By ETHAN BRONNER from Ramallah, West Bank
The funeral of 23-year-old Talat Ramia, a Palestinian who died during a clash with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank last month.
In
the 14 months since revolution has spread across the Middle East and tension
has soared over Iran’s nuclear program, the Palestinian leadership has found
itself orphaned. Politically divided, its peace talks with Israel collapsed and
its foreign support waning, the Palestinian Authority is sidelined, confused
and worried that its people may return to violence.
“The
biggest challenge we face — apart from occupation — is marginalization,” Salam
Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, said in an interview.
“This is a direct consequence of the Arab Spring where people are preoccupied
with their own domestic affairs. The United States is in an election year and
has economic problems, Europe has its worries. We’re in a corner.” For decades,
as autocrats ruled their neighbors, the Palestinians were at the center of
Middle Eastern politics, their struggle with Israeli occupation embodying the
Arab longing for post-colonial freedom and dignity. The Obama administration
came into office asserting that a state in the West Bank and Gaza was the key
to regional progress.
But
when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington this week, the
conversation was dominated by Iran, not peace talks or occupation.
In
the region, the Arab Spring may have increased popular attention to the
Palestinian cause, freeing Egyptians and others to express anti-Israel
sentiments. But that has actually made things harder on the Palestine
Liberation Organization, which negotiated with Israel. Popular affection has
shifted to the Islamists of Hamas. They too have difficulties, however, abandoning
their political headquarters in Syria, facing reduced help from Iran and
contending with their increased divisions.
The
result is a serial splintering of the Palestinian movement, a loss of state
sponsors and paralysis for those trying to build a state next to Israel. As
momentum for a peaceful two-state solution fades, and the effort for
recognition at the United Nations remains stymied, no alternatives have emerged
and attention has focused on other conflicts.
Zakaria
al Qaq, a Palestinian expert in national security at Al Quds University in
Jerusalem, said he recently joined dozens of other foreign scholars for a
series of lectures on his specialty in the United States. Not a single one
mentioned the Palestinian issue.
“I
don’t see Palestine on the agenda of the United States or Israel,” he said. “It
is on the shelf. The Palestinians don’t have the ability to impose themselves
on the world and they can’t mobilize their people. The Arab world is busy. The
Palestinians are becoming secondary.”
President
Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, known for indecisiveness, seems
especially torn on how to proceed. He and his lieutenants have been working for
weeks on a multipage letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel,
laying out all the reasons they believe that Israel has stood in the way of
peaceful progress.
He
plans to deliver a copy to American and European leaders as well, explaining
why he thinks he must abandon the Israeli peace track and reconsider the
Palestinian Authority’s relationship with Israel. And while diplomats are
sympathetic with his frustration over Israel’s refusal to stop settlement
building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, they suspect that Mr. Abbas,
known as Abu Mazen, feels politically unable to compromise with Israel at this
time of upheaval.
“The
political price Abu Mazen pays for being in negotiations with Netanyahu is too
high right now,” a top Western diplomat said, speaking on condition of
anonymity. “People in this region believe that you are either protesting or
being protested against. He has decided it is better to protest.”
The
problem is not only a Palestinian one, however. Mr. Netanyahu’s government and
its supporters also say that the regional tumult makes it harder for them to
yield territory.
“Israelis
have always been concerned that if they make difficult and strategic concession
in the peace process, what will happen if the regimes with which they signed an
agreement are overthrown?” noted Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for
Public Affairs and a longtime adviser to Mr. Netanyahu.
“Israel
has to be extremely cautious and ratchet up its security concerns. Will the
Palestinian Authority be the Palestinian Authority one year from now? When
European diplomats come to Israel and ask it for new territorial concessions,
it is like asking us to put up a tent in the middle of a hurricane.”
Others
argue that as Palestinian frustration grows the chance of an explosion in the
West Bank increases. Rock throwing and confrontations with Israeli troops have
picked up in recent months.
“We
don’t want to be employees of the occupation,” Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the
executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said in an
interview. “Israel has left the Palestinian Authority with responsibility but
no power. At the same time, Israel has gotten the international community to
pay the bill. It has a cushy occupation.”
The
end of the Israeli track has pushed Mr. Abbas to pursue reconciliation with
Hamas. But that too has faltered. Announced in a flourish last May, the plan
for a unity government that would ready the Palestinians for elections has
stalled largely over internal Hamas divisions on the plan.
Khaled
Meshal, the political chief of Hamas who was based in Syria, agreed that Mr.
Abbas would become the prime minister in the interim government. But his
colleagues in Gaza objected to the way he negotiated without consultation.
There are divisions among them and within the military wing of Hamas. Few
Palestinians believe that elections are imminent; many suspect that they are a
long way off.
Meanwhile,
the distractions in the Arab world along with Israeli maneuvers have
contributed to a worsening fiscal crisis for the Palestinian Authority even as
the private sector here builds a modern infrastructure, creating a small but
impressive business class.
Economic
growth for the West Bank, which from 2008 to 2010 averaged 10 percent, slowed
to 5.7 percent in 2011 with unemployment remaining at 17 percent, according to
Oussama Kanaan, of the International Monetary Fund. Last year, Arab countries
together gave only $340 million dollars to the Palestinian Authority, leaving
it with $200 million less than expected.
The
authority has been unable to pay its debts to private companies and the public
pension fund, leaving it some $500 million in arrears, in addition to its debt
of $1.1 billion to private banks.
Agreements
between the Palestinian and Israeli finance ministries to improve Palestinian
revenue collection have not been implemented because the Israeli government has
not signed off. Prime Minister Fayyad said that unless those measures go into
effect, he may not attend a donors conference planned for Brussels this month.
At
the same time, Israeli troops have stepped up their nighttime raids on West
Bank cities, recently shutting down two television stations and contributing to
the sense of impotence.
“We
need attention to our finances, our security and to the violence from the
Israeli Army,” Mr. Fayyad said. “What the army has been doing is both wrong and
dangerous. It makes us look like a weak authority. They don’t know when there
will be one incident too many, when things will simply spin out of control.”
-This report was published in The New York Times on 07/03/2012
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