01-Apr-21: What, as elections approach, do Palestinian Arabs think about their society's corruption?

Screen shot from a YouTube clip called "Super Rich Palestinians"

Here's how the opening paragraph of a brief but concentrated report entitled "Corruption in the Palestinian Authority" reads:

"Corruption is endemic in the Palestinian Authority, the private sector and NGOs. It is spreading across all sections of Palestinian society."

The work of a Palestinian Arab organization - AMAN, The Coalition for Accountability and Integrity, based in Gaza and Ramallah - the report takes readers on a walk through a depressing landscape, touching on massive misappropriation of funds by senior officials, corrupt actions on the part of the highest-level judges, embezzlement in the Palestinian Arab intelligence agencies, the widespread smuggling of medications, the distribution of counterfeit drugs. 

"Stamping out corruption is an urgent need", its authors say. 

"There is no doubt that corruption is not new to the Palestinian Authority and that it has been endemic since the very beginning in Ramallah... This corruption began from the first moment that the PA began to gather the Palestinian people’s money and aid and pour it into the Fatah budget, even though this money was given to the Palestinian people, not the PA or its officials who have divided it amongst themselves."

The name of the revered Palestinian Arab leader Yasser Arafat is, not surprisingly, sprinkled among the charges. So is that of the current president, Mahmoud Abbas. And not in a kind and gentle way. 

The report was published in 2013. Has progress been made since then? Not if the events unfolding in the current chapter involving vaccines to combat the Covid-19 pandemic are anything to go by.

Jake Wallis Simons, in an exposé publish on March 9, 2021 in The Spectator ["Corruption affects everything in Palestine – even vaccines"], suggests that the situation remains grim.

Visit certain parts of the West Bank and you’ll encounter mansions owned by senior officials in the Palestinian Authority (PA). By any standards – let alone those to which ordinary citizens are accustomed – they are impressive, with arches, colonnades and tall windows. If you’d been watching them in recent weeks, you might have seen vaccines being quietly delivered to these residences in unmarked cars, having been skimmed off the supply intended for medical workers.

Those, at least, were the allegations made by a number of Palestinian human rights and civil society groups. Last week, the Palestinian health ministry was forced to come clean. In a statement, the ministry admitted that 10 per cent of the 12,000 doses it had received had been put aside for government ministers and members of the PLO’s executive committee.

The rest, it claimed, had been given to workers treating Covid patients and employees of the health ministry. Aside from the 200 doses that were sent to the Jordanian royal court, that is. And those reserved for presidential guards. And those that had been given to the Palestinian national football team... 

According to AMAN, a Palestinian anti-corruption body linked to Transparency International, almost 70 per cent of Palestinians believe that their government institutions are corrupt. An EU report found that embezzlement had led to a loss of £1.7 billion of aid money between 2008 and 2012 alone. Huge sums are spent on fake companies and projects, including – in 2017 – a non-existent airline...

The Spectator piece (that's just an extract above) is a revealing essay, an easy and short read but with some important messages for the many who take an interest in the Middle East and its conflicts. It reflects a concern about which we have written (often) since shortly after our child's murder at the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists in the service of Hamas. 

Jake's bottom line is one we share: 

It’s high time for those on the Left to stop using the conflict to burnish their own political credentials and consider the real roots of the problem.

To which we would add: And it's time foreign governments, especially of donor countries providing aid to the Abbas regime in Ramallah, realize the funds they hand over so casually are part of the solution to what ails Palestinian Arab society. 

We think there are lots of people who think the same way: ordinary Palestinian Arabs.

Getting a real and reliable sense of what they feel about important issues is harder than most people would imagine. This has to do with the massive distortions, the centralized control of Palestine's media, the fear of the multiple overlapping security forces, the relative ineffectiveness of the institutions of justice, and other similar dark realities. 

And also the way "government jobs, which are prized due to the weak private economy, are awarded on the basis of cronyism rather than merit" [source]. The latest data show [here] that unemployment in Hamas-controlled Gaza is a fraction under 50% and rising. For the West Bank, we're still checking and will update. If you were in their shoes, how ready would you be to go finding fault with public officials who perhaps hold the key to your salary-earning job and perhaps those of your spouse and/or children?

