Thirty years. That is a long time. It is enough time to pay off a mortgage, raise a child, or watch the **Oslo Accords** crumble into dust. It is also, apparently, enough time to prove that the **Palestinian Authority (PA)** is a total failure. Everyone is running around now, waving their arms, screaming that a **Palestinian Authority collapse** is imminent. They act like this is a surprise. They act like this hasn't been the plan—or the inevitable result of the deepening **West Bank crisis**—for three decades.

Let’s be honest for a second. The **Palestinian leadership** was supposed to be a government in waiting. It was supposed to be the group that got the keys to the car once everyone calmed down. But that never happened. Instead, it turned into the world’s saddest waiting room. A waiting room where the magazines are thirty years old and the receptionist ignores you while counting cash under the table. And now, the lights are flickering, and the landlord—Israel—is changing the locks.

The news says the PA is in "dire straits." That is a nice way of saying they are broke and useless. They have no money. They have no power. They have a bunch of guys in expensive suits sitting in offices in Ramallah pretending they run a country. They don't run anything. They can't even pick up the trash without asking for permission or a handout from Europe. It is pathetic. But it isn't just their fault. It is a team effort in stupidity.

Look at the Israeli side of this mess. For years, the strategy has been simple: squeeze until it pops. They control the money. They control the borders. They control the movement. It is like putting someone in a box, nailing it shut, and then complaining that the person inside isn't breathing right. The current hardline government in Israel looks at the **West Bank settlements** and sees free real estate. They don't care if the PA collapses. In fact, some of them probably want it to. Chaos is a ladder, right? If the PA falls apart, who takes over? The guys with the guns and the bad attitudes. And that gives the hardliners in Israel exactly the excuse they need to never give an inch.

Then you have the rest of the world. The Americans. The Europeans. The "International Community," which is just a fancy name for people who like to hold meetings in five-star hotels. For thirty years, they have been throwing money at this problem. Billions and billions of dollars. Where did it go? Did it build a state? No. Did it build peace? No. It went into bank accounts. It went into paying salaries for jobs that don't exist. It went into keeping a zombie alive so everyone could pretend there was still a "peace process."

There is no process. There is no peace. There is just a slow, grinding misery. The average Palestinian in the West Bank sees the PA as a joke. They see their own leaders as corrupt old men who drive nice cars while the streets crumble. They see the Israeli settlements growing on the hilltops, getting bigger every day, while they can't even get a permit to fix a window. Why would they support the PA? What has the PA done for them lately besides coordinate with the very people occupying them?

So now we are at the cliff edge. The warnings are getting louder. "It's going to collapse!" they cry. Okay. Let it. Maybe it needs to. You cannot keep propping up a corpse and pretending it is dancing. If the PA goes down, it is going to be ugly. It is going to be messy. There will be violence, because that is the only language anyone speaks in that region anymore. But at least it will be real. Right now, we are living in a fantasy. We are pretending that there is a government where there isn't one. We are pretending there is a solution when nobody wants to solve anything.

The scary part is that nobody has a Plan B. The Israelis don't want to go back to running every sewer and school in the West Bank. The Americans don't want to admit they wasted thirty years. And the Palestinian leadership just wants to hold onto their VIP cards until the very last second. It is a ship of fools, sinking in slow motion. And the saddest part? The people who will drown are not the ones steering the ship. It is the regular folks, the ones who just want to go to work and feed their kids, who will get pulled under.

This is what happens when you let politics replace reality. You get a thirty-year lie that costs billions of dollars and ends in ruins. The PA isn't failing because of bad luck. It is failing because it was built on a foundation of sand, lies, and other people's money. And now the tide is coming in.

***

### References & Fact-Check * **Original Report**: [Palestinian Authority in dire straits as Israel's hold on West Bank deepens](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wn8lw0kgjo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss) (BBC News) * **Context**: The Palestinian Authority (PA) faces severe fiscal crisis exacerbated by Israeli deductions of tax revenues and declining international aid. * **Key Entities**: West Bank, Palestinian Authority, Ramallah, Israeli Settlements.