Summary
The Palestinian government created under the Oslo Accords, which in Makdisi’s account took over the day-to-day administration and policing of the Palestinian population on behalf of the continuing Israeli occupation, while Israel retained borders, airspace, labour, water, natural resources, the Population registry and family unification, taxation and a veto over Palestinian legislation (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.130-132).
Details
- The PA quickly developed police and security forces tens of thousands strong, and “a repressive apparatus no better, or more just, than the Israeli one it was nominally replacing” (PDF p.130).
- Yitzhak Rabin, before signing the first Oslo accord in 1993, told a Labor party meeting: “I prefer the Palestinians to cope with the problems of enforcing order,” because they would allow no appeals to the Supreme Court and would keep the Association for Civil Rights out (PDF p.130).
- At the peak of the process the PA had limited control over Area A, dozens of separate pieces totalling less than 18 percent of the West Bank, and administered the population of Area B (a further 22 percent), which remained physically under Israeli army control; Area C, about 60 percent, remained under direct Israeli rule (PDF p.132).
- Israel used its control of tax collection to suspend the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars of PA tax revenues after the Hamas election victory in 2006 (PDF p.132).
- Corruption: nearly half of the PA’s 1997 budget was lost to corruption and mismanagement, according to an auditor’s report; an IMF audit in 2003 found Yasir Arafat had diverted $900 million in public funds to an account under his personal control; prime minister Ahmed Qurie was publicly charged with involvement in a company supplying cement for Israel’s West Bank wall (PDF p.133).
- In the Second Intifada the Israeli army and air force smashed the PA’s political, security and administrative institutions and formally reoccupied large portions of the West Bank (PDF p.137-138).
Related pages
Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Oslo Accords, Allon Plan, Yasir Arafat, Hamas, Fateh