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It was a sad and sorry spectacle, but entirely symptomatic of the slow-burning crisis facing the Palestinian national movement. Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority and chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, rose at the UN general assembly last week to deliver a much-ballyhooed “ultimatum” to Israel. It was initially hyped as a “bombshell”. Then expectations were lowered to the “dramatic”.
In the event it was a largely meaningless announcement that Palestinians are no longer bound by the Oslo Accords because – as is perfectly true – Israel has systematically violated them to the point of mockery.
But, practically speaking, what does that mean? It’s one thing to say one feels no longer bound by the terms of an agreement and quite another to start changing the day-to-day practices that have been shaped by ongoing realities.
There’s no basis for expecting Mr Abbas to cease security cooperation in the West Bank between the PA and Israeli authorities. These arrangements are politically very difficult for Palestinians. At some level they do aid the occupiers, and co-operating in any significant way with the forces of the status quo is both humiliating and galling.
But there’s no questioning the practical value to both sides of these arrangements, or the severe dangers and difficulties that would be courted if they were permanently suspended. Therefore, as a practical matter, it makes no sense for Palestinians – in their own pragmatic interests – to abandon this cooperation even if it would be emotionally satisfying and politically popular.
Security cooperation is only one example of the many daily arrangements under the Oslo framework that pose a stark choice for Palestinians. Is it better to abandon these systems merely to spite the Israeli occupiers even though that would create much more severe problems for Palestinians themselves and offer no plausible benefits at all?
Non-cooperation is one way of pushing back against occupation, but it’s hard to imagine that giving up on the limited forms of self-government Palestinians have created in the past 30 years would do more to harm Israel than themselves. The Israelis have many options. But their own self-rule is one of the few tools Palestinians have which, as former PA prime minister Salam Fayyad’s policies briefly but convincingly demonstrated, can be used to both develop society and promote international expectations for Palestinian statehood. Giving it up in favour of a return to direct occupation would be painful for Israel but catastrophic for Palestinians at every register from daily life to the prospects for independence. Therefore, it won’t happen.
Meanwhile, the world moves on, impervious to the Palestinian conundrum. Benjamin Netanyahu devoted almost all of his own UN speech to Iran. Indeed, he frequently gives major addresses without mentioning the Palestinians at all. Mr Netanyahu’s government is obviously opposed to the prospect of Palestinian statehood, even in theory, despite his protestations to the contrary. His offer to negotiate without conditions is the height of cynicism.
Mr Netanyahu’s real policy is amply illustrated by his government’s outrageous plan to legally recognise five wildcat settlement outposts, including hundreds of buildings constructed in violation of even Israel’s own laws and on privately-owned Palestinian land.
The Arab world, too, is focused on other matters. And the United States not only seems to have lost interest in brokering peace, doubts are now raised regarding its own long-term commitment to a two-state outcome. Major Jewish American groups like AIPAC, J-Street and Americans for Peace Now are focused on, and squabbling about, Iran and the nuclear deal, not anything to do with the Palestinians.
The Palestinian leadership does not know what to do. Its options are so limited, and its ability to craft creative alternatives so restricted, that it has all but given up. Both will and imagination seem exhausted. Hamas’s approach offers nothing but adding considerable human suffering to further failure. Its misrule in Gaza is so bad it now faces creeping encroachment by ISIL.
In the West Bank, events are being driven by the brutal logic of reciprocal violence embedded in the occupation. A settler couple were shot dead in front of their four young children by unknown gunmen. Militant settlers carried out reprisal attacks on Palestinian homes and vehicles.
While it would make no sense for Palestinians to dismantle their own nascent national institutions, however imperfect they may be, Israel cannot expect that another wave of massive violence would be manageable or containable. Any such delusion would be an even greater failure of political and social imagination.
The UN says six Israelis and 24 Palestinians have been killed in the simmering tensions in the occupied territories this year. That’s a small but sobering reminder of how the violence at the core of relations between occupiers and occupied inevitably bubbles to the surface even when no one welcomes it.
Mr Abbas was bluffing in New York. Israel knows this. His speech might as well never have been delivered. But what faces both parties in any system defined by violence, and by dominance and subordination with no end in sight, is no mystery and no bluff.