For many Palestinians in the West Bank, the minor shifts in Israeli politics are a long-awaited opportunity to challenge the traditional understanding of the occupation.
By Yuval Abraham
Palestinians wait at the Qalandia Checkpoint, which separates the West Bank and Jerusalem, on their way to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque for Ramadan, Friday, Sept. 26, 2008. (Issam Rimawi/Flash90)
Ahmad, a former officer with the Palestinian Authority’s intelligence forces, retired two years ago. Every morning for 23 years — since the PA was established — he would drive to his office in Ramallah and deal with security issues. He experienced the political upheavals of the past two decades on the ground, including the collapse of the peace talks, the Second Intifada, Benjamin Netanyahu’s rule, the building of the separation wall, and the expansion of the settlement enterprise.
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I call Ahmad to get his thoughts on the latest elections in Israel. He agrees to speak to me on the record, “but without [publishing] my family name.”
“Honestly, I was happy with the election results because there’s a chance that Netanyahu will not form the next government,” he says. “Anything is better than another Netanyahu regime. Over the past few years, we at the Palestinian Authority have been feeling that this man is trying to force our political and economic demise.”
I ask why. “Netanyahu openly said that if he is elected again, he will annex the Jordan Valley,” Ahmad replies. “He is talking about 35 percent of the land under the PA’s control. He knows we will oppose this annexation, which is why he is trying to weaken us. It has been eight months since PA employees received their salaries. One of the reasons is that Israel, which charges a tax for all goods that enter the West Bank, is not transferring the money we deserve. This tax, about $15 million a year, is a significant part of Palestinian economy. The PA is essentially under an economic, political and media siege — led by Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Mahmoud Abbas has been the Palestinian president since the first PA elections in 2005, replacing Yasser Arafat. Ahmad says he knows him personally. “Since Abu Mazen was elected, he is doing everything to appeal to the Israeli public and to show them that the PA wants peace, but Netanyahu is working in the opposite direction, especially over the last three years.”
I ask Ahmad what the PA has done “for peace,” and he says: “I was part of the team that drafted Abu Mazen’s peace plan. He was very emphatic about his position. The Israelis want security? We will take great measures to provide it to them.” He mentions a campaign led by the PA to collect weapons from Palestinians, as well as Abu Mazen’s attempt to replace the generation of technocrats who worked under Arafat with another “that prioritizes de-escalation and cooperation with Israel,” explains Ahmad.
“The most significant move Abu Mazen led,” he continues, “is security coordination with Israel. Abu Mazen used to say: the security coordination is sacred. Sacred! When opponents told him ‘Why are you lending a hand to the occupation?’ He said Israel always uses security as an excuse, so there, now that it has security, there can be no more excuses. I think the Israeli army, as opposed to Netanyahu, knows to appreciate this security coordination.”
That makes Ahmad’s support for Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s competitor, former IDF chief of staff and head of the Blue and White party, far clearer to me. “Gantz is preferable over Netanyahu, because the positions that Israeli generals take, at least those in the Labor Party, rule out the annexation that Netanyahu is trying to promote. Yes, maybe they are not interested in resolving the conflict or evacuating settlements, but they are interested in maintaining the status quo. Therefore, they prefer to maintain the security coordination with the PA and oppose annexing occupied land, which could lead to the collapse of the PA. If Gantz and his team of generals are elected, in some ways, we will steer back in this direction, and the PA’s status will stabilize.”
These days, Ahmad enjoys spending time with his grandchildren, painting and writing — he says he does not miss his work in intelligence at all. “Life is more relaxed this way,” he says, laughing. I asking him how he would summarize his years at the PA, or whether he would have done things differently. After a prolonged silence, he says: “We have utterly failed.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a controversial statement to the press regarding his intention to annex the Jordan Valley and its Jewish settlements if he wins national elections, in Ramat Gan on September 10, 2019. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)
This sense of failure is especially palpable among young Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The perception in Palestinian society is that the PA is essentially a puppet serving Israeli interests, “a government without legitimacy.”
A Palestinian activist friend of mine from the South Hebron Hills tells me that last year the PA arrested her father and took him in for interrogation. They held him for two weeks, “hung him upside down from his feet and tortured him with electric shocks. He showed me the scars,” she says. “Anyone who accumulates some influence in Palestinian society — even my father, as an organizer — intimidates them. Abu Mazen is a dictator who will do anything to stay in power.”
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian scientist and intellectual, is starkly opposed to the path the PA is leading. “Any change to come from the elections will be positive, in my opinion,” he says. Answering my questions over a phone call from the Palestine Museum of Natural History, which he founded in Bethlehem, he continues: “What matters is that there is some sort of movement, because the status quo is bad for us. A shift — of any kind, whether to the right or left — will advance us toward the inevitable: the end of Zionism.”
“What does this mean?” I ask.
“Blue and White, Likud, Avigdor Liberman — all of them share the same agenda, which can be summed up in one sentence: a land without a people for a people without a land. They deny our existence. That is why, I believe, we must let go of this illusion that there is any possibility to co-exist with the Zionist movement. For those who want peace on this land, the replacement of Zionism is inevitable.”
But what about parties like Meretz, that support a Zionist state alongside a Palestinian one, along ’67 borders? “It is an illusion,” he replies. “It cannot happen. Zionism will not allow it. The logic behind colonialism, which is deeply rooted in the Israeli establishment, refuses to accept the native population’s control of even a small portion of the land, because recognizing our existence as Palestinians, in the full sense of the word, questions the entire [Zionist] project. If they recognize my right to live in Ramallah, for example, why shall I not also live in Jaffa, Haifa, or Nazareth? It frightens them.”
