The Seeds of Real Arab Democracy?
News: For a glimmer of hope, look to the Palestinian elections.
January 5, 2006
|
|
TULKAREM, Occupied West Bank—Ask any Palestinian politician whether last month's elections in Iraq were a beacon of Arab democracy and you get a blank stare.
"If the US wanted to give a good example for democracy, it should have left Iraq by now," says Mustafa Barghouti, a cofounder of the Palestinian National Initiative, a Palestinian civil society group that adovcates a non-violent end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the head of the Independent Palestine list of candidates for this month's Palestinian parliamentary elections. "If there is a group that is having an effect on democracy in the Arab world, it is Palestine."
The vote, scheduled for the 25th, would be the first Palestinian parliamentary election since 1996, when Yasser Arafat's Fatah party won 55 out of 88 seats. Municipal elections in March, despite some problems, were hailed by the Palestinian Commission for Human Rights and international observers as a largely successful exercise in representative democracy.
Barghouti and others rejected recent calls from Israel and some members of the Palestinian Authority to cancel the elections, on account of instability in the Palestinian territories, especially in Gaza, where armed men recently forced the closure of the border between Egypt and Gaza and a cease-fire with Israel was broken. Polling stations have been taken over and foreigners have been kidnapped, reportedly by members of the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, a militant offshoot of Fatah, some claiming to be unhappy with being left off their party's list.
"Without these elections there will be no political system in Palestine. The PA is losing legitimacy every day that can only be established through elections," Barghouti said.
More than 300 candidates are vying for the now 132 seats in Gaza and the West Bank. (Population increase explains the jump in the number of seats since 1996.) In last January's presidential election, won by Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas, turnout was reported as 46 percent, and as high as 81 percent in municipal elections in May. Palestinians are eager to go to the polls one again, frustrated with the corruption of Fatah, which effectively controls the PA.
The vote will as be as much a test of Fatah as of Palestinian democracy. The party recently won a ruling to resubmit its candidate list after the December 15 deadline. Jailed intifada leader Marwan Barghouti, a member Fatah's younger guard, which has been vying with Arafat's generation for control of the party, had submitted his own list of candidates, competing directly with the old guard, which includes Abbas. After Abbas made concessions to Marwan Barghouti and other younger Fatah leaders, the lists were combined. (Marwan and Mustafa Barghouti, of the PNI, are distant cousins.)
Despite the 11th-hour truce within Fatah, Mustafa Barghouti, who challenged Abbas in January's presidential election and took more than 30 percent of the vote, remains hopeful of unseating the ruling party.
"Marwan alone is popular. Marwan with Jibreel Al-Rjoub and (Mohamed) Dahlan, [powerful Fatah figures] it becomes a different story," Mustafa Barghouti said. "That's the choice Marwan has to make...if he wants to maintain his popularity. Can he manage to run on one list with people who are from the system, the same group that is accused of corruption?"
(The degree of openness in Palestine is a welcome change to this reporter, who is used to covering Iraq, where many people, when making an accusation of wrongdoing, are too afraid to actually speak the name of the accused person or party.)
The participation of Hamas, the militant Islamist group that boycotted previous elections has been cited by the Israeli government as a reason to postpone elections or prevent Israeli Arabs from voting, because Hamas's charter does not recognize the existence of Israel. The US Congress has gone so far as to suggest that Hamas be banned from participating. (The US officially regards Hamas as a terrorist organization.)
"The Palestinian Legislative Council elections are an internal matter," counters Maoyed Shareem, a Hamas member, referring to the Palestinian parliament. Shareem was elected in May to the local council of a city just south of Tulkarem, Qalqilya, which will be surrounded by Israel's controversial separation wall if building continues as planned, and where Hamas took all 15 council seats.
"Congress would not accept for the Palestinans to interfere in their affairs," Shareem said. "Hamas is a component of the political plurality of the democratic system," Shaqqura said. "Any political group taking office is different from an opposition group ? they have to run a state."
Some members of Fatah have suggested that the aim of Hamas is to Islamicize the government, a notion Shareem rejected.
"What pushed Hamas to campaign was the corruption within the PA," he said. "We will not change the status quo of the state by obliging anyone to do anything. I think we will secure an opposition force within the [Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC)]. We don't want to embarrass the Palestinian authority in respect of the agreements they have already signed. We will not negotiate with Israel but we will be a part of the legislative council. The effect of Hamas inside the PLC will be to make change inside the PLC."
Mustafa Barghouti agreed that Hamas owes much of its recent success to dissatisfaction with Fatah.
"The world community has not recognized the presence of a strong democratic alternative in Palestine," he said. "The silent majority, which does not want to be Fatah, does not necessarily want to be Hamas. This is why we got the highest vote in Nablus for the presidential elections, where we did not run a local democratic opposition list, and people there turned their voices in that election to Hamas."
He also espoused the widely held view that complaints about Hamas's participation are only a pretext for larger matters.
"The Israelis don't want the elections to happen. They don't want any representative body of Palestinians. Sometimes I think they talk about Hamas to encourage Hamas and strengthen Hamas, and that they want the world to think we are all fundamentalists and Hamas. Elections will empower us and will be a great support for building Palestinians. Only a democratically elected entity would be truly capable of providing peace and true and capable negotiations."
Even for members of fractured Fatah, the path to party reform are clear.
"Democracy," said Sami Al-Nasser, the vice-governor of Qalqilia Province and a Fatah appointee. "By free elections. By having another strong party. The challenge of Hamas will lead to changes in Fatah."
David Enders is a frequent contributor to MotherJones.com and author of Baghdad Bulletin: Dispatches on the American Occupation.
