02.09.2024 Brussels Although the EU top diplomat Josep Borrell is intensely critical towards the state of Israel, proposing to sanction some cabinet Ministers, he insists in omitting the looming problem of the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas democratic deficit.

During the latest Council of the EU Foreign ministers, Borrell put forward his proposal to sanction Israeli ministers:  “…certainly, I initiated the procedure to ask the Member States – if they want, if they consider it appropriate, to include in our list of sanctions some Israeli Ministers that have been launching some hate messages. Unacceptable hate messages, against the Palestinians and proposing things that go clearly against international law, and it is an incitation to commit war crimes. And I think the European Union should have no taboos to use our toolbox in order to make humanitarian law [be] respected. But it is not my decision. I only have the capacity of proposing; Member States will decide”.

While Borrell did not announce the ministers in question, he has recently expressed regrets over the statements and actions of Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is leading Otzma Yehudit party; and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who both belong to the religiously conservative wing of Netanyahu’s coalition government.

While scrutinizing with zeal Israeli cabinet, Borrell hardly pays attention to the evident problem of the political decline of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who since the end of his mandate in 2009, has always found a way to prevent new elections. The latter creates a conundrum, because under Abbas’s presidency, the Palestinian Authority has become autocratic and ceased to function as the putative foundation for a Palestinian state. Yet it remains critical as the provider of essential services to over three million West Bank Palestinians.

A failed transition of power could trigger violence or even the PA’s collapse, the International Crisis group report warns. While Borrell prefers to focus on the functional elements of the presidency in line with the established policy of the EU, being member of the Quartet and is the single largest donor of foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority, the discontent of the Palestinians with Abbas accumulates.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) that administers the West Bank, the Fatah party that dominates the PA and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in which Fatah is the largest faction and which Israel recognised as the Palestinian people’s sole legitimate representative in the 1993 Oslo accords.  Abbas, who is 88, has lead all three bodies since Yasser Arafat died in 2004.

When Abbas passes from the scene, he is highly likely to leave behind a void at the top, since he has made no provision for transition of power. In January 2021, he called presidential and legislative elections for the PA and elections for the PLO’s main decision-making organ. Just three months later, however, he cancelled them.

Meanwhile Russian state news agency TASS quoted the Palestinian ambassador to Moscow, Abdel Hafiz Nofal, as saying that Palestine will lodge its application for joining BRICS after attending the summit in October in Kazan, Russia.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin promised that one session would be fully devoted to Palestine,” the Ambassador said. Earlier, Putin invited Abbas to attend the BRICS summit in Kazan.

“This invitation means that despite all the crimes, killings and destruction in the Gaza Strip, our message is that Palestine wants to live and to develop,” Ambassador Nofal added.

BRICS includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. In January, it welcomed Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE as full members.

Anna van Densky