Palestinian National Authority

The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) or simply Palestinian Authority, whose official name is Palestinian Authority of the West Bank and Strip Gaza is an autonomous administrative organization that has governed temporarily since 1994 in the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank. In January 2013, it officially adopted the name of the State of Palestine.

The PNA was established in 1994, pursuant to the Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Government of Israel, as a transitional entity for a period of 5 years after which negotiations would take place endings between the two parties. Based on these agreements, the Palestinian Authority was designated to control both security and civil administration in the Palestinian urban areas (designated as "Area A"), and only civilian control over the Palestinian rural areas ("Area B"). The remaining territories, including Israeli settlements, the Jordan Valley region, and road connections between Palestinian communities, remain under exclusive Israeli control (“Area C”). East Jerusalem (the part of Jerusalem controlled by Jordan from 1948 to 1967), which is claimed as the future capital by the PNA, was excluded from the Oslo agreements until the final phase of the negotiations, for which the ministries and government bodies of the Palestinian Authority were located between Gaza and the small city of Ramallah, close to Jerusalem.

On October 31, 2011, she was elected member number 195 of UNESCO, which admits Palestine as a full member. Subsequently, on November 29, 2012, the UN General Assembly passed, through Resolution 67/19 to consider Palestine as a "State", instead of the previous consideration of "entity".

Geography

View of the River Jordan.

Palestine, a historical region whose extent has varied greatly since antiquity, located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, southwest of Asia, and now divided for the most part between Israel, Jordan (previously called Transjordan) and the autonomous Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip which are controlled by the Palestinian National Authority. The region has a highly diverse terrain that is generally divided into four parallel zones. From west to east they are: the coastal plain; the hills and mountains of Galilee, Samaria, and Judea; the Jordan River Valley, which separates the West Bank and Transjordan, and the eastern plateau. In the extreme south is the Negev, a rugged desert. The altitude of the elevations oscillates between 395 m below sea level on the shores of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the earth's surface, and 1,020 m at the summit of Mount Hebron. The region has several fertile areas that constitute its main natural resource. Most notable of these are the Sharon plain, along the northern sector of the Mediterranean coast, and the Esdrelon (or Yizreel) plain, a valley north of the Samarian hills. However, the region's water supply is not abundant; almost all of the annual rainfall occurs during the winter months and is modest. The Jordan River, the only uninterrupted channel in the region, flows south through Lake Tiberias (the area's only freshwater lake) to the highly salinity Dead Sea.

History

In 1993, after decades of violent conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, the leaders of each side agreed to sign a historic peace agreement. Yasir Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Israeli Prime Minister Isaac Rabin met in the United States on September 13, 1993, to sign the peace agreement for the region. The plan contemplated the autonomy of the territories occupied by Israel, which should begin in the Gaza Strip and Jericho. Palestinian administration over part of these areas began in May 1994.

Elections held in the Palestinian autonomous territories reaffirmed the leadership of Yasir Arafat and the PLO, but the intransigent attitudes of Jewish extremists (assassination of the first Israeli Minister Isaac Rabin in November 1995) and the Palestinian group Hamas (which has carried out indiscriminate terrorist attacks in Israel's main cities) have repeatedly endangered everything agreed in that first global peace treaty and all those that they followed him.^{[citation needed]}

Postal seal of the Palestinian National Authority.

In this context of progress towards full pacification of the region, at the end of October 1999 (with a five-year delay) the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank under the control of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) were united through of a 44-kilometre-long highway that crosses Israeli territory from the Erez post (in the northern Gaza Strip) to the autonomous city of Tarqumiyah (in the West Bank). Its opening meant the end of the solitary confinement that three million Palestinians from both sectors occupied by Israel in 1967 had suffered for years. Between August and September 2005, under the so-called Disengagement Plan promoted by the government of Ariel Sharon, Israel dismantled the settlements in the Gaza Strip and proceeded to withdraw all its military personnel; thus putting an end to a situation that had lasted since the Six Day War. The Gaza Strip came under the control of the PNA (although Israel retained control of jurisdictional waters, airspace and borders).

International status

Since its creation in 1994, the Palestinian National Authority has had representation in the United Nations, a representation already held by the "Palestine Liberation Organization" (PLO) since 1974 – and since 1988 with the official name of "Palestine" — within the "Entities and intergovernmental organizations that have received a permanent invitation to participate as observers in the sessions, and in the work of the General Assembly, maintaining permanent offices at the United Nations headquarters". Observer status at the United Nations gives the right to speak but not to vote.

The main task attributed to the Palestinian Authority is to achieve international recognition of a perfectly delimited territory. To achieve this goal, the Palestinian Authority deploys (first priority) intense diplomatic activities with those countries it considers its allies, as well as other countries sympathetic to its cause.

Government and politics

Executive Branch

The President of the Palestinian National Authority is the highest-ranking political position (equivalent to head of state) in the Palestinian National Authority. The President is elected through popular elections for a period of four years. The President appoints the Prime Minister, who is therefore not directly elected either by Parliament or by the Palestinian voters. Since 2007, due to political conflicts, there has been a prime minister in the West Bank and another in the territory of Gaza. The last elections were in 2006. Mahmud Abbas promised several times between 2006 and 2020 to call elections but did not. After 15 years of uninterrupted rule without democratic elections, the first parliamentary and presidential elections since 2006 were scheduled for May and July 2021, but in April 2021 President Mahmoud Abbas postponed them again, both the legislative and the presidential ones. Hamas spoke out against the decision to postpone them, saying that the Palestinian leader is using the Jerusalem issue as an excuse to avoid elections that a divided Fatah could lose to Hamas.

Legislative branch

Palestinian Legislative Council headquarters building in 2007

The legislature is represented by the 132-member Palestinian Legislative Council. Its original 88 members increased to 132 by a law passed in 2005. Its headquarters are in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian political parties

In the 2006 parliamentary elections, the following lists were presented, ordered from highest to lowest by number of votes obtained:

• Change and renewal (official list of the Hamas movement).
• Fatah movement
• Marty Abu 'Ali Mustafa
• Alternative
• Independent Palestine
• Third track
• Freedom and Social Justice
• Freedom and Independence
• Marty Abu al Abbás
• National Agreement for Justice and Democracy
• Palestine justice
• Political-Liberal System

International Criminal Court

On April 1, 2015, Palestine became a member of the International Criminal Court.

Administrative divisions

Areas under the control of the ANP.

After the signing of the Oslo accords, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were divided into areas (A, B and C) and into governorates. Areas A refer to territories under the control of the Palestinian National Authority; Bs refer to territories under Palestinian civil control and security management by Israel; and Areas C, which are territories controlled entirely by the Israelis.

The Palestinian National Authority divides the Palestinian territories into 16 governorates, comprised between the 5,640 km² West Bank territory (not including the 220 km² Palestinian part of the Dead Sea) and the 360 km² Gaza Strip.