Rami Dajani
Palestinian Politics Briefing

Rami Dajani | Palestinian Politics Briefing | 07.08.21

- Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. A very warm welcome to Rami Dajani and thank you Rami for joining us on Lockdown University today.

Rami Dajani is a political advisor with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, focusing on Palestinian and regional issues. Through the institute’s initiative for the Middle East, he supports Mr. Blair’s effort to promote Middle East Peace through regional integration. Previously, Rami worked on governance rule of law and security sector reform at the office of the Quartet representative in Jerusalem. Rami also spent time with the UN mission in Libya advising on the political aspects of security sector reform.

Prior to that, he acted as coordinator and legal advisor at the PLO Negotiation Support Unit, a Ramallah based project managed by Adam Smith International advising the Palestinian leadership on legal and policy issues in negotiations with Israel. At the start of his career, he briefly practised law at a major firm in Toronto, Canada. Rami holds an undergraduate degree in political science and law from McGill University and a master’s degree in international law from Duke University.

Today, Rami will be in conversation with Carly and they will be talking about Palestinian politics briefings. So thank you once again, Rami, for joining us, and we are looking forward to the next hour. Over to the two of you.

• Thank you, Wendy. So, Rami, I’m very looking forward to getting the chance to speak with you. I think there’s no soft entry into this topic, so we’re going to go straight for it. And I wanted to start with looking at how COVID has affected the Palestinians over the last 18 months, but particularly I wanted to talk about vaccines. So, as we’ve seen in the news, the Palestinians were working with Covax to get vaccines and also arranging agreements with other countries. There’s been a lot of pressure on Israel to look at then supplying vaccines to the Palestinians.

There was a number of false starts, and then around a month ago, an offer was made when the new coalition came in, some back and forth and 48 hours of vaccines moving between the West Bank and Israel. And the Palestinians handed back the doses saying that the expiration date was too close. Then July’s doses roll around and the Palestinians also say the doses are too close. These vaccines landed 10 days after they were offered to the Palestinians in Korea this weekend, so that the 700,000 doses could be used before the end of July.

So can you walk us through what this all means and why you think the Palestinians responded the way they did and do the Palestinians have any vaccines now to use?

• Yeah, well, you need to kind of take a long view of this from the beginning, from the beginning of the pandemic. At the beginning, the coordination and corporation between Israel and the Palestinian authority was actually quite good in dealing with issues relating generally to the pandemic in terms of movement of workers, in terms of access, in and out, and in terms of managing overall, the joint management of dealing with the pandemic. That deteriorated over time due mainly to political developments.

But once you get to the issue of the vaccines, that was a different question altogether because by that time when the vaccines were on the, let’s say were available, the Palestinian Authority Health System has so deteriorated in its ability to handle the issues that it basically was no longer capable, in my view of managing the logistics even of dealing with the kind of requirements that you would need to administer the quantities of vaccine at a given time. I mean, the Pfizer vaccine requires very specific conditions, it has to be at a very cold temperature conditions that are not readily available in the West Bank, and the ability to deliver large quantities of that vaccine to populations in the West Bank is a major issue because they don’t have the capacity to do it, and they don’t have the logistical or planning capabilities to do it.

And furthermore, there are also issues of reluctance among the population to take the vaccine in the first place. They’re issues of access to villages, issues of, I mean the same that you have all over the world, but they’re more amplified because of the particular circumstances in the West Bank. But the, around the issue of this controversy regarding the latest batch of the vaccines, there are varying reports. I mean, when you read the Palestinian Media official and nonofficial, you get varying reports of what the reasons were for the failure of that transaction to happen.

One account, which is now the official account, is that the expiry date by the end of July would not have allowed the PA under its current capacity to administer those doses because they don’t have the ability to have the freezers and that technical capacity to administer those doses within a few weeks. At least that’s, I mean, that’s the narrative. Now I think in the bigger picture, it just shows the failures of long-term planning by the PA and the failures of contact and coordination with the Israeli side. I mean, this could have been done way in advance and this could have been done much more effectively to the benefit of both sides.

• So do you see the potential for future deals, or do you think both the logistical and the political challenges make that impossible and the Palestinians must rely on Covax and that kind of international solution?

