006 parliamentary elections in which it won a majority. The ensuing civil war over control in the PA resulted in Hamas wresting control of Gaza, and Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah maintaining control of Area A of the West Bank, the land relinquished by Israel to full PA control in the Oslo Accords.
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The PA and Hamas remain at odds. In fact, the PA has not held elections for president since 2005 and parliament since 2006, precisely because Abbas and the international community are worried that Hamas would win.
Indeed, Hamas is an existential threat to the PA’s survival, due to its popularity and violent opposition to the Fatah Party that engages with Israel. Further, Israel has no interest in seeing Hamas take over the PA.
Currently, the PA recognizes Israel’s right to exist, even though Hamas certainly does not. The PA typically cooperates with Israel on security issues, while Hamas directly causes security problems for Israel by shooting rockets into Israel and conducting other acts of terror. And most importantly, Israel already shares two borders with Iranian-funded terror organizations – it certainly does not want to share its Eastern border with one, too.
All-in-all, Israel and the PA have a common enemy, and Israel has a vested interest in keeping the PA in power. Israel helps support the PA through financial aid and supporting Palestinian infrastructure. For instance, during the worst parts of COVID-19, when the international community largely cut funding to the PA. During this period, Israel practically sustained the PA by loaning $155 million in 2021.
Further, the Israeli government consistently reaffirms its commitment to supporting the PA. Even the current government, which the media commonly refers to as “the most extreme, right-wing government in Israel’s history,” publicly committed in July 2023 to preventing the PA’s collapse. Every member of the cabinet, except two ministers, voted to support this initiative.
Therefore, the PA leadership should have a vested interest in Israel’s success and deal well with the Israeli government.
But they do not. Instead, they incentivize terror by granting rewards to terrorists imprisoned for murdering Israelis and to the families of terrorists who died carrying out attacks.
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Additionally, when Israel conducts discrete, precise strikes on terrorists like the July 2023 raid on Jenin, the PA condemns Israel. This is concerning, as a large terrorist presence anywhere in the PA’s territory threatens its control. Further, in this most recent raid, the PA decided to halt cooperating with Israel on security matters.
On the UN stage, Mahmoud Abbas consistently condemns Israel for crimes it does not commit and blames Israel for not achieving peace, even though the PA has been the uncompromising party lately. He also repeatedly violates the IHRA definition of antisemitism by indulging in Holocaust distortion.
Palestinian Authority Officials Glorify Terrorism
PA officials regularly go on Arabic television channels and glorify terrorism against Israel and call for the end of Israeli sovereignty.
For example, Fatah Revolutionary Council Member Abdel-Elah Atira went on Hizbullah-sponsored Al-Manar TV in June to talk about violence in the region. In the interview, he said that the terrorists who killed four Israeli civilians in Eli “carried out a wonderful and very unique attack that will be taught at military academies.”
Also in June, Dr. Nasser Al-Qaram, the head of the Palestinian Shari’a Court of Appeals, said on Palestinian television, that “Jihad for the sake of Allah is the pinnacle of Islam,” and quoted passages from the Quran that slander Jews.
But it does not stop there. PA official Azzam Al-Ahmad said on Fatah television that the PA should follow in the steps of Vietnam, North Korea, and China by being uncompromising and violent in their fight to seize the entire land of Israel.
Indeed, by conduct and creed, the PA is proving itself to be an unfaithful partner for stability and peace in the region. It supports terror against Israel and calls for the end of Israeli sovereignty – two fundamental breaches of the Oslo Accords – as the establishment of the PA was contingent on its commitment to nonviolence and the recognition of Israel and its valid claims to the land.
While this might be understandable if the PA was officially at war with Israel, or at least detached from Israel – that is just not the case. The PA’s relationship is more complex and intertwined than that. For example, more than 200,000 Palestinians have permits to work in Israel. These workers help support the Israeli economy by contributing to the workforce, and they also support the PA by paying taxes and spending money in PA-controlled territory and improving the quality of life for Palestinians in the West Bank.
Additionally, the PA is also aligned with Israel on many issues. The PA sees Hamas as an existential threat to it, desires stability and prosperity in the region, and, at least sometimes, advocates for a Palestinian state that will not constitute the entire territory of Israel.
So why does the PA still antagonize Israel? This is especially troubling considering the fact that its behavior goes beyond statements of opposition to Israel, but instead directly violates the terms that the PLO agreed on in order to establish the PA itself. Moreover, the PA still engages in practices that contribute to violence against Israelis.
Israel still supports the PA and sees value in its continuity. However, such behavior must make it more difficult to do so. Either way, it is in the PA’s interest to stop these practices and become a more faithful cooperative partner with Israel.
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