Palestinian National Authority

I

Introduction

Palestinian National Authority (PNA), interim body created in 1994 to administer Palestinian-populated areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The PNA shares power with and is subordinate to the government of Israel, which seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War of 1967. Israel unilaterally relinquished internal administrative control of the Gaza Strip in 2005 and evacuated Israeli settlers from the territory.

II

Role

The duties of government in the West Bank are divided between Israel and the PNA. Israel maintains nearly complete control over foreign affairs. Israel also controls Jewish settlements and military installations, as well as security and travel between Palestinian-populated areas in the rural parts of the West Bank. While the PNA handles security in the Gaza Strip and in cities of the West Bank, security for most other Palestinian areas in the West Bank falls under the joint control of Israel and the PNA.

The PNA has nearly complete authority over most civil matters in Palestinian areas, including levying taxes, regulating business, and providing education, health care, and social services. The PNA also represents Palestinians in negotiations with Israel regarding further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank and the final status of the Palestinian areas. In this role, the PNA works alongside the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

III

Structure

The PNA is governed by an executive and legislative branch. The Executive Authority is led by a president (preferred term of the Palestinians), or head (preferred term of the Israelis). The president appoints a prime minister, who oversees the day-to-day work of the several ministries of the Cabinet. These include ministries for security, local government, justice, finance, trade, labor, information, telecommunications, health, housing, education, sports, and religion. Some of the operations of the ministries are supplemented by semigovernmental bodies, such as the Palestine Council for Development and Reconstruction, which channels foreign aid to Palestinians. Minimal funding—much of it allocated to security—has severely limited the functions of the Executive Authority. For this and other reasons, the primary function of the executive branch has been conducting negotiations with Israel.

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The legislative branch of the PNA, called the Palestinian Legislative Council, is made up of 132 members elected by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The council was first elected in January 1996 and met for the first time in March 1996 in Gaza, the principal city in the Gaza Strip. The council is responsible for generating legislation and under Palestinian law it has the right to name the members of the Cabinet and the prime minister, which together run the daily affairs of the governing authority.

Although the offices of the president and the Palestinian Legislative Council are located in Gaza, many of its other offices and facilities are scattered throughout the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. This diffusion is due in part to Gaza’s lack of adequate facilities; it is also, however, a reflection of the Palestinians’ hope that they may eventually use East Jerusalem, which Israel controls, as their capital. The agreements that established the PNA in 1993 forbid placing the Palestinian capital in Jerusalem.

IV

History

The PNA was established as a result of a 1993 accord signed by Israel and the PLO. Known as the Oslo Accords because they resulted from secret talks between Israeli and PLO negotiators in Oslo, Norway, the agreement provided for incremental Israeli withdrawal from most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and limited Palestinian self-rule in these areas. The PLO-appointed PNA took office in Gaza shortly after Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Jericho in May 1994. Further withdrawals in 1995 and 1997 extended the PNA’s jurisdiction to additional Palestinian areas of the West Bank. A 1998 accord mandated more Israeli withdrawals, but Israel froze the implementation of the accord after one small withdrawal.

Under the 1993 accord the PNA was to govern for a five-year period until May 1999. At that time, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations regarding the final status of the Palestinian areas, including the possible establishment of a permanent Palestinian government, were to be completed. However, final-status talks have been delayed.

In the PNA’s first popular legislative and executive elections, held in January 1996, PLO chairman and Fatah leader Yasir Arafat was chosen as president. The development of the PNA under Arafat was marked by patronage politics, with positions in the PNA’s administrative bodies going to people with ties to Fatah, or to those with whom Arafat sought to forge coalitions in order to stay in power. Arafat died in November 2004 and longtime PLO Executive Committee member and Fatah founder Mahmoud Abbas was named Arafat’s successor as PLO chairman. In January 2005 elections, Palestinian voters chose Abbas to be the new PNA president.

The PNA has had little money to work with. As a consequence, much of the PNA budget goes to paying the salaries of those employed in Palestinian police and security agencies, leaving little for development projects. This contributes to a general sense of discontent among the Palestinian population and to the ongoing appeal of Islamist groups such as Hamas, which accuse the PNA of corruption and weakness. The PNA is constantly pressed by Israel and the United States to suppress terrorist acts by such groups, pitting the Palestinian administration against segments of its own population. Abbas’s election in January 2005 was warmly welcomed by world leaders, but the new PNA president faced the same problems as Arafat.

