The two Palestinian polities in Gaza and in the West Bank, are both in an advanced state of deliquescence. Their disastrous condition is discussed here: “Palestinian Society Sinks into Shambles,” by James Sinkinson, JNS.org, August 10, 2023:
Palestinian society is in disarray.
In two major West Bank towns—Jenin and Nablus—the Palestinian Authority has lost control, and rogue gangs rule the land. Last week, thousands of Gazans protested in the streets—risking brutal backlash from the Hamas regime. Meanwhile, talks in Egypt meant to reconcile the PA and Hamas after 17 bitter years have again hopelessly failed.
The PA’s authority no longer extends much beyond Ramallah. In both Jenin and Nablus, the terror groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, along with a half-dozen newer groups supported with money and weapons by Iran, and all of them opposed to the PA, share — and vie for — control. No one group has yet managed to control either city.
All this takes place as the Biden administration tries to pressure Israel and Saudi Arabia into a “normalization” deal contingent on concrete steps toward a Palestinian state. Both sides are resisting.
No surprise: Despite billions of dollars in “welfare” from the United States, Arab states and the European Union, Palestinian institutions are in a death spiral. Both the PA and Hamas lack political stability or security control, their economies are bankrupt, the two rival dictatorships cannot reconcile and neither has a vision for statehood, let alone peace … other than the destruction of Israel….
The Palestinians have received from the United States alone more than $40 billion in aid. But this has not prevented the PA from being nearly bankrupt, with much of that aid money siphoned off by massive corruption, and mismanagement of resources. Mahmoud Abbas now shares, with his sons Tarek and Yasser, a family fortune of $400 million. The corruption in Gaza is even greater, with just two Hamas members, Khaled Meshaal and Mousa bin Marzouk, having accumulated fortunes of $2.5 billion apiece. As a consequence of such corruption, many of the donors that once provided money to the Palestinians have drastically decreased, or ended altogether, their aid. The rich Arab states of the Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have been particularly dismayed with the Palestinians. Hamas, they realize, is merely the local representative of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is implacably opposed to their family monarchies. And the PA’s Mahmoud Abbas has exhausted them with his constant demands for money. In 2018, the Saudi Crown Prince, exasperated with Abbas, told him to “take whatever deal the Americans offer.” The two Palestinian economies, in Gaza and the West Bank, are both suffering from high unemployment, sinking GDPs, and a high debt-to-income ratio. The only bright spot for the Palestinian economies is Israel’s willingness to increase the number of work permits to a historic high, to above 200,000,which allows that many Palestinians to work in Israel and the settlements where they earn from two to five times what they would receive from Palestinian employers — assuming that there were work to be had in Gaza and the PA-run territories.
The Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank remain at daggers drawn; the latest attempt, by Egypt, to have Hamas and the PA reconcile ended in a complete failure. And the political instability is not merely the result of the enmity between Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank, but also within both areas, with other parties involved. Hamas rules despotically in Gaza, but faces a challenge to its rule by the PIJ. And in the West Bank, where the PIJ fought recently against the IDF in the Jenin camp, while Hamas failed to support it, that terror group now presents itself as the new standard bearer of Palestinian “resistance.” The recent protests by thousands of Gazans against Hamas show that the terror group no longer instills fear in the populace as it once did. In the West Bank, the PA has lost effective control everywhere but in Ramallah and Jericho. Elsewhere in the West Bank, Hamas and the PIJ contend not only with the PA’s Fatah, and with each other, but also with new groups, such as the Lions’ Den, that have appeared, to challenge not only the Israelis but also the older Palestinian terror groups, that are perceived, accurately, as riddled with corruption and nepotism.
The ordinary Palestinians distrust the despots who rule over them. They have seen how both Hamas and the PA have remained in power by arresting, imprisoning, and sometimes murdering, those who oppose them. A recent example was Nizar Banat, whose criticism of Mahmoud Abbas’ corruption was judged so effective that Abbas had his goons beat Banat to death.
In Gaza it is the same story, with Hamas, which expelled or murdered hundreds of Fatah men in 2007, has continued to murder its domestic critics, beginning most famously with Osama Atallah, who, in 2009, was tortured and then killed by Hamas militants.
According to the latest poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 80% of Palestinians want 87-year-old PA President Mahmoud Abbas to resign. An Arab News/YouGov poll indicates 63% of Palestinians feel underrepresented by both Hamas and Fatah, the two most powerful Palestinian factions. In fact, just 11% have confidence in Fatah, while only 19% have confidence in Hamas.
The Palestinians are overwhelmingly opposed to both the PA’s Fatah and to Hamas.
At the same time, the majority of Palestinians—71%—support the formation of armed terrorist groups like Lions’ Den. In addition, 52% of Palestinians support continued “armed struggle”—more terrorism—against Israel….
The Palestinians are becoming more supportive of violence, and ever less ready to make a compromise.
Hamas faces a major challenge from the PIJ in Gaza, while the PA has been losing control in the West Bank not to one, but to a half-dozen, terror groups, including Hamas, the PIJ, the PFLP, and the Lions’ Den.
The PA has all but ceded control of Jenin and Nablus in Samaria (northern West Bank) to armed terrorist gangs. Last month, Israel conducted a large-scale raid in Jenin to neutralize its terrorist infrastructure and halt murders of Israeli civilians. While Israel temporarily cleaned up the PA’s mess, the rebels will surely regroup….
The Jenin operation was conducted solely against PIJ. Hamas showed just how deep is its rivalry with that group by not lifting a finger to help it against the Zionist enemy. And the PIJ has subsequently been making much of that failure by Hamas, insisting that it alone deserves to be seen as the leader of the “resistance.”