SUMMARY
The PNA (Palestinian National Authority; al-Sulṭah al-Waṭaniyyah al-Filasṭīniyyah) was a Palestinian political entity, registered in UCDP data as a separatist rebel group that fought an intrastate armed conflict over territory against the Government of Israel intermittently since 1996. It is worth noting that while the PNA has been controlled by Fatah for most of its existence, the UCDP has nevertheless coded the two as separate, simultaneously existing actors.
The PNA was formally established on 4 May 1994, following an agreement (the “Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements”, or the “Oslo I Accords”) signed between the PLO and the Government of Israel in 1993. The 1993 accords was the first face-to-face agreement between the PLO and the Israeli government, and it outlined the principles of Palestinian self-governance. The agreement established the PNA as the governing body in the agreed-upon autonomous Palestinian areas in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank. The PNA was thus intended to serve as a form of interim Palestinian government, which would exist until a separate Palestinian state could be established. In September 1995, the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement (“Oslo II Accord”) established the amount of self-determination the PNA would hold in the autonomous territories. However, the negotiations between the Government of Israel and PLO (which at the time was dominated by Fatah) to transform the PNA into a Palestinian state stalled in 2000.
Following an incremental increase in the PNA’s authority, it came to control the entire Gaza Strip and approximately 40 percent of the West Bank. However, following a non-state conflict between Fatah and Hamas in 2006-2007, the PNA de facto lost control over the Gaza Strip to Hamas. The PNA ensured that Palestine was given non-member observer status by the United Nations General assembly in 2012. Since 2013, the Fatah-led PNA refers to itself as the “State of Palestine”.
The PNA was organized to have a presidency, and a legislative body called the “Palestine National Council”; the office of prime minister was created in 2003. After initially allowing democratic competition, the PNA-held territories have been governed without an elected mandate since the Fatah-Hamas conflict in 2006-2007. For example, the legislative has remained dysfunctional, and no elections have been convened since 2005 (presidential) and 2006 (legislative).
Following its creation in 1994, the PNA was composed of officials from PLO, which was dominated by Fatah; the first PNA President was Yasser Arafat, the leader of Fatah. Arafat’s presidency was formalized in 1996, when he won the first PNA presidential election; the same year, Fatah emerged as the dominant party following a victory in the elections to the Palestine National Council. In practice, this meant that the PNA became a prolonged arm of the Fatah movement. In 2003, Fatah’s Mahmud Abbas became Prime Minister. For the duration of his tenure as President, Arafat was the dominating political force within the PNA.
Following the death of Arafat in 2004, Abbas was subsequently elected PNA President in 2005. In January 2006, the second legislative election was held. Hamas rather surprisingly won this election, and agreed to form a coalition government with Fatah; Hamas’ Ismail Haniya became Prime Minister. However, following the outbreak of violence between Fatah and Hamas in 2006-2007, President Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led government and declared a state of emergency; a new “emergency cabinet”, led by Salam Fayyad of the “Third Way” party, was created on 15 June 2007. Fatah’s Rami Hamdallah replaced Fayyad as Prime Minister on 6 June 2013; Abbas remains President as of 2017, after his mandate was indefinitely extended by the PLO in 2009.
The PNA also maintained its own armed forces, formalized in 1994 as the General Security Services (GSS). The GSS was comprised of various pro-PLO paramilitary groups, civil police forces, and various intelligence forces. In 1996, the GSS numbered approximately 16 500, a number that had risen to 35 000 by 2000. It should however be noted that the GSS forces had a very limited capacity to function as a conventional armed force; the numbers presented here also included for example the civilian police. Arafat also maintained two other security organization: the intelligence-oriented Special Security Force (SSF), and the Presidential Security Service (PSS, or “Force-17”), which was charged with protecting Arafat and other high-ranking PNA officials.
The bulk of PNA forces were drawn from Fatah militants to create the GSS. As a consequence dual allegiances existed, complicating any distinction between who was Fatah, and who was PNA. To deal with this complexity in UCDP data, all events reported to have involved Palestinian security forces have been attributed to the PNA, while events explicitly reported to have involved Fatah as a separate group was coded accordingly.
