PA Independent State

The World Bank and the European Union congratulated the Palestinian Authority and proclaimed it ready, on the basis of its burgeoning economic success, to achieve independent status as a new country. The Palestinian Authority has demonstrated a new and growing ability to govern and to make full use of the critical instruments of civil government, from the provision of services to its population to administering its executive properties.

In the process of lauding the PA, the World Bank and the EU appear to have overlooked the reality that without the financial and administrative props of the EU, the United Nations and the international community at large, let alone Israel, the West Bank with its four million population and its admirable GDP would collapse. Its vaunted independence is a hollow aspiration as it stands at the present time.

The Palestinian Authority may feel it is fully prepared to declare statehood, but it is heavily reliant, and indeed dependent on foreign aid to maintain the integrity of its financial stability. The irony here is that Mahmoud Abbas and his administration refuse to sit at the bargaining table with Israel to work out a final and lasting agreement for peace, yet without Israel's ongoing goodwill, enabling tax collection and trade, success will remain elusive.

Without negotiating seriously with Israel for firm, acceptable borders what kind of state can be declared? The PA bureaucracy may now be capable of functioning, and of administering the affairs of state, but it will remain a hollow, incomplete instrument incapable of fully representing itself independently without recognizing fully Israel's role in its statehood success, an issue that the PA continues to evade and avoid.

The Palestinian economy is highly dependent on its massive trade with Israel. Where elsewhere will it send its exports should Israel decide not to absorb them? Israel employs, at a far better pay scale than what is paid in the West Bank, those Palestinians fortunate enough to find jobs in Israel. And those Palestinians who work in and for Israeli West Bank settlements, whom Abbas intends to force away from such employment, where will they find comparable wages?

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics itself declares that Palestinians working for Israeli employees earn two to three times what is paid to their PA-West Bank-employed counterparts. This too forms part of the successful PA economy, much to the chagrin and annoyance of Mahmoud Abbas. A far greater number of Palestinians were employed by Israelis before the staging of the Intifadas and the suicide bombings in Israel.

They were replaced because of the ongoing security threats, by migrants from Asia and Eastern Europe, more than willing to work in Israel. What occurred when Israel unilaterally vacated Gaza is a case in point, where trade collapsed and employment by Gazan Palestinians with Israelis was cut off once Hamas took power there, resulting in 50% unemployment.

Additionally, a highly-economic-dependent PA in the West Bank would see itself without financial support from the United States should it proceed as it is determined to do, to face the United Nations with its demand for statehood recognition without first establishing an agreement with Israel.

Belligerently autocratic, essentially impractical. What measure of success can be anticipated to arise from irrational demands and a refusal to recognize Israel and its offers to negotiate? To do so, obviously, would mean that the PA would be forced to admit that it will never acquire that which is mourns as a loss, by unseating the Jewish State from its Islamic geography.