• I think Covax has to be a part of it because currently the political climate is not exactly conducive to those kinds of arrangements. Also, I think on the Israeli side, there is now a pressing concern to obtain more vaccines for Israelis given the recent upsurge in cases and the calls for a potential need for a third, a booster shot. So I’m not sure that the arrangements are going to be forthcoming. I think the PA needs would probably have to rely on the Covax and other vaccine sources. I think right now the situation is becoming more troubling because you have outbreaks of COVID in particular areas of the West Bank that are underreported.

There isn’t a lot of testing and a lot of these people are moving into Israel as workers, and they move through these gates where there’s no monitoring or testing, they move back and forth, or they go and work in settlements. And so that’s an issue of concern to, should be an issue of concern to the Israeli authorities.

• Now, we’ve been talking about the West Bank, but what’s the situation in Gaza with relation to vaccines and how does vaccine procurement work? We’ll come later to the relationship between Fatah and Hamas, but when the Palestinians are engaging with Covax, is it just the Palestinian authority engaging on behalf of the West Bank and Covax, has to have a separate discussion with Gaza? How does that work practically?

• Well, in theory, it’s the Palestinian authority that engages with the international community with, in this aspect. And so with Covax, it has to go through the Palestinian authority, and their official line is that they would be sending the share of Covax vaccines to Gaza. Now whether that actually has translated into reality or not is a suspect. Now it’s not exactly clear how much, I mean, I can’t give you numbers because nobody really knows, but it should be Covax should work through the official channels. How that dynamic is going to work out between the PA and Hamas in the future, I’m not sure.

• And COVID in general, how has the Palestinian Authority health system held up? You know, much of the world has been concerned about lack of ventilators, lack of beds, how has the system held up in the West Bank particular?

• Not so well, but also it’s not among the worst, there is a, a fairly, I wouldn’t say high level of healthcare in the West Bank, but it’s not as bad as other parts of the world. So the issue of ventilators and all of that was managed well at the beginning, at the beginning of the pandemic, the hospital capacity issues, all of that was never really at a huge stretch at the beginning. Over time, however, what you ended up seeing was a kind of an effort to minimise the issue of, basically, just to, I wouldn’t say ignore it, but to just minimise the public coverage and the restrictions and all of that.

And as of now you get reportings of 100 cases a day or something like that, where most people believe the actual numbers are much higher. So there’s a lot less testing. There are anecdotal reports of people being, getting sick and dying and, without that being actually recorded as COVID cases. And so I think it’s similar to some other parts of the world where you don’t have the kind of infrastructure and medical care system that you would address these issues differently. However, I think that as it stands right now, the situation isn’t good, but it’s not really, it’s not a terrible situation. I think it’s somewhat manageable, but it’s not good at all.

• And in terms of the public opinion, and we’ll come to Mahmoud Abbas and the cancelled elections in a moment, but how has the public reacted to the failure to do the vaccine deal? Has this been a vote winner or a vote loser in that context?

• You know, to be honest, the issue of the COVID vaccines has not really been a major determinant of sort of the political direction among the general population. That’s not at all, I mean, the issue that is, I mean, that might be number five on the list of issues that is of concern.

If anything, actually the population is resentful of the fact that the deal was made with Israel. And if you ask most people, if you do a poll, I suspect, based on my anecdotal, on me speaking to people in Ramallah, most people are actually angry at the PA for making that deal in the first place, not the other way around. And so, but most people’s concerns with the PA have to do more with their overall political policies and approach and other issues of corruption, suppression of public freedoms, et cetera, that we’ll get to in a minute.

• So let’s turn now to talk about Mahmoud Abbas who has been president since 2005 and cancelled a number of elections recently, just in the last few months. What was the, there was lots of different reports in the foreign media about the reasoning behind the cancelled elections. What is the kind of a situation on the ground that you see it as, and is there any hope for elections in the future?

• Well, the issue of elections came up repeatedly, as you mentioned. I mean, over the years, because since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, the legislative council, the Palestinian Legislative Council, the PLC, the Parliament has been ineffective. And that kind of led to a situation where Abbas accumulated and consolidated power for himself and his close circle of advisors over time, to the detriment of other institutions that were supposedly being built, with the support of the international community and donors for a future Palestinian state.

