fta
“Oslo is dying and so of course is the PA,” said Mustafa Barghouti, an independent politician and head of the increasingly popular Palestinian National Initiative.

“They are transforming the authority into a security subagent for Israel. It’s becoming a Bantustan government, a Vichy,” he said. “The PA is a house with nothing inside,”

said Qaddura Fares, a veteran Fatah member and former MP. In an attempt to establish the PA as a credible government, senior British and US army officers have been seconded to train the PA security forces, once made up of former PLO forces who had fought for years alongside Yassir Arafat and returned with him from exile in...

fta
“Oslo is dying and so of course is the PA,” said Mustafa Barghouti, an independent politician and head of the increasingly popular Palestinian National Initiative.

“They are transforming the authority into a security subagent for Israel. It’s becoming a Bantustan government, a Vichy,” he said. “The PA is a house with nothing inside,”

said Qaddura Fares, a veteran Fatah member and former MP. In an attempt to establish the PA as a credible government, senior British and US army officers have been seconded to train the PA security forces, once made up of former PLO forces who had fought for years alongside Yassir Arafat and returned with him from exile in the 1990s.

Billions of dollars have been pumped into the PA, money that its many critics say has made its leaders rich while doing little to improve the economy, which has been crippled by Israeli closure and restrictions on movement in the West Bank.

“The PA is wasting away,” said Diane Bhuttu, a Palestinian political analyst and former legal adviser to the PLO.

“It’s not going to collapse because that would entail active measures on behalf of the international community and Israel, and because there’s still so much money coming in from donor states.”

The authority of Abbas was rapidly diminishing, she said.

“Palestinians are asking, ‘Is this really the only strategy we have, just to negotiate and negotiate?’ If you add Netanyahu to the mix, then it is not just a question of not believing in Abu Mazen, but questioning the utility of the PA.”