The coming collapse of the Palestinian Authority

What will happen to the PA when Mahmoud Abbas dies?

Alaa Daraghme @AlaaDaraghme

Ongoing clashes in Nablus: Palestinians hurl stones at the PA security forces vehicle in Nablus and the forces launched stun grenades at them and arrest some of them.

There was a day-long series of confrontations in Nablus last month as rock-hurling Palestinians protested an armed invasion of the city.

There was then a firefight that resulted in the death of a 53-year-old bystander, Firas Yaish.

But the incursion into the northern West Bank city was not carried out by the Israeli military — the invaders were from the Palestinian Authority.

Acting (according to the Israeli press) “at Israel’s request,” PA forces invaded the city and arrested two Palestinian fighters affiliated with Hamas, Palestine’s Islamic resistance movement.

The Palestinian reaction was very similar to what happens when Israeli death squads invade West Bank cities: groups of mostly young locals look to the streets to pelt the PA forces with rocks and other projectiles. One could hardly tell the difference.

That seems to me an inevitable response, which is likely to grow over time.

If PA forces are going to act like Israeli occupation forces, then the Palestinian response to them is also going to be similar.

Indeed, in Nablus, the PA acted so much like Israel that the Palestinian fighters initially opened fire on them, assuming they were firing back at Israeli special forces.

But Musab Shtayyeh and Ameed Tubeileh — the two Hamas fighters — ultimately laid down their weapons after learning they were firing on Palestinians. (Fears of a civil war have often led to the decision by Palestinian resistance fighters not to respond to PA provocations.)

Many people — especially in the West — are fooled by the title “Palestinian Authority.” The reality is that the PA has always acted to protect the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and (until it was kicked out by Hamas) in Gaza. Indeed, that is the entire reason the PA was set up in the first place: to transform the resistance — then led by the Palestine Liberation Organisation — into a collaborationist entity.

Thus killing two birds with one stone.