IN PALESTINE, CITIZENS HAVE RIGHTS OF FREE SPEECH and free assembly. The most independent judiciary in the Arab world adjudicates their disputes. Palestinians select their leaders freely in competitive elections overseen by an independent electoral commission. A representative assembly monitors the executive, granting and withholding confidence from ministers and reviewing the state budget in detailed public discussions. Elected councils manage local governments that are fiscally autonomous of the center.

Palestine is, in short, a model liberal democracy. Its most significant flaw is that it does not exist.
This is true in two senses. First, Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza are governed in many of
their internal affairs by the Palestinian Authority (PA), an uncertain political hybrid that falls far
short of sovereignty. This situation creates enormous obstacles that are well known—Palestine is still
a political entity struggling to come into existence in the midst of one of the world’s most intractable
national conflicts. And, second, domestic problems as well as international obstacles have blocked the emergence of a liberal, democratic Palestine. Though widely acknowledged, these domestic obstacles are less well understood. Palestine on paper shows the Arab world a different kind of politics, one that avoids the authoritarian, unaccountable, and highly centralized practices prevailing in the region, but it has failed to build the institutions to give this politics full substance.

The logic of the PA’s origins led it to develop in an authoritarian direction. It was built on
foundations that were not designed to answer to the local population in any way. And the
international agreements that allowed the PA to form—the Oslo Accords—were predicated on the
ability of the PA to enhance Israeli security and thus focused on enabling the executive and placing
few fetters on the security services in internal matters. To be sure, the PA emerged on the basis of a
movement that posited itself as both revolutionary and popular. But rather than develop mechanisms
of democratic accountability, this movement—embodied in Fatah (the largest political party),
the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and their common leader, Yasser Arafat—used its
revolutionary legitimacy to advance its claim to represent Palestinians without any formal structures
for doing so. Occasional international criticism and constant domestic criticism of the growing
authoritarianism led PA leaders to develop (or allow to develop) a host of structures, laws, and plans
promising to make Palestine democratic. But even as these grew more detailed, they were rarely
allowed to develop in ways that would transform the nature of Palestinian governance.

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