WHICH IS WHY THE PLO AND ISRAEL OPPOSE ELECTIONS:

[M]uch of the Palestinian public today openly perceives the PA as an extension of Israeli colonial rule that is incapable of advancing their struggle. And they are correct.

Established in 1994 under the Oslo Accords as an inter-elite accommodation between the Palestine Liberation Organization, Israel, and the latter's Western partners, the PA effectively traded the Palestinian liberation struggle for a limited form of self-rule that is completely besieged by and dependent on Israel in almost every sphere.

The PA not only imposed structural constraints on Palestinians to resist Israeli policies, but actively collaborated with Israel in a way that served the latter's myriad security, economic, and political interests. The advent of the PA further led to the demise of the PLO, which ended the leadership's representation of the Palestinian diaspora outside the Oslo-created cantons, and ultimately subordinated and coopted the Palestinian national movement.

This historical trajectory intersects perfectly with Israel's logic of colonial governance. For over a century, the Zionist movement has pursued a doctrine of "maximum land with minimum Arabs," seeking to neutralize the Palestinian "demographic burden" that impedes Jewish sovereignty over the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

However, given its inability to reiterate a similar campaign of large-scale ethnic cleansing like in 1948 -- due to both local resistance as well as regional and international pressures -- Israel has instead embarked on multifaceted strategies of population management and control to keep the territorial-demographic equation in favor of the settler-colonial project. After the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, the priority became to ensure that Israel could continue colonizing the land while excluding the Palestinians from power and concentrating them into tiny slots of territory.

A fundamental pillar of this logic was the creation of a "native" institution charged with controlling Palestinians in densely populated areas. This idea derived from many historical precedents from Africa to Southeast Asia, where colonial powers routinely invented and cultivated local authorities to sustain their rule.

These authorities were often put into the hands of traditional elites who, with the power's patronage, served to mediate between the colonizer and colonized, enforce security and stability, and reduce the costs of colonial bureaucracy and military operations. They also developed local police or militia forces to ensure public order, protect the elite from internal opposition, and suppress any form of resistance. When national liberation movements later emerged to overthrow their rulers, these local authorities were viewed as collaborationist entities and were resisted and dismantled as such.

Israel has long tried to implement this colonial logic by encouraging a vision of "Palestinian autonomy" under its rule.

Tweet   @brothersjudd