More hollow threats from the PLO

Last Monday, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said it was suspending recognition of Israel and halting all its commitments to the “occupation authorities” — including “security” cooperation and trade agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) — until Israel recognizes a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

This announcement may sound like a proverbial bombshell — after all, Palestinian recognition of Israel (but not the other way around) was a prerequisite to the Oslo Accords that spawned the ill-fated “peace process” in the early 1990s, and “security” cooperation has been a central and enduring pillar of the relationship between Israel and the PA ever since.

But such is the hollowness of the PLO’s threat that it was largely ignored by the international media, and even by Israel itself. Not only is the decision not binding on the PA, but this is not the first time it has been made. It is not even the first time this year!

In January, the PLO renewed the decision that it made in 2015. According to polls since January this year, and as recently as September, a majority of Palestinians do not believe that the threat will be carried out — they are right to be skeptical.

Polls have consistently shown an overwhelming majority of Palestinians opposed to the PA’s “security” coordination with Israel, because they see it for what it is: Serving the interests of the occupier at the expense of the rights of the occupied. Of all the things fundamentally wrong with the PA, its wilful subservience to the oppressor of the very people it is supposed to emancipate tops the long list.

A poll published in September showed that two-thirds of Palestinians support the PLO’s decision to suspend recognition of Israel, and more than two-thirds (68 percent) support an end to “security” coordination.

But that same month, Mahmoud Abbas told Israelis during a meeting that Israeli and PA forces work together “on a daily basis,” and that he and his people “do anything possible so that no Israeli gets hurt,” according to Israeli organization Peace Now, whose executive director attended the meeting.

Mahmoud Abbas is talking tough via the PLO while puckering up via the PA. He may think that doing the former will divert attention from the latter and burnish his image in the eyes of his people, but he is fooling no one.

Sharif Nashashibi

This is not the result of a disconnect between the PLO and the PA. Abbas, who has shamefully described “security” coordination with Israel as “sacred,” is president of the PA and chairman of the PLO. As such, he is orchestrating this duplicity, talking tough via the PLO while puckering up via the PA. He may think that doing the former will divert attention from the latter and burnish his image in the eyes of his people, but he is fooling no one.

One could have understood the reluctance to implement the PLO’s decision in 2015, when Barack Obama — whose relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was always tense — was US president.

But there is no excusing the inaction after January 2018, one year into the presidency of Donald Trump, who has been openly hostile toward the Palestinians and the PA. Indeed, Abbas has been saying since last year that he and the PA do not consider the US under Trump an honest broker.

And with an emboldened Israeli government as ardent as ever in its occupation and colonization of Palestine, why on earth is Abbas still sitting on his hands? If it is only to preserve his position and that of the PA, then the Palestinians would be better off without him and the national institution that has so utterly failed them.

In 2015, the PLO rightly said: “Israel, the occupying power in Palestine, must assume all its responsibilities in accordance with its obligations under international law.” But the PA’s continued collusion, its willingness to repeatedly ignore PLO decisions, and the latter’s acceptance of this ignorance, are allowing Israel to shirk those responsibilities. Both institutions are simply cementing their irrelevance to the very people they claim to represent.