At this point, the scale of human and material destruction in Gaza has rendered the place nearly uninhabitable. All indications, moreover, suggest Israel\u2019s destructive campaign will continue on for some time longer. Be that as it may, members of the international community are still devoting much of their energies into planning for \u201cthe day after\u201d. In these regards, the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, a territory that has been out of its control since 2007, is not infrequently put forward as a viable option. For a number of reasons, this strikes as dubious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brought into existence by the Gaza-Jericho agreement (also known as Oslo I), the Palestinian Authority (PA) was established in May 1994 to serve as an interim governing body for Palestinian lands occupied by Israel since 1967. Its tenure was designated at five years, a period during which Palestinian and Israeli negotiators were notionally meant to resolve final status issues kicked down the road in Oslo: principally, the status of Jerusalem, delimitation of borders, right of return for refugees, sharing of natural resources, and the sovereign rights of a Palestinian state. Alas, when the five years in question elapsed without agreements having been reached, inertia saw to it that the PA endured as a semi-autonomous government of sorts, its powers over matters as fundamental as land, water, airspace, and security subordinated to those of Israel. This year, the Authority rang in its thirtieth birthday, as far from sovereignty as it was in 1994. The rule of its President, Mahmoud Abbas, nears twenty years since last subjected to a plebiscite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Due to the failures of the process begun in Oslo, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories had been living through a succession of political crises well before October 7th<\/sup> introduced a rather seismic rupture: 2007\u2019s partitioning of the occupied territories and consolidation of dueling government authorities. Elections forever delayed or canceled. Authoritarian upsurges in the West Bank and Gaza. Intensified colonization. The blockade of Gaza. And, as commemorated in the Abraham Accords, regional marginalization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In many ways, the structure and design of the PA propelled this course of events. The truth is that the so-called “Oslo Accords” never envisaged the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. Rather, they institutionalized an arrangement whereby the PA was enlisted as subcontractors for the Israeli military administration\u2014and whereby Palestine\u2019s economic dependence on Israel was quietly deepened. Premised upon security cooperation from the very start, the PA was allowed to hire tens of thousands of policemen and civil servants and to exercise a degree of control over the inhabitants of the Occupied Territories. It was obstructed, however, from opposing Israel\u2019s pursuit of colonial ambitions in any meaningful way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In terms of governance and advancing the Palestinian national project, the PA\u2019s record can only be called woeful. It has consolidated a highly securitized fiefdom, its police and intelligence agents eating up one third of annual budgets and numbering 85,000 as of the late 2010s (one for every 48 Palestinians, a ratio nearly nine times larger than that of the United States). Fed by counterparts in Israel, these actors maintain a system of surveillance and control designed to prevent the mobilization of a political opposition. As they do, Israel\u2019s construction of settlements continues apace and prospects of salvaging a two-state solution wither on the vine.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTowards a surge of protest<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n