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Palestinian Authority Broke and In Disarray
Three years and five months after Palestinians began their second uprising against Israel, the Palestinian Authority is broke, politically fractured, riddled with corruption, unable to provide security for its own people and seemingly unwilling to crack down on terrorist attacks against Israel, according to Palestinian, Israeli and international officials. The turmoil within the Palestinian Authority is fueling concern that the agency — created almost 10 years ago to govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip — is disintegrating and could collapse, leaving a political and security vacuum in one of the Middle East’s most volatile regions. None of the analysts or officials interviewed said they believed a collapse was imminent, and many noted that the key players in the Middle East, including Israel, the United States, the European Union and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, have a strong interest in preventing the Palestinian Authority’s demise. However, most agreed that the key issue affecting its survival is a lack of money, and they noted that even on the verge of bankruptcy, the authority has not imposed many of the reforms that frustrated donors are demanding.

Arafat and Qureia reportedly are at loggerheads over security and financial reforms -- the same issues that led to the resignation of the first Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, after 130 days in office. Edward G. Abington, a former State Department official who is now a Washington consultant to the Palestinian Authority, said he told Arafat during a meeting at the Palestinian leader’s bombed-out compound here recently that the governing body was in danger of collapse. "Let it collapse," Arafat said, according to Abington. "It will be the fault of Israel and the Americans."
As long as there's fault assigned, what's it matter that the populace is plunged into chaos and anarchy?
One of the authority’s main responsibilities was to police the Palestinian territories, cracking down on militant groups and stopping terrorist attacks against Israelis. Israeli officials say the authority failed in its most important task, as evidenced by the mounting death toll — 928 Israelis and more than 2,400 Palestinians — during the 41-month-old Palestinian uprising. Palestinians say the authority was put in the untenable position of being the security subcontractor for Israel at the same time that Jewish settlements were expanding in areas slated for eventual Palestinian control.
"See? See? It wudn't our fault!"
U.S., Israeli and Palestinian officials say they fear a collapse of the Palestinian Authority could result in a violent power struggle among remnants of Palestinian security agencies, crime bosses, Islamic militants and others. Arafat’s Fatah movement — the political backbone of the Palestinian Authority — has begun losing its once solid grip on key political and social institutions within Palestinian society. Three weeks ago, a gunfight erupted inside the Gaza City police headquarters between officers under Arafat’s appointed police chief and security forces aligned with former Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan, now an Arafat rival. One police officer was killed and 11 others were wounded. Other conflicts are being waged on the political front. The Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, has long challenged the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip by providing residents with a wide range of social services. Now it is also eroding the Fatah movement’s control over a large network of influential student, worker and professional unions across the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas and other militant organizations have seized total or majority control of student governing bodies at major universities in the West Bank, wresting from Fatah the loyalty of an important segment of the next generation of Palestinian leaders.

Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, a critical decision-making body, met last week for the first time in three years. The meeting reportedly erupted into shouting matches several times over Arafat’s failure to control the growing lawlessness on the streets of Palestinian cities and his refusal to hold internal party elections, which many members say believe would give younger Palestinians a greater voice in Fatah. Some Palestinians have begun arguing that the Palestinian Authority should dissolve itself, saying that such a move would force Israel to assume the full burden of its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "I think the Palestinian Authority should push the button" and disband itself, said Ali Jerbawi, a political science professor at Ramallah’s Birzeit University. The authority has no political strategy for combating the Israelis, Jerbawi said, and dissolving itself could help it regain the initiative by forcing Israel to "bear the consequences" of occupation.
Or they could dissolve themselves and Israel could not bother to assume the burden, just standing back and watching as the Paleo tough guys burn themselves out slaughtering each other.

Posted by: Paul Moloney 2004-03-01
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=27193