The Palestinian Authority: Unsettling Status Quo Scenarios

Abstract

Conventional thinking assigns the Palestinian Authority (PA) an indispensable governing role in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). The PA is also often described as a national achievement, having enabled Palestinians to govern, for the first time, a Palestinian population over a Palestinian land. The PA also supplies hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with employment through the public sector. It is the international community’s preferred interlocutor – as opposed to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). For Israel, the PA enables the maintenance of public order in the West Bank’s major cities. While the PA still appears to be at the center of Palestinian politics, internally as well as externally, it has brought few real changes to the way the West Bank is governed after 22 years of existence. In fact, the PA’s governance function is virtually irrelevant. This weakness will play out on the political status quo in ways that both policymakers and human rights advocates would do well to understand.