Want PA Reform? Return to Oslo

One of the frustrations of U.S. assistance policy – for foreign observers and beneficiaries – is an absence of continuity: new administrations every few years with new priorities; the deleterious rotation of key personnel in key policy positions, both in Washington, DC and at embassies abroad; the often-times vacuum of institutional knowledge due to said rotations; and, as a result, the “recreating-the-wheel” manner in which past policy failures are revisited by unwitting new officials. Combine this with national characteristics of wanting the quick solution or “silver bullet,” impatience, and the very American can-do spirit that refuses to believe anything is beyond its powers of persuasion and you have the U.S. approach to Palestinian governance over the past two decades. Anyone, therefore, expecting today’s assistance efforts – to induce Palestinian Authority (PA) reform – will produce different outcomes needs a reality check. U.S. and international frustration with the PA may be justified, but at least the PA has long been consistent. Same cannot be said for U.S. policy.

If the U.S. is serious about pushing the PA to reform itself, however that is defined, its current efforts are not likely to bear fruit, not without credible diplomatic pressure and the use of leverage, and not without returning to the fundamentals of the international community’s relationship with the PA. According to the 1995 Interim Agreement (also known as Oslo II), which clarified internal governance aspects of the 1993 Declarations of Principles (Oslo I) recognizing Palestinian national aspirations, the nature of self-rule in the territories of the West Bank and Gaza transferred to the new-established PA was explicitly democratic. While the interim period, intended to last five years, nominally expired in 1999, Oslo I and II arrangements remain in effect in 2024 – to the extent that the PA still operates and is still recognized as representative of the Palestinian people. It provides the ongoing legal basis for the U.S. diplomatic recognition of the PA, as well as continued U.S. foreign assistance flows, albeit with certain restrictions such as the Taylor Force Act.

With the White House emphasizing PA reform as an imperative, if not a prerequisite, in its quest to extricate the U.S. from the potential quagmire of the “day after” in Gaza, it finds itself in a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. If the Oslo arrangements continue to provide the legal basis for the PA’s very existence and hence the legitimacy of its institutions to represent and govern the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza, then the PA in its current form is in gross violation of these arrangements. According to Article II (Elections) of the Interim Agreement:

 “In order that the Palestinian people of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip may govern themselves according to democratic principles, direct, free and general political elections will be held for the Council and the Ra’ees of the Executive Authority of the Council…”

Article III (Structure of the Palestinian Council) goes on to state:

“The Council shall possess both legislative power and executive power, in accordance with Articles VII and DC of the DOP. The Council shall carry out and be responsible for all the legislative and executive powers and responsibilities transferred to it under this Agreement.”

 Even if it the current “Ra’ees” (leader or chief) of the PA – a position occupied since his election in 2005 by Mahmud Abbas – maintains residual electoral legitimacy 14 years past the expiration of his original mandate, Abbas’ dissolution of the elected Council and current rule by decree not only goes against the spirit of the Oslo Accords but also contravenes its very provisions. The unilateral modifications to the foundational elements of the Oslo framework, with the complicity or, at least, quiescence of the international community, were neither negotiated by the original signatories nor voted upon by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Ignoring these realities, while pushing for reform, is, as the proverbial saying goes, like asking a leopard to change his spots.

This may all seem a bit academic in mid-2024, with the Gaza crisis widening into a regional one, but if reform of the PA is truly a priority for the White House and seen as key to solving the dilemma of Gaza, then a return to the fundamentals (i.e. the Oslo Accords) provides the best and arguably most widely accepted roadmap. Anything short is not likely to advance peace and security, satisfy the Palestinian desire for good governance, or grant the legitimacy and popular support needed by Palestinian leadership to be part of any future solution to the current crisis. Recent polling in the West Bank and Gaza by the Arab World for Policy and Development (AWRAD) makes this abundantly clear with overwhelming majorities in both territories favoring new elections for the Ra’ees and Council.

As Trump Administration Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs David Schenker wrote in his seminal 2000 policy brief entitled Palestinian Governance and Democracy: An Appraisal of the Legislative Council, “[t]he U.S. policy of ignoring the PLC [the Council] and other democratic elements in the PA is unfair to Palestinians and counterproductive to long-term U.S. policy goals of peace, stability, and democracy in the Middle East.” The current crisis would seem to bear this out.