We have focused over several years on Palestinian Arab studies of Palestinian Arab views via the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (commonly called PSR). We summarized their published reports for the first time a little over eight years ago ["15-Jan-13: Update on the Palestinian Arab Terrorism Index"]. And since then about a dozen more times [click here].

In a blog post some five and a half years ago, we posed these question about opinion measurement:

Polls are fine and useful and so on but there's another way of gauging public opinion that most of the world uses regularly. When were the last elections in either of the two Palestinian Arab entities? Why are elections such a low priority for people ruled by autocratic regimes, living with significantly un-free media, and ostensibly desperate to have their voices heard? ["03-Nov-15: What do they mean when the Palestinian Arabs say they oppose terror?"]

We're addressing this now because there are indications (and the matter is by no means certain) we're going to find out soon. 

Mercedes-Benz Palestine

The most recent PSR poll, published a week ago, is timed to throw light on where Palestinian Arab opinions stands as an exceedingly rare event - Palestinian Authority elections - seems to be appearing on the horizon. The full text of the PSR's Public Opinion Poll Number 79, released March 23, 2021, is online here. 

Actually, they are preparing for three separate but related upcoming elections: (1) For the Palestinian Legislative Council on May 22, 2021. (2) For President of the Palestinian National Authority on July 31, 2021; and (3) for the Palestinian National Council of the PLO on August 31, 2021,

Our interest is mainly limited to a sub-set of the analysis: what do its subjects think about corruption in the Palestinian Authority? 

Here's what the PSR data tell us about the views of Palestinian Arab adults, via a sample of 1,200 polled face-to-face in 120 randomly-selected Palestinian Arab locations by Palestinian Arab interviewers speaking in Arabic during the period between March 14 and March 19, 2021:

• The perception of corruption in PA institutions: 84% 
• The perception of corruption in the Hamas-controlled institutions of the Gaza Strip: 70%
• Asked to assume that the PA (meaning Fatah) wins the elections, 36% of those polled say PA corruption will get larger; 16% say PA corruption will decrease. And though the poll report doesn't say this, we assume the remaining 48% expressed no opinion. If we're right, that's almost half the Palestinian Arab population who would rather not say. That may be the nmost significant statistic to emerge from this study. So now note the next bullet: 
• Related to corruption as Jake Wallis Simons explains above, nearly two-thirds of Palestinian Arabs (62%) say the vaccination process in the West Bank lacks transparency and justice. The percentage who say it is transparent and just is 33%. Evidently on vaccination, almost no one lacks an opinion.
• Also COVID-19-related: those dissatisfied with the PA's measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus are fully 50%. (Further break-down: In the West Bank which is ruled by Fatah/PA officials, those dis-satisfied are 61%. In the Gaza Strip which is dominated by Hamas, the dis-satisfied are 34%.) And 47% are satisfied.  

There's much more to think about, as there always is, in the PSR poll results. But the only other part we want to highlight at this point concerns overall goals and overall problems. Somewhat surprisingly, the problems and the goals seem not to match up - a phenomenon we have seen over and again among the Palestinian Arabs, (It's worth a short essay but not today.)

Main Palestinian Arab goals, according to PSR:

1. "To end Israeli occupation in the areas occupied in 1967 and build a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital: 43% 
2. "To obtain the right of return of refugees to their 1948 towns and villages": 31%
3. "To establish a democratic political system that respects freedoms and rights of Palestinians": 14%
4. "To build a pious or moral individual and a religious society, one that applies all Islamic teachings": 11%

And the most serious problem confronting Palestinian society today?:

1. Poverty and unemployment: 30%
2. Curbing the spread of corruption in public institutions: 25%
3. "The continuation of occupation and settlement activities" of the Israelis: 24%
4. "The continued  siege of the Gaza Strip and the closure of its crossings": 13%
5. "The lack of national unity": 6%

We'll know we're getting to a better place with our Arab neighbors when their goals align with their problems. Till then, there's not much room for optimism.

[This post, like many others before it, has been translated into the Polish language ("Co Palestyńczycy w obliczu zbliżających się wyborów myślą o korupcji w ich społeczeństwie?") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.]

15-Dec-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think now?

