Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas was in his element when, on stage at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) last month, he thanked 124 countries for voting yes on the first-ever resolution introduced by Palestine at the UNGA.
He was back at the scene of one of the PA’s most significant political achievements since its establishment under the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s – Palestine’s successful 2012 bid for non-member observer status.
Abbas, an architect of the peace process that created the PA as a government-in-waiting until the establishment of a Palestinian state, succeeded Yasser Arafat at the helm of the PA after his death. Since then, the PA has made international recognition and diplomacy a priority, with constant calls for UN action and a years-long campaign for the International Criminal Court to investigate crimes committed in Palestine.
At the UNGA, Abbas condemned Israel’s yearlong war on Gaza, ongoing incursions and settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.
But for many Palestinians, who are reeling from the deadliest year in a long history of violence, Abbas’s words at the UN felt tired and irrelevant.
While the Palestinian Authority “paid lip service” to the tragedy Palestinians were facing, it also continued to carry out its role as “subcontractor” for the Israeli occupation by suppressing protests and resistance in the West Bank, Yara Hawari, a co-director of the Palestinian think tank Al Shabaka, told media.
“Really since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority has been absent from the scene, making a few comments here or there, or statements that really do nothing”, she said. “But there have been no concrete actions to support Palestinians in Gaza”.
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