The Palestinian Authority

What it is

The Palestinian Authority is the governing body created by the Israel-PLO agreements of 1993 to 1995 to run limited self-rule for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and specified areas of the West Bank, subject to overall Israeli control. ¹ Its legal structure comes from the September 1995 Interim Agreement, known as Oslo II, which established it as a transitional governing body. ² It has been transitional for thirty-one years.

The PA is not the PLO. The Palestine Liberation Organization is the body that represents Palestinians internationally, and Fatah is the secular nationalist faction that drives it. ¹ The PA is the administrative apparatus underneath: ministries, schools, courts, a payroll, and police. Hamas, the main opposition to Fatah, has never accepted the PLO's recognition of Israel. ¹

The PA has a president, a prime minister, and a Palestinian Legislative Council that confirms the prime minister and approves the cabinet. ² Its constitutional document is the Basic Law, which as amended in 2005 sets a four-year presidential term with a two-term limit, and a four-year term for the Legislative Council with elections "once each four years in a regular manner." ³

The record against that text is short. The first elections were held in 1996, and Yasser Arafat won the presidency while Fatah dominated the Council. ⁴ After Arafat's death, Mahmoud Abbas won the presidential election of Jan. 9, 2005, with 67% of the vote, 501,448 ballots, for a four-year term. ² On Jan. 25, 2006, Palestinians elected a new Legislative Council with 77% turnout, roughly 980,000 of 1.273 million registered voters. Hamas took 74 of the 132 seats, Fatah took 45, and others took 13. ²

That was the last national vote. In 2007 Hamas seized Gaza by force, Abbas reorganized the cabinet to govern the West Bank, and the two territories have been under separate rule ever since. ¹ Abbas's four-year mandate ran out in January 2009 and was extended that year by the PLO's Executive Committee rather than by voters. ⁴ On Dec. 12, 2018, the Constitutional Court dissolved the Legislative Council and called for elections within six months. They never happened. ⁴ In January 2021 Abbas issued a decree scheduling legislative elections for May 22 and a presidential election for July 31. ⁴ On April 29, 2021, he postponed them, saying Israel would not confirm that Palestinians in East Jerusalem could vote. "As soon as Israel agrees, we'll hold the election within a week," he said. ⁵ Hamas called the delay a coup against partnership. ⁵ Critics inside Palestinian politics said the Jerusalem question was cover, and that the real problem was Hamas's projected strength at the polls. ⁵

Since 2007, Abbas has governed the areas the PA controls in the West Bank by decree. ¹ He was born in 1935 ¹ and has led the Authority since 2005. ⁶

Why it still matters

Three things follow from a government that has not faced voters in twenty years.

The first is money. Clearance revenues, the taxes Israel collects on imports bound for Palestinian markets and remits to Ramallah, are the PA's main source of income. ⁷ Israel deducts from them, and the deductions have grown: monthly withholdings averaged more than 460 million shekels in the first half of 2025, against about 200 million before October 2023, and transfers stopped entirely from May 2025. ⁷ The result is a payroll the PA cannot meet. It paid 70% of salaries for January through April 2025, 60% in May, and 50% in June, and by that month owed its own employees 2.1 billion dollars in arrears. ⁷ Under the Taylor Force Act, Congress also bars most U.S. economic aid that directly benefits the PA unless it curtails payments to prisoners and the families of attackers; the PA announced changes to those payments in February 2025, and whether the changes satisfy the law is unresolved. ¹

The second is security coordination, which is the most argued-over thing the PA does. Its West Bank forces work with Israeli counterparts, an arrangement Western governments have backed as a way to strengthen the Fatah-led PA against Hamas, and which appeared to continue through the West Bank violence of 2024 and 2025. ¹ In December 2024, PA forces mounted a rare operation against armed groups in Jenin, arresting about 50 people and losing three of their own, including an intelligence captain; a militant from Islamic Jihad and two uninvolved civilians were also killed. ⁸ A PA spokesman, Brig. Gen. Anwar Rajab, framed it as imposing law and order. ⁸ Many Palestinians read the same operation as the PA doing Israel's work and view its forces with suspicion. ⁸ The Israeli argument against the PA is that it has been corrupt and has supported terrorism, which is why Israel has publicly rejected returning it to power in Gaza. ¹ Since Oct. 7, polling has shown West Bank support shifting toward Hamas at the expense of Abbas and Fatah. ¹

The third is succession. The Basic Law says that when the presidency falls vacant through death, resignation, or loss of capacity, the Speaker of the Legislative Council takes the powers of the office for no more than sixty days, during which a new president is elected. ³ The Legislative Council was dissolved in 2018 and has not been re-elected. ⁴ There is no sitting speaker to hand the office to.

The workaround came on April 26, 2025, when Abbas named Hussein al-Sheikh, 64, as the PLO's first vice president, a post created two days earlier. ⁶ Al-Sheikh runs civilian affairs and is the PA's primary point of contact with Israel, including the travel permits Palestinians need to work or get treatment there; he spent eleven years in Israeli prisons. ⁶ The Congressional Research Service notes that he and the intelligence chief Majid Faraj have high international visibility and limited domestic popular support, that Marwan Barghouti has the popular support and has been in Israeli prison since 2002, and that Mohammed Dahlan, a former PA security chief in Gaza, has backing from some Arab states. ¹

The words you'll hear

The PA. The Palestinian Authority, created by the 1993 to 1995 Israel-PLO agreements to exercise limited self-rule in Gaza and parts of the West Bank under overall Israeli control. ¹

The PLO. The Palestine Liberation Organization, the body that represents Palestinians internationally and is dominated by Fatah. Hamas has never accepted its recognition of Israel. ¹

The Basic Law. The PA's constitutional document. As amended in 2005 it sets four-year terms for the president and the Legislative Council, and gives the Council's speaker sixty days as acting president if the office falls vacant. ³

The PLC. The Palestinian Legislative Council, the PA's parliament, last elected in January 2006 and dissolved by the Constitutional Court in December 2018. ^{2 4}

Clearance revenues. Taxes Israel collects on Palestinian-bound imports and transfers to the PA. The PA's largest income source, subject to Israeli deductions and, since May 2025, a full halt. ⁷

Security coordination. The working relationship between PA security forces in the West Bank and their Israeli counterparts, supported by Western governments as a counterweight to Hamas and resented by many Palestinians as service to Israel. ^{1 8}

The Taylor Force Act. The U.S. law barring most economic aid that directly benefits the PA unless it ends payments that arguably reward acts of terror. ¹