And what that led was to the deterioration of the judiciary and all the parliamentary kind of checks and balances to the rise of control by the central executive of the security forces. And so this led to also the corrosion of these political parties like Fatah that used to be an actual movement with different factions and people within it and players. And so our best consolidated power within that organisation as well as the PPO over the years, I mean, he did this over several years.

So the question of elections has grown exponentially more complicated because it is clear that if elections were to be held, he would lose. And so would his faction, his governing faction. And the consequences of that would be potentially kind of earth shattering for people who are, have been used to being in those positions in Ramallah for over a decade. And so the rivalry with Hamas plays into that. So Abbas’s gambit in calling for elections this time was based on the idea that he could reach some kind of deal with Hamas, a power sharing deal.

You see that the idea was that they would have these legislative elections that in exchange for Hamas getting a foothold into the legislature, a new legislature and some kind of representation within the PLO, they would allow him to stay on as president. That was kind of a deal that was brokered through these talks that happened over several months between Istanbul, Beirut and Cairo. And at the end of the day, this kind of thing was not acceptable, whether to Fatah or Hamas, the colleges, the people who are in the organisation. So they scuttled it.

And when the elections were started, the campaigning, you had all these factions within Fatah competing against him. And so he went ahead and cancelled the elections, which in a way was the worst kind of scenario because it showed that he cancelled the elections because he thought he was going to lose, and after everyone had started campaigning and all of that. And so that was probably one of the worst political moves of his career. He’s still facing the repercussions of it today. And I think that it undermined his position, not only with regard to the Palestinian public, but in terms of the donors, the European Union in particular, also the US and also in terms of his ability to argue that he is the legitimate leader as opposed to his detractors, his challengers on the Islamist on the Hamas side, who have profited greatly from this.

• So let’s talk a little about his challenges. There are lots of names, some of which gather more international attention, be it . And then there are others lesser known, outside of the West Bank and Gaza. Who do you see as potential successors or rivals and where do you see them sitting on the situation, both in terms of unity with Gaza and potential two-state solution with Israel?

• Yeah well, there’s a two-step analysis here. The first thing is inside the Fatah camp, inside Fatah itself, the traditional core of the PLO. And there you had the people you mentioned, is a key figure because even though he’s technically now out of his position in the security services, but he commands a great deal of, a great following, let’s say, among people with political influence, with security credentials. And then there are people like who’s in Israeli prison, multiple life sentences for terrorism during the second Antifa. Now he, was close to Arfa back in the days, and he was, let’s say, I mean, if you look at any public opinion poll, if you ask people who would they vote for in a presidential election? He wins every time against all against anyone.

I mean, regardless who it is, he defeats not only Abbas, but everyone else by a large margin. Now he’s sitting in an Israeli prison and his wife, his children, they have followers, they have people within Fatah who are now openly opposed to Mahmoud Abbas. What Abbas did was he kind of forced everyone’s hand by calling the elections, before it wasn’t clear who was going to run for or against, and whether they would join in one list. And what happened when the elections were called is camp joined hands with Nasser which was a bit of an unexpected development.

Now, Nasser is nephew. He used to be the PLO ambassador to the UN. He used to be the PA foreign minister. He’s the guy who was behind the ICJ decision on the construction of the wall. I mean, I know the guy personally, he’s very iodized, he’s a very, he’s an intellectual, he’s a very well spoken guy, and so, and he has kind of the prestige of being linked to RFA and having the long history of being part of Fatah. And that alliance immediately kind of threw off the Mahmoud Abbas camp in Fatah because they decided to run on one list. And that was a huge challenge because that was basically, telling the ruling clique, the ruling group of people around Abbas that Fatah is challenging them. Now, the second one you mentioned, of course, and has significant support, maybe numerically underrepresented in opinion polls, particularly in Gaza at where he comes from. And the Fatah supporters in Gaza who are, kind of living under Hamas rule are more inclined to support .

But also has a great deal of support in refugee camps, both in the West Bank and in places like Lebanon. And so he would garner a good deal of support, although he probably would not have the credentials to be the successor, but he might be in a coalition of people who would bring that about. Now don’t have the best relationship, they have a long-standing rivalry. So how that would work in a future arrangement is difficult to predict. Finally, you have people, like, as you mentioned, Fayard and and others I won’t mention by name, who would in elections get if you, reasonable amounts of votes, but who could play a role in a future coalition or future government?