As Abbas starts the thirteenth year of his four-year
term as president, nearly two-thirds of all Palestinian Arabs say
it's time for him to go home [Image Source]

We're keenly interested in knowing what the Palestinian Arabs think.

If you rely on newspapers or pay attention to electronic media coverage of their attitudes and expectations, you are likely to be getting someone's wishful projections rather than data-based analysis. The difference between the two is vast and unbridgeable.

So what is reality when we're discussing people's attitudes?

In the case of the Palestinian Arabs, we think it's what they tell serious polling organizations that are themselves Palestinian Arab. That's why we have published several posts here in the past couple of years that are based on the published findings of the pre-eminent Palestinian Arab opinion polling organization, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research or PSR [website] headed by a respected figure, Prof. Khalil Shikaki.

Not for the first time, we say that understanding the feelings, expectations and aspirations of the Palestinian Arabs is fundamental to having a sense of what's ahead. If you agree, you might want to review one or two (or all) of these earlier posts of ours:

• 18-Oct-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think and feel now?
• 15-Jun-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 16-May-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 14-Dec-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 03-Nov-15: What do they mean when the Palestinian Arabs say they oppose terror?
• 22-Sep-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 10-Dec-14: What else do Palestinian Arabs want, beyond the 80% who say killing of ordinary Israelis is a good thing?

Let's now look at the latest PSR poll which was announced via a press release [here] two days ago.

The parts that get the greatest prominence concern the political leadership of the Palestinian Authority and the outcome of the Fatah movement's recent Seventh Convention. Both of those matters provide an opportunity for the people polled to express broad and growing unhappiness with the performance of Mahmoud Abbas. In the previous poll three months ago, 61% said they wanted him to resign as president. That urgent Palestinian Arab dissatisfaction has now risen to 64%. This has vast implications for how and with whom and along what lines a living relationship can be negotiated by Israelis with the side he ostensibly leads.

The last time Palestinian Arabs were given the chance to vote for a president was in January 2005 when Abbas won; he has held tenaciously on to power ever since. The only previous presidential election, dominated by Yasser Arafat, was in 1996.

Frankly, we're much less interested in those issues and far more in what's revealed about Palestinian Arab thinking on violence and terrorism. Here's what we see, adopting verbatim (for the most part) the language of the PSR press release:

• "A majority in favor of armed attacks and a return to armed intifada." 
• "The overwhelming majority of the public sees nothing but incitement against Arabs in Netanyahu’s claim that some of the recent fires in Israel were initiated by Palestinians." 
• "An increase in the percentage of those who favor the abandonment of the Oslo agreement." 
• "Almost a consensus among the public that the decision by the Israeli government to ban the use of loudspeakers in the mosques’ call for prayer is tantamount to declaring war against Islam."

A few more insights into the mindset of the neighbours with whom we are engaged in a generations-long conflict:

• Asked about "the most effective means of building a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel", 37% vote for "armed action". Three months ago, that had the support of slightly fewer Palestinian Arabs - just 34%. 
• "62% support non-violent popular resistance, 53% support a return to an armed intifada..." [How to reconcile those two points? We won't try.] Three months ago, support for a return to an armed intifada stood at 48%..." 
• What do they not want president-elect Donald Trump to do when he takes office in January? According to 53% of them, he should keep out of the "peace" process. 
• About the PA leadership decision to send fire fighting vehicles and men to combat the recent wildfires in Israel, 50% say it was the wrong thing to do; they should not have been sent. And if their own houses or lands would have been destroyed? That wasn't asked, but we did notice that twice as many Arabs from the West Bank were in favour of Palestinian Arabs joining in the fire-fighting Arab compared with Gazan Arabs. (The fires did not threaten Gaza.) 
• "An overwhelming majority (87%) believes that the Israeli government decision to legislate a law that would ban the use of loudspeakers when calling for prayer at mosques is an indication of a war against Islam waged by the government while only 9% believe that the Israeli government is simply trying to protect the Israeli public." The pollsters evidently failed to check whether the respondents knew anything about similar measures adopted in other places. For instance the use of loudspeakers by mosques is (according to Wikipedia) banned outright in Mumbai, India; Lagos, Nigeria; certain cities in Michigan; and in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Limitation on calls of prayers by muezzins exist in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Austria, Norway and Belgium. 
• Only 32% think the two-state solution to the Palestinian Arab versus Israel conflict is "viable". In our October 2016 blog post on the previous PSR poll, 49% of Palestinian Arabs supported it, while among Israelis - via an unrelated poll we quoted then - 59% supported a two-state solution. 
• 54% of Palestinian Arabs say they believe that "Israel’s long term aspiration is to annex the lands occupied in 1967 and expel their population". 
• Roughly the same number, 52%, believe Israel intends to destroy al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock and replace them with a Jewish temple (that proportion is essentially unchanged from three months ago).

