The Palestinian Authority as a Suspended Entity ... No Possible State and No Permitted Collapse ..

The issue in the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is not linked to the question of survival or collapse in the direct sense, but rather to the nature of the political role that Israel wants to establish for the Authority within the deep structure of the occupation itself... Here precisely lies the central knot... Israel does not view the Authority as a transitional sovereign project that has reached the end of its path or stumbled, but rather as a controlled governance formula, which has been gradually emptied of its national content and transformed into a tool for managing the Palestinian population within the framework of Israeli control over the land....

The dilemma is not that Israel undermines the Authority, but in the manner in which it does so... It does not seek to completely destroy it, because its total collapse means the breakdown of a low-cost occupation management formula, and it would mean reintroducing the question of occupation in its raw and direct form before the world... Conversely, it does not allow for its natural development into a political entity possessing conditions of sovereignty and independence. What Israel wants is an Authority that exists in the gray area between existence and non-existence... existing enough to bear the administrative, security, and social burdens, and weak enough not to transform into an independent national decision-making center.

This is not a mere transient paradox, but rather the essence of the Israeli vision for many years... The Israeli project, especially in its modern right-wing form, no longer operates within the horizon of a political settlement as it was promoted in the 1990s, but rather within the horizon of managing the conflict and dismantling the possibility of a solution... In other words, Israel no longer treats the Authority as a transitional station towards a Palestinian state, but as a tool to freeze the formation of a Palestinian state while maintaining the illusion of the political process.

For this very reason, Israeli policies seem to be based on producing a structurally paralyzed Palestinian condition... The issue is not merely financial pressures or security measures or separate settlement expansion, but an integrated construction aimed at preventing the formation of any independent Palestinian capacity, whether politically, economically, or geographically... Settlement here is not merely a real estate or ideological project, but a tool for dismantling the Palestinian political space itself... When the West Bank transforms into torn geographical blocks, subjected to complex networks of military control, settlements, and bypass roads, then the talk about sovereignty becomes devoid of its real content.

Israel does not necessarily need an official declaration to end the two-state solution, as it is daily dismantling the conditions for the possibility of this solution on the ground... This is a very important point... The contemporary Israeli project often moves not through decisive major decisions, but through the slow accumulation of facts... Annexation does not happen at once, but through transforming occupation into a permanent and natural condition, and by shifting Israeli control from being an exceptional state to a stable and institutional structure... In this context, the Palestinian Authority becomes a suspended entity between two contradictory roles... It is internally required to represent a national aspiration for a people under occupation, but externally governed by a network of constraints that makes it unable to exceed the limited administrative and security role... This contradiction explains the continuous erosion that the Authority experiences in terms of both legitimacy and effectiveness... The deeper problem is that Israel has gradually succeeded in redefining the conflict itself... Instead of remaining a struggle for land, sovereignty, and national rights, it has been pushed towards a lower level related to civil administration, economy, and improving daily living conditions... Here, the occupation becomes partially invisible, or at least less visible in its classical form, while the actual control remains entirely in Israel's hands... Borders, crossings, economy, vital space, water, security, movement, and even the financial flows of the Authority itself.... One of the most dangerous aspects of this structure is that the Authority has become in a position of dependence on the occupation for survival, while the occupation relies on it for stability... This dysfunctional reciprocal relationship is what makes Israel keen on weakening the Authority rather than overthrowing it... It wants it to be fragile, always fearful of financial and political collapse, and incapable of making independent strategic decisions. Therefore, the clearance funds become a tool for political control, and the Palestinian economy turns into a dependent and conditional economy, with the financial crisis becoming an almost permanent state rather than a temporary circumstance... The Authority here does not face just a resource crisis, but a complete structural crisis... When the Authority has no control over its borders, no ability to protect its land, no sovereignty over its economy, and no real political horizon, it gradually turns into a nominal authority managing a community trapped within a control system much larger than itself... This makes the question of its future an existential rather than an administrative one... The more significant aspect is that Israel itself seems unwilling to resolve this situation... It does not want to return to a costly direct occupation, but it also does not want the birth of a complete Palestinian entity... Therefore, it manages the state of no solution as a strategic option... This point is central to understanding the current Israeli political mind. Instead of seeking a final settlement, time is treated as a political tool in itself... The longer time passes under the current realities, the more the possibility of a Palestinian state diminishes, the more Israeli control deepens, and the world gradually adjusts to the status quo... For this reason, the Palestinian Authority appears to be trapped within an impossible equation... If it attempts to break free from the imposed constraints, it faces the danger of financial and political collapse, and if it continues under the existing conditions, it gradually erodes from within and loses its national significance. This is not merely a crisis of performance or individuals, but a crisis of an entire model... At its core, the Israeli policies towards the Authority cannot be understood in isolation from the broader transformation in Israeli political thought itself... Traditional Zionism sought international legitimacy through a state project with relatively clear borders, while the current formula tends more towards a model of open control... land without complete withdrawal, and populations without full sovereign rights... This explains why settlement expansion occurs in parallel with the maintenance of the Authority, and why there is talk of economically strengthening the Authority at the same time it is being politically and nationally undermined...

Israel does not see the Authority as a political partner as much as it sees it as a barrier preventing a total explosion, and a tool for organizing the Palestinian space in a manner that does not threaten the existing colonial structure... This is exactly why it wants an Authority capable of preventing chaos, but unable to create liberation... It wants it capable of managing the population, but unable to transform this population into a sovereign project... But this equation carries within it a dangerous contradiction... Societies do not remain forever in a state of historical suspension... A whole people cannot be turned into just an administrative or security file without this situation producing repeated explosions in different forms... What seems to Israel today as relative stability may, at any moment, transform into a total collapse of the system it has built over the past decades. Because the essence of the conflict has never been about improving the conditions of administration, but about the question of freedom, sovereignty, and national existence. Every attempt to bypass this question or to freeze it does not eliminate it, but rather reproduces it in a more complex and acute form... Therefore, the most dangerous aspect of the current situation is not only the continuation of the occupation, but the transformation of the occupation itself into a permanent structure that seeks to produce a Palestinian entity stripped of the ability to transform into a state, and also stripped of the ability to undergo complete collapse... an entity that lives in a state of suspended existence, preventing it from having a normal political life, and not allowing it the right to die and transform.