Like someone like Fayard could be a very good finance minister, or he could play a particular role in a coalition. And so I know that there have been discussions of such coalitions being formed that would bring together a broader umbrella of support. Now obviously these efforts have been stymied by the fact that the elections have been called off. And so it’s difficult to see how you see the problem is now for the PA and I don’t want to over kind of go beyond the scope of this question, but the story of the assassination of the Haitian president yesterday reminded me of actually a scenario, a scenario which we see as a problem with the PA is where, in a scenario where you don’t have a parliament, you don’t have a constitutional procedure, you don’t know what to do, what if Abbas were no longer in capacity.

What is the next step? And as it stands right now, I mean, this is one of the reasons why elections were really important, because at least if you have a legislature, then you have some kind of procedure to determine the succession. So you’re asking about the succession. Now the problem is how do you determine it? And without having this kind of mechanism of elections, you don’t have a way to peacefully or to find some kind of mechanism that people can somehow agree to.

Putting aside the Gaza issue on Hamas and all of that, I’m talking just about Ramallah now to determine who the next leader is or how to manage who will run an election. I mean, who, if the seat is empty at the top of the pyramid, who’s going to be in charge? And that raises, I mean, this is a conversation we had with Salam Fayard a few years ago, and he raised this exact same concern, like how do you manage this situation in the absence of the kinds of procedures that used to exist?

• So to pick up on that, and we could spend the full hour talking about democratic institutions in the West Bank, but how are the other pillars that, those of us in the west often describe as the kind of democratic pillars of how you judge a country, the rule of law, the freedom of press, we’ll touch in a minute on some of the protest issues, but how are those pillars holding up given the lack of elections and the lack of the population being able to express their votes through the ballot box?

• They’re not doing very well at all. I mean, the situation is getting worse and worse. I started working with the Office of the Quartet back in 2011, and I took the portfolio of rule of law and justice and security sector reform for the PA. And I did that for a few years. And back then, this was the back at when I started was the government. And you know, back then they were actually doing real stuff. The courts were being restructured, the prosecution offices, the penal code, we were doing a lot of stuff with, and lots of donors were involved. There was police reform happening, civilian policing, all of this stuff.

I mean, all down to the point, like we were even dealing with issues of how you coordinate criminal cases with the Israeli side in area C. Like we were dealing with a lot of intricate stuff, and there was training going on. The Europeans had police training going on, the Americans obviously continued to do their security training with the National Security forces. And, but you know, when I look back at that time, and I compare it to what the situation is today, I think there’s been a major decline. And it’s ongoing.

I think part of it is the absence of any kind of long term goes back to the question actually of elections. I mean, the fact that there hasn’t been any accountability, the fact that over time there’s been a consolidation of power and the executive branch to the extent that the agents, if you will, or the elements that work with the senior levels of the executive are embedded within the ministries within the intelligence. And the intelligence has taken, the intelligence services have taken a much kind of more intrusive role in things like judicial proceedings, which render most judicial proceedings a sham once they have any kind of a political context.

So there’s not not much of a judicial kind of branch to talk about. There’s no legislative branch, and you really have a top down kind of rule from the the headquarters of Abbas and Ramallah that is really enforced by the security forces, which kind of is a, leads us to the conversation about the recent human rights abuses.

• So we’ve seen a number of protests and some quite difficult challenges, shall we say, for the security forces, particularly over the death of in custody. Can you explain to our audience who perhaps are not as close observers of you as to his significance and why this has kicked off unrest across the West Bank?

• Of course, now the first thing to say is that was not like a unique figure. I mean, he’s not like, he’s one of many activists who have suffered, who have been intimidated by PA security services and by the regime over the years. Now, the thing that that distinguishes this case was just the blatant and brutal way in which he was killed by the PA security forces a few weeks ago.

Now was, he was an activist who posted online on YouTube and other online social media, posted stuff that was opposed to the PA accusing Abbas directly of corruption and others around him, but also attacking the entire kind of structure of the PA and even going back to their historical record. And so he was obviously opposed to Oslo, he was opposed to the security coordination regime with Israel. And so he was someone that had a particular audience online, he never instigated. Like I’ve seen his posts now that this happened. And I looked through many of them.

