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Al-Zaytouna Centre: Strategic Assessment #45: The West Bank: Between the Palestinian State Project and Israeli Settlements

For more than 18 years, the Palestinian leadership’s efforts to establish the

Palestinian state through political negotiations with Israel have failed. Thus,

the Palestinian leadership has merely become an authority tasked with some

functions which the occupation accommodates according to its desires. At the

same time, Israel creates facts on the ground in a way that undermines any

chance for establishing a Palestinian state and that allows it also to

unilaterally impose a peace settlement on the Palestinians.

Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, Israel has been working on

undermining the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state, and the chances

in this respect have become very slim.

In the West Bank (WB), Israel has consistently worked to prevent the

establishment of the Palestinian state in order to impose its vision of the

peace settlement. Since 1967, Israel pursues settlement building and Judaization

policies in order to create facts on the ground. It seeks also to transform the

PA into a functional authority serving specific functions, especially on the

security and economic levels.

The Israeli facts on the ground render the establishment of a Palestinian state

in the WB extremely difficult in terms of geography, as by the end of 2011, the

number of settlers has reached 554 thousand living in 160 settlements. In

addition, the Separation Wall isolates 12% of the WB area and detaches Jerusalem

from it, while 80-85% of the settler population is included to Israel. On top of

that, Israel controls 87% of East Jerusalem, including al-Aqsa Mosque and the

Old City together with the Jordan Valley, the areas classified C within the PA

territories which represent around 60% of the WB area, and 85% of WB water

sources. As for the PA’s functional authority, Israel has controlled all junctures of

the PA work. It restricts the PA’s work to the security and economic

activities, while it enjoys a “five-star” occupation of the WB. At the same

time, Israel has limited the development of the PA institutions thus assuring

that any Palestinian entity that would come to life would lack any resources,

would be isolated from its Arab environment and is under Israeli control.

1.    Dissolving the PA: The PA was supposed to serve for an interim period till

the formation of the Palestinian state. However, in light of the current

conditions which make it a mere functional body, the PA has become an Israeli

need rather than a Palestinian one. Hence, taking things back to square one

might urge Israel to face its responsibility as an occupation authority. It

might also put the international community before its responsibility towards the

Palestinian issue.