There's not much here that's uplifting or forward-looking. 

But that's how it is with public opinion polls. You can ignore them, you can be angered by them, you can adopt them for the purpose of crafting new strategies. What you can't do is deny their meaning just because you find the conclusions unpalatable.

18-Oct-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think and feel now?

A Palestinian Arab leader [Image Source]

There are people who try to understand the Palestinian Arabs by watching CNN or reading the New York Times. For us, it makes far more sense to reach for Palestinian Arab sources and work from there.

Once again, we're looking in this post at what the Palestinian Arabs think, based on what they tell the pre-eminent Palestinian Arab opinion polling organization, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research [website] headed by a respected figure, Prof. Khalil Shikaki.

In a report published three weeks ago, PSR reported these findings (the wording is ours - the PSR's published summary, a 21-page document, is here):

• Some trends that are mentioned in the last PSR report ninety days earlier (reported in our post: "15-Jun-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?") have gotten stronger. For instance, Palestinian Arab opinion is slightly less inclined to back armed action; the so-called French Initiative is slightly more popular; and the feeling that Mahmoud Abbas - the "moderate" head of the Palestinian Authority - should stop being president one way or another has gotten stronger. 
• Ismail Haniyeh, the likely Hamas candidate for president, would defeat Abbas if an election had been held in September. 
• But Marwan Barghouti, a convicted multiple murderer who, before being arrested, tried (in open court) and imprisoned by the Israelis more than a decade ago, was the commander of the Tanzim armed wing of Fatah, would defeat Haniyeh. All those lives murdered by him and his men speak loudly in Palestinian Arab society: in blunt terms, they're a political asset. And don't overlook that Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 1984, thinks Jew-killing Barghouti ought to have been given this year's Nobel Peace Prize ["25-Jul-16: More on Tutu, Barghouti, terror, peace and prizes"]. We're fairly sure Barghouti is much more popular than Tutu among the Palestinian Arabs, but in politics, every source of electoral support counts.
• Palestinian Arab support for what the poll calls "an armed intifada" is currently high, as it has been for a long time. Three months ago, it stood at 54%. In this latest poll, it's down all the way to 48% - which still means every second Palestinian Arab favours the continuation of a shooting/stabbing/ramming campaign against Israeli civilians. Think about that for a moment, and consider what it means for those of us who come into contact with them every day.
• While it gets their support (55%), the Palestinian Arab public is "highly pessimistic" that the French Initiative has any chance of succeeding.  
• A Palestinian Authority court recently ordered the postponement of local elections. But if they had been held in late September, the Pal Arab public was certain Hamas would win in the Gaza Strip. They expect Fatah - the party headed by Abbas - to take the West Bank. (Clarification: Presidential and parliamentary elections have not been held anywhere in the two Palestinian Arab statelets for more than a decade. They are not likely to happen soon. The elections in this note are for local representatives. Abbas' four year term as president which started on January 9, 2005, is likely to keep going for the rest of his life. The Fatah–Hamas Gaza Agreement of April 2014 provided for presidential and parliamentary elections by no later than October 2014. It's questionable whether many thought it was going to happen at that time and no such elections are currently in view.) 
• This past summer saw numerous news reports of water shortages in Palestinian Arab cities and towns. Parts of the activist news reporting media knew whom to blame [for instance "Israel: Water as a tool to dominate Palestinians", Aljazeera, June 23, 2016], because there's rarely any downside in their circles to pointing the finger at Israel. The Israeli view is, not surprisingly, a little different ["Israel blames Palestinians for West Bank water shortage", Jerusalem Post, June 26, 2016]. So what are the Arab consumers of scarce water thinking and whom are they blaming? PSR found that 45% of Palestinian Arabs pin the responsibility for a shortage of water on Israel but a larger percentage (49%) says the Palestinian Arab side is to blame. (When did you last read or hear that in the mainstream news?) 
• The Palestinian Arab public are concerned about what the PSR terms "internal security breakdowns" and connects those with three main factors, all of them Arab: The PA security services' "weak and inconsistent performance"; a "weak" justice system, including the courts; and "a surge in family and societal conflicts". It's an issue that is rarely discussed in the world's media.
• There is very little faith among Palestinian Arabs in their own government. Indication: how many of them believe the PA suffers from corruption? 79%.
• There is even less faith in the freedom of the news reporting media. On the Fatah/PA side, only 16% of respondents feel there is press freedom. In Gaza where Hamas rules the roost, faith in freedom of the local press is even lower: just 14%.
• A two-state solution to the Palestinian Arab versus Israel conflict has the support of just 49% of Palestinian Arabs. A different poll conducted in August 2016 found that 59% of Israelis supported a two-state solution - and an additional 26% would agree if a peace agreement were to be made not only with the Palestinian Arabs but with the other hostile Arab states.
• There's strong support (55%) among Palestinian Arabs for abandoning the Oslo Accords of 1993-1995. (That requires a separate post of its own.)
• Concerning the Temple Mount, on which UNESCO is going to be voting again today, more than half of all Palestinian Arabs believe (and this is a direct quote from the PSR report) that of "the long-term aspirations or plans of the Israeli government for al Haram al Sharif in Jerusalem", the one considered most likely by most respondents by far is "Destroy Al Aqsa and Dome of the Rock Mosques and build a synagogue in their place". That's the view of 52% of all Palestinian Arabs. And while it's a view that only 33% of Gazans hold, in the Abbas-controlled West Bank, 62% believe it to be true.