The man never instigated for violence or never called for any kind of violent activity. He was just, spoke his opinion. He was attacked. He the 27 plain clothed security personnel came to his cousin’s house in at 3:30 in the morning, beat him up in his bed, took his clothes off, hit his head on the wall, dragged him out in the street while he was bleeding, and took him away in a car. And then he died a few hours later. And so the autopsy disclosed that he died due to asphyxiation and severe body blows, internal bleeding.

And so, and in response to that, the PA basically said, oh, well this was an accident and we will investigate it. And they appointed a committee, basically with their own people to investigate why he died, which led to mass public protests throughout the West Bank against the PA by regular people including by people who are activists in civil society, human rights organisations, young people. And the interesting thing about it was that this was not a politically run protest.

Like you didn’t see factional flags. This was not Hamas orchestrated, and this was a lot of the, actually I would call it the bourgeois kids of Ramallah and Abbas, and he, you see a lot of university kids, middle class, it was regular people like I personally know people who went on these marches and were assaulted. And so basically the security forces went and assaulted the protestors on several occasions using tear gas and batons and other tactics, which then evolved into them sending out plain closed, thugs to beat up journalists and just mainly female protestors in the streets. And so the situation deteriorated over the last two weeks. You still have protests now, but they’re being suppressed.

The thing is, the interesting thing for me is the media coverage where you see the official media and even the nonofficial media, but that needs to be careful, quietly avoid the issue. And it’s reminiscent of what you see in the, kind of what you saw in the Arab spring revolutions as they were evolving, whether it was in Egypt or in Libya or in Syria at the beginning. And you see a similar trend in so many aspects to what was happening in the last few weeks in Ramallah.

• Now you brought up the Arab Spring, or the Arab Winter as some have taken to calling it. But the West Bank never went through that moment. There was a few teetering on the edge, but each time the Palestinian Authority managed to regain control. Now, when you take the lack of elections, the lack of successor, the lack of democratic opportunities open to the Palestinian population, the challenges around COVID, which was no doubt affected the PA economy and the way it’s affected everyone else in the world, do you see this as a powder keg moment or is this another kind of unfortunate period for the Palestinian population, which the security forces will come down hard on reclaim?

• It’s a very difficult question to answer, and I don’t want to put my bets either way on this either side of this answer. I think there is a possibility that this will just be another wave of discontent that will die down. But on the other hand, on the other hand, I think that a certain amount of damage has been done to the fundamental credibility of the leadership in Ramallah because of the accumulated impact of the cancellation of elections and what is seen as their indecision or their lack of reaction to the events in Jerusalem during Ramadan and and then the war in Gaza. And finally with regard to Banat. And so these issues have kind of built up a popular, let’s say, anger and discontent that I think is going to be difficult to put down.

But I could be, it’s not really, it’s very hard to tell. Now, I think looking at the history of the Arab whatever, spring winter revolutions and counter revolutions, I think the distinguishing feature of the Palestinian situation, the West Bank and Gaza is a completely different case, is the fact that you have the, I mean, you always have the issue of the occupation, so whenever you can always deflect, you can always deflect criticism of the leadership in place by saying, well, look, the occupation is responsible or did this or that.

So if there’s issues of economic discontent or COVID or you can always, this is in fact what they did with the Banat case. I mean, the official media reporting was all about Israeli raids, incursions, prisoners, and Israeli jails every day on TV so torture of Palestinians and Israeli jails was on TV every night when the Banat thing was raging in the streets. And I remember many years ago when the Arab Spring was going on, I asked one of my old professors who’s, I don’t want to mention the name, a renowned political science professor, like why isn’t this happening in Palestine?

And he said, because you have the bubble of the occupation. And he said, because you have this excuse that, you can never go against your leadership because you have to be in solidarity against the occupation. And the occupation is the really are the bad guys. And so that has withstood the test of time, if you will. I think now that is cracky, but I can’t answer your question whether it will actually crack or not.

• Yeah, I didn’t quite expect you to have a crystal ball, but it’s very helpful to hear the context. Let’s move a little bit away from the Palestinian Authority and talk a little bit about Gaza. You know, so obviously the eyes of the world have been on Gaza in the last few months, and align that along with the new Biden presidency, and there has been a different engagement than has been previously.

