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How the Palestinian Authority Failed Its People
(www.theatlantic.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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You need to ask Israel for that. That not the point of this article. The point is when Palestinian Authority fails, it creates a power vacuum - that's when the Hamas comes in.
The power vacuum was literally artificially created by Israel. Do you think they didn't know that this would happen ? They literally wanted to make an example out of Gaza like "see what happens when we step down of a region? Do you want this to happen?" Do you think Israel actually will let Palestine be united in one voice? They actually loved the fact that Hamas exists, as long as they can keep the violence to a minimum.
Here is an Archived Wall Street Journal article detailing how Israel had a hand in forming Hamas
Thats the point. Israel needs to have Hamas exist, so that they can have Hamas as the bad guy - the non-trusted entity that can never be welcomed into negotiation. As a result of that, they will only negotiate with the good guy - The Palestinian Authority - the only so-called legitimate representative of Palestinian people. They problem is, the good guy is not doing anything favorable for the people that they represent, and instead they become a tool to the the Israel gov itself, so that at the end of the day instead of achieving their goal of 'building a state on 1967 borders', they are actually loosing more land to the illegal settlers. Israel is of course happy with the outcome.
EDIT: I'll add below some more 'perceived' insight to this as I got more free time now
Why do I label the as the 'so-called representative? Because they are not legitimate Palestinian representative. Fatah lose 2006 election. They should relieve their power and transfer them to Hamas that won the Election. But they didn't. Technically they illegitimately grabbed the power given by the people to Hamas.
And how long has Palestinian Authority (Fatah) governs? Since 2006, that's about 17 years. 17 years without election. If that happens in other countries, we will call them dictator. But the West won't say anything because that will disrupt the status quo. The funny thing is, Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) postponed the election in 2021 by giving a ridiculous reason: Israel has failed to confirm it will allow voting in East Jerusalem (source). The truth was, Mahmoud Abbas was afraid Fatah would lose (again) or even he would lose to others in his own party [source: Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday called off next month's parliamentary elections after challengers from his own party threatened to weaken his hold on power.].
What I put forward here is to discuss what I think relevant to the article, the internal power struggle, at domestic level, that in some way led to what happened on the 7th.
I don't mind being proven wrong but I appreciate more replied that discussed on the internal issues instead of staying to the external issues (the world is to blame, ask them to stop bombing then etc). And please read the article before giving your views as the article is interesting because it was written not by a typical journalist, instead by a senior fellow at Washington Institute for Near East Policy who used to hold various position in the Palestinian Authority.
There is actually more to this. Israel's government used the argument that Hamas exist -and so the National Authority isn't talking for all Palestinians- as an excuse to not negotiate with your so called "good guy" at all.
Have you got a source to back them up?
As far as I know, last negotiation (2014) collapse because of the announcement of reconciliation between the 'good' guy and the 'bad' guy.
Source (1)
Source (2)
BTW, what I mean when I say 'negotiation' is not in the literal sense. Loosely, I mean 'to engage diplomatically'.
Well, Palestine doesn't live in a self sustaining bubble, it's not like officials there control the flow of goods, electricity, and water. That's Israel. So I'm not really sure how important being leaders of an open air prison really is.
Maybe if Israel treated Palestinians with equal rights instead of treating them like subhuman, then they probably wouldn't care for radical groups like Hamas.