Palestine: The price of democracy

"In the past the only Palestinian politics was Fatah politics. But now the situation is changing. People are more educated and we understand it's not enough to vote out of loyalty. One should vote for parties that have the power, the will and attitude to change things," said Halimi Omar Mattar, a 22 year-old engineering student, outside a school in Salfit.

The village was once among the most prosperous in the northern West Bank. In the last three years it has had its land, livelihoods and lives crushed by Israeli blockades, the expansion of the mammoth Ariel settlement and, above all, the ever-tightening encirclement of the West Bank wall. But the occupation was only one of the things Halimi wants to see change.

She was one of the 320,000 Palestinians who, on 5 May, voted for new municipal councils in a second phase of local elections in 82 constituencies across the West Bank and Gaza. Like tens of thousands of her kin she was supporting the List for Reform and Change of the Islamist Hamas movement.

Yet the flyers she was handing out said little about the wall, settlements, Jerusalem or Jihad but an awful lot about "improving the education system, municipal services and the status of women and children in society". And the questions she asked me were precisely the questions I wanted to ask her: Would these local elections serve as a dress rehearsal for the PA's parliamentary elections in July? And would Fatah recover from the drubbing it had received from Hamas, particularly in Gaza, in the first round of local elections in December and January?

Fatah recovered -- on paper. In preliminary results released by the Higher Elections Committee (HEC) on 9 May, Fatah lists had appeared to win around 50 municipalities as against Hamas's 30. One reason was a better choice of candidates. This was particularly so in Salfit, where the Fatah list was made up of entirely new people unassociated with the previous appointed council and known locally for professional competence rather than factional loyalty. In a town with a 4,500 electorate Fatah won 13 of the 15 council seats as against Hamas's two.

Fatah also formed effective alliances, particularly among the tribes and families that dominate local politics in rural areas. In Jiflik -- a village in the pit of the Jordan Valley whose electorate is "97 per cent Fatah", in the opinion of former village head Mohamed Omar Jahalin -- Fatah dispersed its support among the four main village families and returned nine "independents".

But these victories serve to highlight the problem. Fatah's base now in the West Bank is small, clan-ruled localities with fewer than 5,000 voters. The flipside is that larger the constituency, the more urban, educated and younger its electorate and more it and they have suffered from the occupation and PA misrule, the better Hamas performs.

Take Qalqiliya, a town east of Salfit and home to 40,000 Palestinians. In the last three years Qalqiliya has seen 83 per cent of its municipal land lost or isolated by the wall. In a truly stunning result, Hamas candidates won all 15 seats on the council, ousting its young and able mayor, Marouf Zahran, with a Hamas prisoner now serving time in Israel's Ofer jail. So was this, unlike Salfit, a protest against the wall and the PA's failure to have it torn down? No, says Zahran. "The people have punished Fatah because of the lack of reforms. This was a vote of protest against the Palestinian leadership."

The local Fatah leadership agreed, resigning en masse once the scale of the defeat was known. Similar resignations followed similar outcomes in the Hebron district and in Bethlehem, where rival Fatah lists won four of the eight allotted Christian seats against Hamas's winning five of the seven Muslim seats. Their refrain too was similar. "The people punished Fatah because of corruption, lawlessness and nepotism in the Palestinian leadership," said Mohamed Khalayleh, whose Fatah list won five seats to Hamas's eight in Samou near Hebron.

Nor -- after this round -- is there any doubt that Hamas is the dominant political force in Gaza. Across eight constituencies in the Strip, Hamas won an estimated 70 per cent of the vote, winning majorities in the three largest councils of Bureij, Beit Lahia and Rafah, with a 74,000 strong electorate.

The Rafah result hit like an earthquake. Fatah and the PA had invested enormous resources in keeping what was once seen as a cast-iron nationalist stronghold as well as perhaps the most lethal front-line in the struggle against Israel. Hamas won 10 seats against Fatah's five.

Claiming fraud, Fatah gunmen took to streets, clashing with their Islamist victors and wounding nine. On 8 May a group of armed and masked Al-Aqsa Brigades forced the closure of Central Elections Commission (CEC) offices in central Gaza in the mistaken belief that the CEC rather than the HEC was responsible for the local elections.

Fatah's allegation was that the HEC had somehow allowed Hamas supporters to vote twice or use names of those "martyred" in the struggle. The most appropriate answer came from the Palestine Human Rights Centre, a local elections monitor in Gaza. It said while there were "many violations" during the election campaign, especially the use of mosques by Hamas and PA security personnel by Fatah, "these did not damage the essence of the electoral process nor did they affect the results." It was a verdict shared by the dozens of international observers in Gaza.

But perhaps the most mordent assessment of the rigging claim came from Talal Aukal, a Gaza-based columnist for the Palestinian Al-Ayam newspaper. "It is universally accepted," he wrote on 9 May, "that the opposition often accuses the regime of forgery during elections. But it is surely unique for the government to accuse the opposition of forgery. Apparently Fatah hasn't learned the lessons of its previous mistakes."

What lessons will the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, learn? The advice he is receiving not only from anxious Fatah cadre but also from Israel, the US and Egypt is that the parliamentary elections must be postponed. For Fatah the reason is "you cannot have elections on the ruins of the Intifada". For the regional powers there is a real fear that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza this summer may become branded in the Palestinian mind not only as a military victory for Hamas but also a political one.

For now Abbas is heeding neither counsel, insisting Palestinian elections "in all their forms" will be held on time. One reason is that Hamas has made it abundantly clear that if Abbas wants calm to prevail during Israel's disengagement then the price is going to be free and fair parliamentary elections on 17 July. But the deeper reason is Palestinian opinion: a recent poll by Birzeit University showed a colossal 84 per cent of Palestinians wanting parliamentary elections in July and the final round of local elections "in the next few months".

"This is democracy," Abbas reportedly told one diplomat, worried whether elections in this part of the Middle East was such a good idea. "This is the price. Learn to live with it".

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/742/re1.htm