How is the situation in Gaza being seen both in the West Bank, but also, on the ground in Gaza post the conflict? Hama did a good positioning of them winning the day, but in the day after, once the relative normality as it is in Gaza has returned, how do people view the conflict there?

• Two million people in Gaza. And I think there’s a variance in opinion, and a lot of people are not exactly obviously happy with the way that the Hamas authorities have run things over the past 14 years. But that I think majority is rather silent these days. There is a fairly large minority that is supportive of the current policies, both of the Hamas political wing and of the military wing.

I think that that has been bolstered by several factors, mainly due to the policies of the PA in Ramallah, due to the approach of being the Gaza Hamas leader who has advocated a position of with Egypt, which has led to an relative improvement of relations with Egypt and the opening of the Rafa crossing for more people. Now, you have to understand for people in Gaza, the only access that they have to travel outside of Egypt other than in urgent cases through Aris crossing is through Rafa, which is the crossing through Sinai to Egypt. And under the leadership, there have been a great deal of sort of improvements in relations in that respect, which has led to, and also relatively better terms in terms of trade and imports and exports, and the Qatari funding, the Qatari grant and better electricity.

Mind you, it’s still not very good, but eight hours a day is better than nothing. At times it was more like 12 hours a day. And so these basic things mean a lot to people, that you could have 3000 passengers go each day in and out of Rafa, and that you can have 10 hours of electricity a day and that you can have a certain amount of cash coming in, although that’s not ideal. But for many, and I say this is still a minority, but it’s a significant minority in Gaza. This and the ability of Hamas to pay salaries as well, probably money coming from Iran, but it’s not clear exactly where it comes from.

And so I think the chances of Hamas kind of losing public support as it were, I mean, are fairly low. It’s not as if they’re entirely popular, but it’s not a situation where you can provoke or create public discontent where people rise against them, even with the recent configuration. And they didn’t seem to lose, in fact, they gained public support, probably more so in the West Bank and East Jerusalem than in Gaza. But they did gain political support among the Palestinian public. You know, when you look at the problem of Gaza, it has to do with a calculation of whether you want to have, whether you’re going to go the root of a political negotiation, which is being mediated by Egypt, for long-term truce.

So, and let’s say, 10 year truce, these are the easing measures you get. These are the lifting of restrictions. That’s what the Israelis do, that’s what the Egyptians do, that’s what you guys do. And you control the border. You stop the rockets and the balloons and all of these things and the tunnels, and in return you get X, Y, Z. On the other hand, there’s the approach of the militant groups, which were the ones who started the recent conflict. It wasn’t the political leadership of Hamas that did that, by the way, the leadership in Qatar, in Doha and in Istanbul and places like that, they were not at all interested.

In fact, they didn’t even speak for days after the conflict started. The whole thing was run by the military wing, by the kasam. And they decided to create the political linkage between the issues in Jerusalem and the holy sights, the old city and the conflict in Gaza. And they decided to do it because they were not completely in line with the strategy of Egypt that the civilian leadership had in mind, which kind of fits within what the Doha and Cairo sort of political leadership wanted to do.

But they decided that they wanted to raise the stakes and obviously the political leadership had to fall in line. I don’t think that was their plan at all to start with, but that’s a different strategy, you see, because that strategy is much more based on a quid pro quo in kind of military in terms of violence and raising the stakes, creating a balance of force, which is a dangerous strategy. And I don’t think that the political leadership of Hamas is entirely in line with that.

• So in the previous US administration, the Palestinians could be excused for claiming they had been marginalised and not engaged with, president Biden was certainly not looking to make this a priority, especially with everything going on with COVID, but very early on that had to change.

Now actually, many across both sides of the conflict have complimented the way the Biden administration positioned themselves during the recent Gaza war. How is president Biden being viewed on the ground? And I have to apologise that the remnants of tropical storm Elsa has just arrived in New York, so I’m getting very loud thunder and lightning.

So if that interferes in any way, I apologise. But yes how is president Biden being viewed on the ground?

• Initially, look, I mean, if you talk to the political elites in Ramallah, initially, they were very positive about the change in administration because they thought that this would be a return, return to previous US diplomacy. And I’ll be frank here, it wasn’t because they believed that the US can actually bring about a successful peace process and negotiation to a two-state solution within the next few years, but rather that the US could marshal the international community, the Quartet, and all of the efforts that would orchestrate or generate the kind of process that would keep the two state solution alive and keep the funding coming from the donors and all of these processes.

