BRUCE PEARL: When a team keeps losing, you make changes — look beyond the Palestinian Authority for peace

Anyone who has coached for a living knows you’re judged by results, not excuses. When the results aren’t there, the coach is out the door. Healthy governments work the same way. Political authorities exist to deliver outcomes. When they fail over time, consequences follow.

We are certainly seeing that play out in Iran, where tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest their failed leadership and where they are today blessing and praising America and Israel for the military operation that may bring their freedom.

Unfortunately, no global expectation exists for the Palestinian Authority (PA) to deliver positive outcomes for their people. They continue to teach antisemitism in their classrooms and lionize terrorists while largely ignoring the needs of ordinary Palestinians, who have paid the price for decades.

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Don’t take my word for it. Listen to Tawfik Tirawi, a former Palestinian intelligence chief who recently issued an open letter describing systemic corruption inside the Palestinian Authority.

Officials act with impunity. Land is seized under political protection. Elections haven’t been held in years. Mahmoud Abbas is now in the 20th year of a four-year presidential term and governs largely by decree.

Tirawi is not an opposition figure or a critic from outside. He is someone from inside the locker room, describing the internal failure of the team he once served.

The PA’s corruption involves violence, too. The U.S. State Department has reported that the Palestinian Authority paid more than $200 million in 2025 to terrorists [who killed or injured Israelis in attacks] and their families, despite earlier promises to end the pay-for-slay program. They simply shifted the money to a different account.

In sports, that’s called cheating. Yet Western governments still tolerate it, fearing pressure on Abbas will allow Hamas to take over, and that’s worse.

That logic gets it backward. When failure is tolerated, the worst outcome becomes reality. Gaza is the proof. Hamas won the 2006 elections by campaigning against corruption and promising action. And the result was a violent, terrorist mini-state that indoctrinated Gazans to hate Israel and Jews.

Now it’s happening in Judea and Samaria, also referred to by many as the West Bank. A 2024 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found Hamas far more popular than Fatah, the movement tied to the Palestinian Authority.

In recent years, I have had the opportunity to speak directly with Palestinian business and community leaders, and they are sick and tired of the PA’s corruption. If we want to avoid Hamas rule in Judea and Samaria, at least two changes are needed.

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First, abandon the failed gameplan. The two-state model entrenched a corrupt and unaccountable Palestinian Authority with little need for public legitimacy. Preserving it out of fear only sustains the conditions that empower radicals.

There is a viable alternative. A decentralized model of local governance — often called the eight-state or local-emirate approach — offers a more realistic path forward. It replaces a single failing center with multiple centers of responsibility.

Power would rest with municipal and tribal authorities that already command local loyalty. This limits systemic corruption and reduces the risk of state collapse. It also makes it harder for any single faction to seize everything at once.

In Hebron, the al-Jaabari family is already pursuing this approach with Israeli Minister of the Economy Nir Barkat. They are seeking to leave the PA, establish local autonomy and join the Abraham Accords.

This matters because Palestinian politics has long been shaped by the elimination of moderates. The result has been a recurring pattern in Palestinian Arab governance: corrupt strongmen on one side and violent theocrats on the other. Notably absent have been serious efforts to protect or empower local moderation, like the initiative in Hebron.

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That failure leads directly to the second required change. Palestinian education must be deradicalized. Independent reviews of Palestinian Authority textbooks and teacher guides show systematic incitement against Israel and Jews.

Violent "resistance" is celebrated. Israel is erased from maps. Hostility toward Jews appears across subjects, including math, science and grammar. These materials corrupt the next generation and undermine any hope for future coexistence between Jews and Arabs.

Under a decentralized eight-state framework, educational reform becomes possible and enforceable. Local governments that embrace pluralism gain aid and regional partners, while those that choose militancy cut themselves off from the international community and Arab states unwilling to relive Gaza’s failure.

As former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has pointed out, human flourishing in Judea and Samaria depends less on abstract statehood than on local autonomy and economic integration.

These two reforms — empowering local governance and educational deradicalization — offer a way out of dead-end thinking. 

In sports, if you’re losing, you change the strategy and the personnel. That is what is required in Judea and Samaria.