PA’s Purpose: Undermine Resistance and Legitimize Occupation

A creature of the 1993 Oslo Accords to control Palestinians on Israel’s behalf

By Aziz Bakr

After years living in South Africa — a nation that teaches you not to stomach anymore our collective Arab timidity. Many of us whisper about dictatorships, occupation, and collaborators in private, then smile and perform diplomatically in public. Usually out of a fear borne out of generations of suppression.

Today, I break that fear.

Let’s speak plainly about oppressive dictatorships, and about the Palestinian Authority (PA): what it is, what it does, and why global support for this rotting and useless corpse must end.

The PA was never a government; it never was in charge of a state. Its creation was a concession by the Israelis, a managerial body that is a creature of the 1993 Oslo Accords to control Palestinians on Israel’s behalf. Like the Bantustan puppet leaders of apartheid South Africa, the

Some numbers as a reflection of the PA:

700,000+ Israeli settlers now occupy the West Bank and Jerusalem (up from 250,000 in 1993).

60% of the West Bank (Area C) remains under full Israeli military control. The PA governs disconnected slivers of land, surrounded by Israeli apartheid walls.

The PA spends 30% of its budget on its U.S.-trained security forces — more than what it spends on education, health, and agriculture combined. This makes the PA the second biggest defence spender compared to all other countries.

The primary task of these “security forces”? To crush Palestinian resistance to Israel’s colonization.

Yasser Arafat, once one of the most recognizable revolutionary icons, signed the devil’s bargain called Oslo. Many Palestinians now call him “al-kha’in” (the traitor), because, under Oslo, Israel doubled its illegal settlements while the PA arrested those who fought back against Israel’s colonization. Arafat’s successors deepened the betrayal.

Mahmoud Abbas was elected “president” in 2005, and then refused to hold another election; like a good dictator, he rules by decree. The “government” is handpicked by him, as are the “parliamentarians” – after he decreed that the parliament should be shut down and oversaw the arrests of numerous elected parliamentarians – either by Israel or by his security forces.

These security forces have jailed over 3,000 Palestinians since 7 October 2023 — a large number of them were arrested for social media posts criticizing PA-Israel security coordination. Abbas had declared that this security coordination between his PA and Israel was “sacred”.

In 2024, the PA openly became Israel’s Enforcer.

While Gaza was crushed under Israeli bombs, the PA ensured the West Bank stayed “quiet”. In Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarem, PA forces:

• Raided homes of resistance fighters, sharing intelligence with Israel.
• Cut water and electricity to refugee camps during sieges.
• Killed journalist Shatha Sabbagh in December 2023 as she filmed their brutality.

For anyone that was fooled, it must now be clear: This is not governance, it is collusion, collaboration in occupation, colonialism, apartheid, dispossession and genocide.

The PA’s security chiefs dine with Israeli generals; its politicians beg for crumbs of aid while 2.3 million Gazans starve. Gaza’s people are begging for tents to ease their suffering; Jenin’s people resist as Israel bombs and bulldozes their homes; meanwhile, Abbas’s cronies live in villas, shielded even from checkpoints, let alone the worst horrors of occupation and genocide. Abbas represents a grotesque parody of leadership.

The World must stop legitimizing the PA! The PA survives on two lies:

1. That it represents Palestinians; And
2. That it is Israel’s “partner for peace”.

Yet 63% of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza regard the PA as a “burden”; 89% demand Abbas’s resignation. As for being a “partner for peace”, the PA is, instead, Israel’s security sub-contractor that coordinates daily with Israel’s army to arrest or murder Palestinians.

When Palestinians resist the occupation, the PA condemns “violence from both sides” while Israel commits genocide, gleefully waiting for the crumbs of the spoils of genocide to be dropped onto Abbas’ table.

Recognition of the PA and acceptance of it as a representative of Palestinians — including by well-meaning South Africans — props up this murderous farce, and prolongs Palestinian suffering.

Would the South African anti-apartheid movement have tolerated the world recognizing Bantustan leaders as “legitimate”? Never!

The Chasm Between Theory and Blood

دائماً هناك فجوة ضخمة بين حقيقة الحرب ووعينا بها. بين من هم في قلبها ويطحنون بين رحاها، وبين من يتجادلون حول مواقفهم منها.

There will always be a gap between those who live through this genocide and repeated Israeli onslaughts — being ground down between the stones of the Occupation — and those who debate it in abstract; between the mother in Gaza digging her children out from under the rubble, and the politician in Ramallah pontificating about “nonviolence”; between the fighter in Jenin defending his home with a rifle, and the PA officer who arrests him for “disturbing order”.

This gap becomes a gaping chasm when one watches Palestinian bodies burn — literally burn — under phosphorus bombs; when one sees a child stare down a tank with a stone. On those streets, theories of revolution, post-colonialism, or diplomatic solutions become meaningless at best. The reality on those streets is not shaped by academic frameworks, it is written in blood and fire.

The PA exists in that ever-widening chasm. It theorizes, negotiates, and collaborates while Palestinians die. Its political programme – if it can be called that – is built on Palestinian corpses. True resistance — the kind that terrifies Israel — comes from the streets of Gaza, the hills of Jenin, the caves of Masafer Yatta, not from “security coordination” with the most violent, brutal and merciless oppressive power, nor from U.N. speeches.

My message to my People is: Cut the PA’s Lifeline! The Palestinian Authority is a corpse propped up by foreign aid and fear. To support it is to spit on hundreds of thousands of our martyrs.

My call to solidarity activists around the world: Redirect your solidarity; listen to Gaza’s mothers, Jenin’s youth, Bethlehem’s priests — not Ramallah’s fattened but vacuous suits.

We Palestinians deserve leaders who fight, not those who fawn over the oppressors.

العظمة الحقيقية ليست في من يناور فوق الجثث، بل في من

يرفض أن يكون جثة.

(True greatness lies not in those who manoeuvre over corpses, but in those who refuse to become corpses.)

Aziz Bakr

Researcher at NOON Films

Former Al Jazeera Journalist

From JENIN