So you see that’s an important thing for the machine to function in the PA because they need to have that kind of structure. They need to be able to go to the people and say, look, the international community supports the two-state solution. The US is leading the peace process. We are getting support from the Europeans, and we are getting money and we are meeting with all these people and the Secretary of State is coming, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so that creates the kind of process that they need to have in place, both to get the funding and to generate credibility and legitimacy.

And so the new US administration was greeted with a great deal of kind of relief. And I wouldn’t go as far as say joy, but they were very happy with the fact that they no longer had to deal with the Trump administration, which was in a way catastrophic. Because what what that did was basically said, we don’t care about what you say and we’re not going to play that game. And so I think though, over the last few months, this has become less, become more muted. Now, when you ask opinion polls, and I think I can’t pull one out now, but I’ve seen an opinion poll. I said the general public, the Palestinian Street, if you will is rather ambivalent.

I mean, they don’t see that there’s going to be much of a difference in terms of US policy, obviously I think if you ask most people, they would have a negative opinion of Trump, but they probably would have a neutral opinion of Biden. Like I don’t think people really follow it that closely. The Islamists, Hamas, the Islamics you had, those guys on the other hand were quite vocal by stating that as far as they’re concerned, all US administrations are the same, and that they don’t distinguish between them and they don’t find, that was their position from the outset.

• So let’s talk about another new player on the scene this time a member of the Israeli Coalition, Mansura Bath has joined the coalition with Ram and taken a bold step as a leader of an Arab Israeli party and is navigating a very difficult line. How has this been reacted to in the Palestinian street, but also by Palestinian officials?

• Surprisingly, very, very little by way of commentary among Palestinian officials. I mean, nobody has openly criticised him. That is a major political figure, but at the same time, no one has supported him either, I think including by the way, among Hamas. And I mean, you have to understand that there are affiliations between the Muslim Brotherhood, kind of linked organisations. And it’s interesting in a meeting we had, I had with Mansura Bath himself recently where someone mentioned the term Muslim Brotherhood, and he quickly jumped and said, no, we’re not the Muslim Brotherhood and we are an Islam driven political party, but we’re not the Muslim Brotherhood.

But there was kind of a wink there and you see, the thing is the Muslim Brotherhood type politics is very pragmatic, tends to be when you look at different parts of the Middle East. And I think the people on the Islam side of Palestinian politics understand what he’s doing. Let’s put it this way. They understand what he’s doing, the same way that someone like is trying to create closer relationships with the CC regime in Egypt, despite the fact that CC was treated the Muslim Brotherhood as the enemy, and similarly in other parts of the Middle East.

So the Muslim Brotherhood has a way of operating that is almost paradoxical because at the kind of ideological level, they have a very fixed ideology, they have a very fixed dogma, but in practise and on the ground, they’re very pragmatic and they function according to kind of Machiavelli tactics. And so, and I think that that’s how, I think that’s how this party and its rise to prominence in the Israeli coalition came about, the Israeli government coalition.

I think it was a very, very smart way of manoeuvring by Mansura Bath in order to obtain leverage for very specific issues that he wanted to get policy done on in the Israeli government and I think that that is something that most Palestinians, at least observers kind of, might not be very happy to see in a government led by Bennett. But at the same time, they’re not openly criticising it. They understand it.

• And for our final topic, I wanted to talk about the Abraham Accords, which in Israel has been met with much positivity. But we know that the old adage used to say that relations to the Arab world ran through the Palestinian Authority. And in fact, a video circulated of John Kerry around the time of the Abraham Accords, where he kind of grandly said this’ll never happen and many said, this was an indication of a lack of understanding.

Now, how have the Palestinians reacted to this, given the warm peace, not just peace deals, but the warm peace happening between the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, South Sudan, et cetera, is it’s shaking up the context that they are used to seeing with regards to Israel and the Arab world.

• I think that this is the Palestinian reaction, that’s what he asked me. So I’ll get to that. I won’t put my personal views.

• You can pontificate on the other parts as well, if you’d like.

• No, no, no, no, no. Because I would’ve liked to see it developed in a more staged approach. This was some of the ideas that we had put together because I think that that would’ve made it much more palatable. I’m getting to it in a roundabout way.