Under the government of Ariel Sharon, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Sharon argued that the peace process could not continue until the PNA demonstrated that it could end Palestinian terrorism. Following Israel’s evacuation of Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, the PNA sought to win control of the Gaza Strip’s airspace and borders. The PNA also expressed frustration with the termination of the peace process.

In the 2006 elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council, Hamas’s charges of corruption and inefficiency in the PNA appeared to resonate with voters. Hamas won 76 of the 132 seats, while Fatah won only 43. Most political observers believed the victory did not signal a massive shift to Islamic fundamentalism among Palestinians, although Hamas’s call for an Islamic state has made some inroads. Instead, these observers saw the election results as largely a reaction to Fatah’s corruption and cronyism and believed that most Palestinians continue to want a secular state.

The Hamas victory appeared to further jeopardize the peace process. Hamas’s charter calls for the destruction of Israel, and Hamas has organized terrorist attacks against Israel and Israeli settlers. It refuses to participate in the PLO, where Fatah is dominant, because the PLO recognizes Israel’s right to exist and has accepted a permanent two-state solution. Following the election, the United States and the European Union (EU), which account for much of the aid that goes to the PNA, cut off aid because Hamas refused to renounce terrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist. Israel also refused to turn over Palestinian tax and customs revenues. Under the Oslo Accords, Israel retained the right to collect these revenues.

The cutoff in funds led Hamas to seek aid from Iran. In December 2006 PNA prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, was denied entry to Gaza after returning from a trip to Iran. He was eventually allowed in but was unable to bring the millions in aid that he had collected from the Iranian government. Hamas officials also charged that an altercation at the border in which some of Haniyeh’s bodyguards were killed was actually an attempt by Fatah to assassinate Haniyeh. Fatah officials likewise accused Hamas of an attempt on the life of Abbas. Armed clashes began to break out between Fatah and Hamas.

As 2007 began, Hamas and Fatah tried to forge a lasting ceasefire. In February, Saudi Arabia brought the two sides together at a meeting in Mecca. The talks resulted in an agreement to end the fighting and form a unity government. The agreement also stated that the new unity government would “respect” past accords with Israel, a concession by Hamas, which had previously refused to honor PNA and PLO pacts with Israel because they implied acceptance of Israel’s right to exist and because the PLO had renounced violence. The language was designed to help restore aid from the EU and the United States.

In March the unity government was formally created. Fatah supporters were given key positions in the PNA Cabinet involving dealings with EU or U.S. representatives so that they would not have to meet directly with members of Hamas. Abbas simultaneously sought to renew peace talks with Israel, and Saudi Arabia renewed its 2002 proposal for a permanent Arab-Israeli peace settlement. U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice engaged in shuttle diplomacy in an effort to restart the peace process. In late March 2007 Rice announced that she had succeeded in getting Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas to meet on a twice-monthly basis.

Neither Israel nor the United States recognized the new unity government, however. Conflict between Hamas and Fatah became more violent, and in early June Hamas’s forces succeeded in ousting Fatah as an organized security force from the Gaza Strip. In retaliation, Abbas suspended a provision in the PNA constitution that required the Legislative Council’s approval of the prime minister and Cabinet. He then appointed an emergency, caretaker government based in the West Bank that excluded Hamas and named Palestinian economist Salam Fayyad as prime minister, foreign minister, and finance minister. The EU, Israel, and the United States all recognized the caretaker government and signaled that aid to the PNA would be resumed.

Meanwhile, Hamas had renounced a temporary cease-fire with Israel, and Palestinian militants resumed firing rockets into Israel on an almost regular basis. Israel countered with air strikes and ground incursions into Gaza. Israel also shut off aid and supplies to Gaza. As a result the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) suspended a number of building projects in Gaza that employed about 121,000 Palestinians working on new schools, water works, health centers, and sewage treatment plants due to lack of construction materials. Israel also continued to detain a number of Palestinian legislators, mostly members of Hamas, who had been arrested in the summer of 2006 after radical Islamists captured an Israeli soldier.

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