Anyone who has coached for a living knows that you are judged on results, not excuses. If the results aren’t there, the coach is out the door. Healthy governments work the same way. Political authorities are there to achieve results. If they fail over time, consequences follow.
We certainly see this happening in Iran, where tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest their failed leadership and where today they bless and praise America and Israel for the military operation that could bring them freedom.
Unfortunately, there is no global expectation that the Palestinian Authority (PA) will achieve positive results for its people. They continue to teach anti-Semitism in their classrooms and glorify terrorists, while largely ignoring the needs of ordinary Palestinians who have paid the price for decades.
PARENTS FIGHT AGAINST THE SYSTEMIC ANTISEMITISM POISONING CLASSROOMS
A large banner depicting Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas hangs from a building as supporters of the Fatah movement gather with their flags for a rally on December 29, 2024. (Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images)
Don’t take my word for it. Listen to Tawfik Tirawi, a former head of Palestinian intelligence who recently published an open letter detailing systemic corruption within the Palestinian Authority.
Officials act with impunity. Land is confiscated under political protection. No elections have been held for years. Mahmoud Abbas is now in the twentieth year of a four-year presidential term and rules largely by decree.
Tirawi is not an opposition figure or an outside critic. He is someone from the locker room, describing the internal failures of the team he once served for.
The PA’s corruption also brings violence. The US State Department has reported that the Palestinian Authority will have paid more than $200 million to terrorists by 2025 [who killed or injured Israelis in attacks] and their families, despite previous promises to end the pay-for-slay program. They simply transferred the money to another account.
In sports this is called cheating. Yet Western governments still tolerate it, fearing that pressure on Abbas will allow Hamas to take power, which is even worse.
A Palestinian Authority police officer walks outside a police station decorated with a painting of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in the West Bank city of Hebron, on November 11, 2024, during the 20th anniversary of Arafat’s death, amid rising violence in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory as the war between Israel and the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip continues. (Hazem Bader/AFP via Getty Images)
That logic takes it backwards. When failure is tolerated, the worst outcome becomes reality. Gaza is the proof. Hamas won the 2006 elections by campaigning against corruption and promising action. And the result was a violent, terrorist mini-state that indoctrinated Gazans to hate Israel and Jews.
Now it is happening in Judea and Samaria, also called the West Bank by many. A 2024 poll According to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Research, Hamas is much more popular than Fatah, the movement linked to the Palestinian Authority.
In recent years I have had the opportunity to speak directly to Palestinian business and community leaders, and they are fed up with the PA’s corruption. If we are to avoid Hamas rule in Judea and Samaria, at least two changes are needed.
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First, abandon the failed game plan. The two-state model entrenched a corrupt and irresponsible Palestinian Authority with little need for public legitimacy. Perpetuating it out of fear only perpetuates the conditions that empower radicals.
There is a viable alternative. A decentralized model of local government – ​​often called the eight-state or local-emirates approach – offers a more realistic path forward. It replaces a single failing center with multiple responsibility centers.
A view of the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria. Evangelical Christian leaders are urging the Trump administration to recognize Israel’s right to the Biblical heartland. (TPS-IL)
Power would rest with municipal and tribal authorities that already command local loyalty. This limits systemic corruption and reduces the risk of state collapse. It also makes it harder for a single faction to seize everything at once.
In Hebron, the al-Jaabari family is already following this approach together with Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat. They are trying to leave the PA, establish local autonomy and join the Abraham Accords.
This matters because Palestinian politics has long been shaped by the elimination of moderates. The result is a recurring pattern in Palestinian Arab governance: corrupt strongmen on one side and violent theocrats on the other. Conspicuously absent are serious efforts to protect or strengthen local moderation, such as the initiative in Hebron.
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That failure leads directly to the second required change. Palestinian education must be deradicalized. Independent reviews of Palestinian Authority textbooks and teacher’s guides reveal systematic incitement against Israel and Jews.
Violent ‘resistance’ is celebrated. Israel is erased from the maps. Hostility toward Jews occurs in all subjects, including math, science, and grammar. These materials corrupt the next generation and undermine any hope for future coexistence between Jews and Arabs.
David Friedman, then US Ambassador to Israel, listens during a press conference on the establishment of full diplomatic ties between Israel and Bahrain in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on Friday, September 11, 2020. (Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Under a decentralized framework of eight states, education reform becomes possible and enforceable. Local governments that embrace pluralism receive aid and regional partners, while those who choose militancy cut themselves off from the international community and Arab states unwilling to relive Gaza’s failure.
As former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has noted, human flourishing in Judea and Samaria depends less on an abstract state than on local autonomy and economic integration.
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These two reforms – strengthening local government and deradicalization of education – offer a way out of dead-end thinking.
When you lose in sports, you change the strategy and the personnel. That is what is needed in Judea and Samaria.
