Palestinian Authority prime minister Salam Fayyad admitted at a conference today that the PLO has the mandate is everything related to the affairs of the Palestinian people at home and abroad, and that the Palestinian National Authority is just a tool of the PLO.
This appears to be an attempt by Fayyad to mend fences, as some Fatah leaders were alarmed that he was making a power play to marginalize Fatah and the PLO. He has recently backtracked at his plan to unilaterally declare a state in 2011, now saying that the PLO is the only entity that can decide to do that.
Fayyad said that the Palestinian National Authority is an institution established by the PLO to deal with the affairs of the country and the people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the duty to develop plans and visions and implement them, and put it in a political framework, to be part of the political struggle practiced by the PLO.
Long-time observers have known this all along, of course. The "free elections" that the Palestinian Arabs had and that the world praised was not for the leaders of an Arab Palestine but for people who must answer to an organization that does not adhere to democratic methods. It is in many ways a sham, although for local elections is has some relevance. The PA does not work for the people - it works for the PLO, dominated by Fatah, which also supports terror groups.
Fayyad himself, of course, was never elected. His position is to mollify the West, and he is the only leader in the short history of Palestinian Arabs that actually thinks like a Westerner.
