Is the Palestinian Authority really a 'fig leaf' for Israeli occupation?

Seated at her desk beneath pictures of two smiling leaders, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the late founding father Yasser Arafat, principal Shadia Shaheen asserts that her high school plays a part in the building of a future Palestinian state.

''To build a state, you must start with the person,'' she says during a break at the al-Bireh Secondary School for Girls.'' We teach the pupils how to be sound citizens, how to serve their country, how to be a democratic person, how to express their opinions, and the importance of not being violent.'' she says.

The school, under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority ministry of education, is part of a sprawling but weak government set up in keeping with the 1993 Oslo Accords. Under the self-rule agreement with Israel, the PA was established to include an executive branch, legislature, and an array of security agencies and ministries – including, at present, health, social affairs, finance, justice, agriculture, transport, and tourism.

Launched with great fanfare, the fledgling institutions of statehood face mounting questions about their utility 19 years later, with a Palestinian state nowhere in sight and peace negotiations in a deep freeze. Many support the PA as an important exercise in self-government for Palestinians. But even some of its strongest erstwhile supporters have joined the chorus of those who criticize it as a façade of self-rule behind which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can continue to expand Israel's hold on the West Bank while avoiding international opprobrium and the full costs of Israeli occupation.

The solution? Disband the PA and jolt the international community into reviving peace diplomacy toward a two-state solution, argues Yossi Beilin, the Israeli architect of Oslo.

''It is an electric-shock treatment because no one can ignore it," says Mr. Beilin in an interview. "If you come to Israel and say, 'Hey, the vacation is over, you can't benefit from me unilaterally, you cannot prolong Oslo forever, that it's over, than that is something. Even Obama will have to wake up.''

Mr. Beilin, who was Abbas's partner in the secret talks leading up to Oslo, called on the Palestinian leader in an open letter last month to dismantle the PA and return the residents of the West Bank to direct and full Israeli occupation. For the sake of Palestinians, ''and for the sake of peace, you cannot let this farce continue,'' he wrote.

Oslo was designed as an interim arrangement to last for five years, until a final status agreement could be reached covering the thorniest conflict issues including refugees, Jerusalem, and borders by 1999, Beilin recalls. He says the Oslo agreement was meant to be a mere ''corridor'' to a permanent peace solution but has turned into a permanent arrangement, or "living room." He blames Israeli and Palestinian hard-liners anxious to avoid a territorial compromise.

''Both myself and [Abbas] are in many ways the parents of Oslo," he says. "But we never meant to have this kind of 'Oslo forever' situation.''

Skeptics: Abbas isn't revolutionary enough to dissolve PA

The idea of dismantling the PA is originally a Palestinian one. Beginning in 2003, it was advocated by Ali Jarbawi, then a political scientist at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank and now the PA planning minister, as a means of challenging Israel's character as a Jewish state by forcing it to resume responsibility over a growing Palestinian population.

However, it has traditionally touched off considerable resistance among Palestinians who would lose their jobs and positions and those who question what would come in its stead. The PA employs 180,000 people and supports more than 1 million, if one includes relatives of employees.

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