The Palestinian Authority could conceivably disappear in a variety of ways. It could collapse due to financial insolvency, as PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has recently warned. It could be unilaterally dissolved by writ of PA President Mahmoud Abbas--as he too has warned--if Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rejects his conditions for renewing negotiations. Or it could somehow simply dissipate in tandem with the removal or withdrawal from the scene of the current West Bank leadership.
Two primary actors that are not candidates for dismantling the PA are Israel and the United States. True, Israel knowingly endangers the PA when it withholds monthly tax and excise transfers--as it did several months ago and as several Israeli government ministers are threatening once again. But most Israeli officials understand they need the PA nearly as much as Palestinians do. In fact, Israel's financial punishment of the PA, along with financial penalties imposed by the US Congress, stem mainly from a tendency to confuse it with the Palestine Liberation Organization, Israel's statutory negotiating partner and frequent antagonist on the international scene. Perversely, that confusion is a compliment to the success and viability of the PA and a reflection of the concomitant weakness of the PLO and its primary member group, Fateh.
Nevertheless, and despite that seeming viability, let's suppose the PA ceases to function, for whatever reason. What would this mean for Israel, the Arab world and the international community?
The current Likud-led Israeli government would do everything possible to avoid assuming responsibility for administering the West Bank, lest it be faulted for destroying the peace process that created the PA and which the Likud is at least nominally pledged to maintain. Nor would it wish to resume the financial and security burden of running West Bank Palestinian affairs, as in the pre-Oslo era.
Ideas for maintaining the Israeli government's "distance" from West Bank responsibility would presumably run from calling for international or perhaps Jordanian administration to trying to organize a Palestinian puppet government. It's hard to imagine that any of these ideas would have traction. The resultant political, economic and security vacuum would quickly invite the intervention of nearly everyone else.
Hamas, recognizing the implications of PLO failure to maintain the PA, would seek to gain adherents for its leadership on the West Bank and to sabotage attempts to maintain stability. (On the other hand, it would have to explain to Gazans why financial transfers from the West Bank-based PA had ceased, thereby exacerbating Gaza's economic situation.) Extremist settlers might view the situation as an invitation for a land-grab. Either or both of these developments could oblige the Israel Defense Forces to expand their reach back into all of Area A: Palestinian cities and towns. The Israeli peace camp would justifiably trumpet the government's failure to prevent the PA's collapse and would seek new Israeli elections or heightened international intervention.
Calls would emerge from the Israeli far right and post-Zionist far left and from Palestinians who have lost hope for a two-state solution for Israel to annex the territory. The Palestinians and the post-Zionists would demand full citizenship rights for West Bank Palestinians, thereby jeopardizing Israel's claim to be a Jewish state. The far right would insist on some sort of distinction between Palestinian "personal rights" and Jewish "citizenship rights"--meaning, in effect, apartheid.
Meanwhile, an increasingly Islamist Arab world would find plenty in this situation to accuse Israel of. So would the US and Europe, where voices would be heard suggesting that the emerging crisis offered an opportunity to adopt more forceful policies in favor of two states and against the settlements.
