This is not the first time, and perhaps not the last, that the idea of dismantling the Palestinian Authority (PA) and “returning the keys to Israel” is being bandied around in the diplomatic vacuum. Already in August 2008, in the days of the Ehud Olmert government, Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al-Quds University, told me the following: “I suggested that the [Palestinian] Authority announce that if we don’t reach an agreement by the end of the year, it will dissolve itself and return the keys to Israel.”

Nusseibeh, who partnered with former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon in the agreement termed “The People’s Voice” (two states based on the ‘67 borders, with no right of return for the Palestinians), asserted, “We have 160,000 civil servants. Half of them are security personnel who don’t provide us with any security. We spend a fortune on rifles that are used to fight each other.” He also said he had begged European leaders to stop financial assistance to the PA, since it had turned out to be leveraging the continued occupation instead of ending it. He said that according to international law, on the day after the PA is dismantled, Israel will have to go back to funding the occupation on its own, the way it did during its military rule in the territories that preceded the Oslo Accord.

A senior officer in the civil administration confirmed to me at the time that Nusseibeh’s assessment was correct. He said he suffered from nightmares in which then-PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announced he has fired all the PA’s employees, including the security forces. Before bidding him farewell and shutting the door to his office, Fayyad handed him the keys to the hospitals, schools, welfare services and the planning and building entities.

It would be interesting to know what that officer, who was just promoted to a very senior post in the defense establishment, thinks of the reaction of Naftali Bennett, chairman of the HaBayit HaYehudi Party and economy minister, to the “returning the keys” threat by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Bennett, speaking to reporters on April 20, joked, “With such threats, who needs good wishes?”