• It was done with a Trump flare of diplomacy. We’ll give you that.

• It’s just done it one, it was like a one bang, and that was a problem because once that hit like that, it was obviously going to be negatively, it was going to have a negative reaction. Now, what you needed to do was you needed to face it and structure it and sequence it in a way that creates the right kind of, not just public messaging, but also the underlying content of what the benefits are and what the, so look, I believe that any kind of normalisation or peace in the region is good for the Palestinian cause.

I think that it has to be done in a way that, perhaps not the way that it was done, but done in a way that emphasises that this is part of reaching a comprehensive peace in the region and not just bilateral deals with these sort of, almost like business transactions. And I think that was what angered the Palestinians. And that was, so answering your question, how the Palestinian reaction was in the beginning was this was a stab in the back because if there was something more concrete than saying, oh, well they want an X for a few years, or if there was something that led to something more than that, if there was some other content to it, I think Palestinians would’ve been, would’ve reacted much more, in a much different way.

• And finally. Sorry, go on.

• No, but the thing is, I think this was not like the leadership alone. I mean, in a way, this was the population that was reacting, and I spoke to people from the entire political spectrum, from the right to the left to all sorts of people. And there was almost a unanimous position, and I was ridiculed for saying, look, I think that this could bring leverage, this could be a good thing for the Palestinians. And I was ridiculed at every kind of conversation that I had on this issue across the spectrum. And I think part of it, part of the problem was how this, the public relations, the public diplomacy aspect of it was not dealt with at all.

And how, and then this was also amplified by the bombastic response of the leadership of our best and others who went over the top in personally attacking the leadership of the Emirates in particular, which escalated things into broad, a different tone to the conversation. Now, I think that that’s been resolved, but I think the problem was that this should have been better managed, rolling it out should have been done in a different way.

• So finally, I wanted to turn to Iran, and whilst the relationship between Hamas and Iran is well understood, the Iran and the potential nuclear deal is back in the news, and the Israeli coalition is considering it, tackling it differently, how does the Palestinian Authority view Iran and their perspective on the Iranian deal?

• Interesting question. The Palestinian Authority rarely brings about that issue. It’s not something on their radar. They do not necessarily wish to establish relations with Iran. It’s not on their, the Palestinian Authority might like, during the time of the Trump administration, when they felt like they were being squeezed into a corner, they, Abbas had this kind of approach of, well, maybe I’ll go to Qatar and Turkey. And in a way kind of hinting that he was moving towards that kind of side of the equation, if you will.

But he obviously even then was not going to take sides with Qatar or Turkey on that access at the time, Iran was never, I mean, I know for a fact that the PA has refused major contacts with Iran over the last, well, at least 15 years. And I remember when I worked with the PLO and Ramallah, when there were times when the Iranians requested meetings or things like that, and they were just turned down. Now, I think that that was a strategic decision that that’s not something that, that was not a relationship that they wanted to develop.

I mean, for them, at least for them, the Saudi, just Saudi Arabia and Egypt were much more kind of, Jordan were the key, always for the Palestinian Authority it was those powers that were the most important regional powers. And they saw Iran as a kind of a threat because they supported Islamics you had at Hamas. So I don’t think they have much of a say in the issue, though. I mean, I don’t think that they’re players at all.

• Rami, thank you. I feel like we barely scratched the surface, but I’m conscious that it’s late in Ramallah and I’m very grateful for the opportunity to catch up and to see you. And I look forward to being reunited in person at some point soon. And I’m going to hand back over to Wendy.

• Thank you, Carly, thank you Rami, thank you very much for joining us today at Lockdown University to share your expertise and knowledge around what sure is a very, very complex situation. And for those of us listening today on Lockdown University, it’s very helpful to hear from you directly because we read about the region from afar, but to hear your ground, your own ground assessments makes it a completely different experience. I too have got so many questions, Rami and or just love to continue this conversation, but I know that as Carly said, it’s late in Ramallah.

So I just want to say thank you very, very much for joining us. I look forward to having you back on Lockdown University in the near future. I would also like just to say thank you to Carly once again, Carl, excellent as usual, and to Shauna and to Lauren for the help behind the scenes. So Rami, thanks a million and see you soon.