Arabs Within Judea and Samaria Prefer Hamas Rule
The situation, in which Hamas is the only alternative to the PLO regime, is a direct result of Israel's reliance on the PLO since the Oslo Accords.
For years, Nizar Banat, a resident of Hebron, acted as a "one-man opposition" to the Palestinian Authority administration. He was a member of the nationalist—not Islamist—"List of Freedom and Dignity" group that ran in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections.
Banat made extensive use of social media and through it sharply criticized the PA rule, the protectionism that characterizes its appointments, the corruption that pervaded it, its cooperation with the "occupation," the abolition of elections, the lack of democracy in PA institutions, and the PA's conduct in the health and economic crisis created by the Coronavirus.
Last Thursday night, PA security forces stormed an apartment where Banat was sleeping, dragged him from his bed, stripped him naked, and sprayed him with pepper spray. Several hours later his body was found with severe signs of torture.
Since it became known what happened to Banat, stormy demonstrations have erupted throughout Judea and Samaria, and the anger against the PA that has accumulated during the Coronavirus period has erupted so strongly that today no one is willing to walk the streets in Judea and Samaria, even in Ramallah, and say out loud that he supports Abu Mazen. Many compare—and rightly so—Nizar Banat to the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whose elimination was a watershed moment in the world's relationship with Saudi rule.
It is important to note that the Nizar Banat case was not a first, as it was preceded by quite a few cases of people criticizing the PA and suffering torture—some to death—in the PA basements.
The big beneficiary of the Banat affair is the Hamas movement, not because the public in Judea and Samaria are close in their perceptions of Hamas' religious worldview, but because Hamas is the only organized alternative to the PLO regime. The people of Judea and Samaria are well aware of the situation in Gaza—the destruction, the wars, the corruption of Hamas that does not fall short of that of the PA, the terrible cruelty with which Hamas treats its subjects, the high unemployment and the low standard of living in Gaza—nothing escapes them. But what is happening in the PA is provoking great anger among their subjects, and their tendency toward Hamas is not rational but emotional.
My impression is that if PA elections had been held today, Hamas would have won an overwhelming majority of the electorate, so the chance that in the foreseeable future there will be PA elections is nil. This is especially serious in light of the fact that Abu Mazen's days are drawing to a close, as questions immediately arise about how his successor will be elected: Will PLO institutions elect him? Will there be a general election? Only for parliament or also for the presidency?
It will be recalled that in the last Palestinian Legislative Council election, which took place in January 2006, the Hamas movement won most of the seats.
This situation, in which Hamas is the only alternative to the PLO regime, is the direct result of Israel's reliance on the PLO since the Oslo Accords signed 28 years ago, in September 1993. Israeli leaders gambled on the lies Arafat sold them about being a peaceful man seeking to establish a Palestinian state next to the State of Israel, even though already at the beginning of the process there was conclusive evidence that Arafat was misleading Israeli leaders.
Israel based its confidence on the security coordination with the PA's security apparatus (Arafat will deal with Hamas without the High Court and without B'Tselem) on the assumption that the PA's existence depended on this coordination, ignoring the incitement against Israel led by the PA.
But worst of all was the basic assumption in Israel that the Arab public in Judea and Samaria and perhaps also in Gaza wanted Western-style democracy. As Netanyahu described in a 2009 speech he gave at Bar Ilan University, there is no such thing as a "demilitarized state" in the Middle East. See Gaza.
And how do I know that there is not and will not be democracy in the PA? There are several answers to this question: The first is that there is no Arab or Islamic country in the world that is a true Western-European-style democracy. Second, for comparison: is the conduct of Arab-Israelis democratic? Even the Arab local authorities—official Israeli bodies that are supposed to uphold Israeli law—are not governed by the rules of democratic governance but by culture. Another reason is that the foundations of democracy are strongly opposed to Islamic perceptions: equality between Muslims and others, the right to organize, women's rights, freedom of expression, freedom of religion—all these elements of democracy are completely contrary to Islam and Islamic law. There is not and will not be real democracy in Islamic societies, including the one in Judea and Samaria.
If Abu Mazen has been able to control the PA for 15 years without elections, does anyone really think that Hamas will allow free and fair elections every four years?
From all of the above, the following conclusions emerge:
First, the PA, even if it becomes a state, will not be a democratic state. It will be a corrupt, cruel, and oppressive state; and cases like that of Nizar Banat will continue.
The second conclusion is that the chances of a Palestinian state—if there is an election in it—becoming a Hamas state are very high. In Gaza, Hamas will be dug in the sand, in Judea and Samaria it will be dug in the rock.
Third, a Palestinian state that will have a land border with Jordan will turn Jerusalem into Sderot and the entire state of Israel into a "Gaza Envelope."
There is only one alternative to the PLO and Hamas rule, and that is the solution of the emirates. Under the emirates system of governance, each of the Arab cities of Judea and Samaria (Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Jericho, and Hebron) would be under the authority of local clans. Each one of these cities would be its own emirate. In addition to this, the plan would include the annexation of the rural area to Israel, and the transformation of the PA into a federation of emirates, similar to the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf. It is an effective Middle Eastern model, based on Middle Eastern sociology that is very likely to succeed.
The alternative to the emirates is a Palestinian state that will become a failed state like Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, or Libya at best; or a Hamas state that will be an Islamist state like Iran or ISIS, at worst.
Only the emirate solution will free Israel from the demographic burden of the Arab cities of Judea and Samaria and create legitimate, stable, and functioning policy frameworks as has been proven in the Gulf.