If all of this were not sufficiently dis-spiriting (and let's be frank - it really is and it mostly has been for at least five generations now), consider what the people on the far side of the fence want to happen after a State of Palestine has been established and after all (repeat: all) the "issues in dispute" (that's a quote) are resolved. 

Will there then be mutual recognition of Israel as the state of "the Jewish people" and Palestine as the state of "the Palestinian people" (those are the terms the poll report uses)?

The answer of 59% of West Bank Palestinian Arabs is "no". And that's what the Arabs of the Gaza Strip also say: 63% of them. 

We're for peaceful relations. And like most of the Israelis that we know, we're open to talk about compromise and to bargain in good faith. But what are people who hold views like ours to do once we internalize the Arab opinion reflected in that last statistic? It's also impossible to ignore the daily incitement to yet more hatred, bigotry, violence and conflict emanating from elite circles in the two Palestinian Arab statelets (the schools, the mosques, the political corridors) that certainly makes the situation steadily worse.

Postscript:

We're convinced that understanding the feelings, expectations and aspirations of the Palestinian Arabs is fundamental to comprehending them and to having a sense of what's ahead. If you agree, you might want to review these earlier posts:

• 15-Jun-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 16-May-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 14-Dec-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 03-Nov-15: What do they mean when the Palestinian Arabs say they oppose terror?
• 22-Sep-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 10-Dec-14: What else do Palestinian Arabs want, beyond the 80% who say killing of ordinary Israelis is a good thing?

22-Jan-13: Elections!

[Image Source]

It's election day here in Israel.

We don't engage in politics in the ordinary sense of the word, but there's an op ed by Frimet Roth on The Times of Israel site today that we would like you to consider. It starts with this:

Binyamin Netanyahu’s election platform rests squarely on his purported toughness towards terrorists. How odd, because Netanyahu’s behavior has been quite the contrary.

The article is entitled "Stop! A Note Before You Vote for Bibi", and we invite our Israeli readers to consider it before going out to cast a vote.

2-Nov-12: Understanding the term 'Palestinian elections' and what lies behind it

PA police face off against protestors

Those of us who live in countries where freedom of opinion, of worship, of political viewpoint and the right to express ourselves as we wish are core values tend to lose sight of life is like where those values don't exist. In the towns ruled by the Palestinian Authority, for instance.

