The prospect of the Palestinian Authority imploding should not concern Israel as much as it does, a new study by the Bithonistim security and defense forum, presented to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, concluded.
Netanyahu had asked the forum's top members, including former head of the IDF Intelligence Directorate's Research Division Brig. Gen. (ret.) Yossi Kuperwasser, to study the reification the PA's potential economic collapse would have for Israel in a meeting they held about two months ago.
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The study was compiled while Israel was still debating how to extend sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley under the US's Middle East peace plan, a move which Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned would render the PA null and void.
Kuperwasser found that while "it is in Israel's best interest that the Palestinian Authority remain intact, its dissolution in part on in full will present alternatives that are not must worse."
Kuperwasser presented five scenarios should the Ramallah-based government implode: the termination of all PA activity; a suspension of PA activity; the transfer of government to local elements; a succession struggle in the post-Abbas era, and a takeover of the West Bank by Hamas – the terrorist group that usurped control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah in 2007 in a military coup.
Chances of any of the scenarios coming true are low, the former MI chief said in his report.
Instead, Kuperwasser believes that even if the PA announced a termination of all its activities, "Domestic and international pressure – by the Europeans and the Democrats in the US, as well as by the pragmatic Arab states – would push it to resume its rule."
The study found that the financial fallout entailed in the PA's collapse will not be as high as predicted by left-wing officials, noting that Israel should be able to fund the West Bank's civilian expenses with the taxes it collects for the Palestinian Authority under the mechanism set in place in the 1993 Oslo Accords.
However maintaining the Palestinian security forces would most likely entail a hefty expenditure he said.
Still, Kuperwasser criticized what he called "the Israeli 'addiction' to the existence of a viable Palestinian Authority, which has created a weakness on Israel's part. … It seems that some in the defense establishment have, for years, sought to promote this notion vis-à-vis decision-makers."
Bithonistim forum Director Brig. Gen. (res.) Amir Aviv, who is among the study's signatories, told Israel Hayom that the government "must be ready and have contingencies in place to deal with the possibility that the Palestinian Authority dissolves. There are better alternatives [to the PA's rule) that won't undermine Israel's interests and won't require it to rule the Palestinian people."
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