Israel Matzav: Amnesty to issue report claiming Palestinian Authority not legally functional to enter into contracts

Amnesty to issue report claiming Palestinian Authority not legally functional to enter into contracts

Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.

On Tuesday, Amnesty International will issue a report on the water situation in our region. It goes without saying that the report will claim that we aren't giving the 'Palestinians' enough water.

The catch is that Israel is complying completely with a series of agreements that it entered into with the 'Palestinian Authority' under Yasser Arafat between 1993-95. Amnesty is going to use an innovative way to ignore that reality.

Absurdly, Amnesty claims that Israel is violating the human rights of Palestinian because the Oslo Accords “codified inequality in access to water resources”. According to the authors, the PA and the Palestinian Water Authority have “extremely limited control over water resources in the West Bank. Under the Oslo Accords, [they] merely acquired the responsibility of managing an inadequate water supply…and for maintaining and repairing a long-neglected water infrastructure that was already in dire need of major repairs.”

In other words, Amnesty is saying, that when they entered into Oslo (1993-95), Yassir Arafat and the PLO were incapable of taking their own interests into account and lacked the ability to negotiate and enter into a deal to their own benefit (whether they actually stuck to the deal once entered into is another question). Under contract law, an agreement can be invalidated for a lack of capacity on the basis of infancy, mental illness, or drunkenness. Amnesty must think that the Palestinians involved in negotiating and agreeing to Oslo were children, insane, or wasted if it is advancing such an illogical and silly argument.

The problem is that if they get away with that admittedly silly argument now (and undoubtedly, they will), they will use a similar argument to disavow anything they don't like about a 'final status agreement' down the road. Imagine them using the same argument to get out of provisions that call for demilitarization, end of conflict or Israeli control over border crossings with Jordan.

What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: Amnesty to issue report claiming Palestinian Authority not legally functional to enter into contracts