They held elections of a sort there two weeks ago. As the Palestinian Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh writes ["Palestinian Elections: Which Fatah Won?"], the Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas won a majority of seats. 

To understand, let's carefully define some terms. Like "president", "Fatah", "elections" and "won".

These municipal elections, held in 93 municipal and village councils across the PA's fiefdom (historically called Judea and Samaria) but not for the so-called Palestinian parliament, were the first voting opportunity in the PA-controlled region in more than six years. 

They were boycotted by the opposition, meaning the Islamist terror group Hamas. However there was a different sort of opposition, and they did well. As Abu Toameh points, the candidates who were fielded by the Abbas-controlled Fatah leadership found themselves running against Fatah members who formed themselves into an independent ticket. Guess how it turned out?

"The Fatah "rebels" scored major victories in important cities, such as Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah, as well as many villages. Abbas and the veteran Fatah leadership tried up to the last minute to dissuade the disgruntled members of his faction from running as independents, but to no avail. The Fatah Central Committee, a body dominated by Abbas loyalists, later decided to expel all the Fatah candidates who insisted on running in the election separately... Many of the Fatah candidates who were dismissed scored significant victories. Candidates who were expelled from Fatah defeated those who expelled them: Abbas and old guard Fatah leaders. Even in places where Abbas's Fatah candidates won, the vote was on the basis of clan affiliation. Many Palestinians voted for Abbas's Fatah candidates not because they were satisfied with the old guard leadership of Fatah, but simply because the candidate happened to belong to their clan. What is perhaps most worrying for Abbas is the fact that a large number of his policemen and security officers voted for the dissident Fatah candidates who ran against the Palestinian Authority's nominees." [Abu Toameh]

As for president Mahmoud Abbas, we've posted numerous times about the absurdity of calling this lifelong denier of the Holocaust and booster of terrorists/terrorism a moderate. (Many journalists and their editors don't agree with us.) But beyond that, he's also an illegitimate political fraud. As Sultan Knish points out

Western media outlets insist on referring to Mahmoud Abbas as the President of the Palestinian Authority, even though he’s currently on the 7th year of his four year term... Abbas has no political legitimacy since his term expired in 2009. Salam Fayyad has even less legitimacy since he was never elected by anyone and his appointment to Prime Minister was never even confirmed by the Palestinian parliament, who have no legitimacy either because their last election was in 2006. But even though the Palestinian Authority’s president, prime minister and parliament have not been elected by anyone, the terrorist democracy experiment is still going on with with local councils.

This has consequences. Abu Toameh says "Palestinian analysts are convinced that had Hamas participated in the elections, turnout would have been much higher and the Islamist movement would easily have defeated a divided Fatah". This is quite worrying, but not new.

If you have the misfortune to live under the control of Abbas and his henchman, here's a taste of what you can expect (hat tip to Challah).

A gentleman with the not-so-gentle name Jihad Harb is a newspaper columnist. This past Tuesday, the head of the PA's Department of Public Prosecutions called him in for a conversation. He was informed that a complaint had been filed against him under the Jordanian Penal Code (in force under PA law) by no less a personage than "the Chief of Staff of the Palestinian presidency". The charges: libel and slander and directly insulting the employees in the Office of the President arising from an article he had written two months ago. There's outrage in certain very specific corners of the Palestinian Arab world - at the optimistically named Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms, for instance. But otherwise, it's an invisible story - as if it never happened.

Sultan Knish, reflecting on the 'elections', points out some things that the rest of us ought to take away:

If Fatah can’t win local elections, it certainly can’t win anything bigger. Its political institutions have no legitimacy and derive their support entirely from the backing of Western diplomats. If the Fatah regime has no democratic legitimacy, then on what basis is it regarded as the legitimate representative of Muslims living within the West Bank and Gaza? And on what basis is Israel being asked to negotiate with it? And finally, on what basis is any bid that it makes at the UN being taken seriously and on what basis are American tax dollars being funneled into a two state project, when the the West Bank and Gaza are already two states, one run by Hamas, one run by Fatah, and neither holding any real elections?