Palestine: Elections under fire

Bobbing on the shoulders of Zakaria Zubeidi, Palestinian Authority president-in-waiting, Mahmoud Abbas, kicked off his campaign amid a packed, sceptical, armed and dangerous Jenin refugee camp. The irony was thick as the gunfire that greeted them.

Abbas's signature contribution to the Palestinian Intifada has been to denounce its "militarisation", not least in places like Jenin where militias have long replaced police forces as the embodiment of his "one authority, one weapon" injunction: Zubeidi's has been to emerge as one of the most prominent leaders of Fatah's West Bank Al-Aqsa militia, having survived four failed Israeli assassination attempts and the killing of his mother, brother and other comrades in arms in a score of more "successful" ones.

But times and the men change. Zubeidi and his men have become a vital political cog for Abbas as all wheel gingerly into the post-Yasser Arafat era. In return the young fighters seek amnesty from the Israelis and (in the not so distant future) "a role in the next Palestinian leadership, where I will continue to fight for the Palestinians", hopes Zubeidi. But they also represent one of the many ties that will bind Abbas's leadership.

"Let us be clear," said Zubeidi in Jenin. "I do not support the political path of Abu Mazen (Abbas). I support him, because I support the Fatah candidate. But if Abu Mazen starts to mess with our unalterable positions -- with Jerusalem, the right of return, a Palestinian state, the release of prisoners -- we will not recognise his leadership."

There seems little chance of that, at least on the campaign trail. In every public utterance Abbas has sworn fealty to the legacy of the "eternal leader" Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian political consensus he embodied. In other words: no peace without Israel's full withdrawal from the 1967 occupied territories, Palestinian sovereignty in East Jerusalem and the right of Palestinian refugees to "return home".

Prodded by the recent challenge of his leader in waiting, Marwan Barghouti, Abbas has also vowed to "protect" fighters like Zubeidi and sign no peace agreement unless accompanied by the release of the 8,000 Palestinian political prisoners, 50 per cent of whom are Fatah activists.

On these -- and other issues such as reform and opposition to Israel's settlement, wall and outposts drives -- Abbas is at one with the six other presidential candidates. But there are differences. One is the unprecedented freedom of movement the Israeli occupation has granted Abbas, enabling him to move from Ramallah to Jenin to Gaza with barely a pause at a checkpoint.

It stands in contrast to the treatment the army has meted out to the other contenders, chief among them the independent Mustafa Barghouti, now running a distant but respectable second to Abbas in the polls. Since campaigning began last month, Barghouti has been arrested on three occasions (including in occupied East Jerusalem and Hebron), roughed up twice and (he alleges) had one of his campaign workers shot dead by army snipers in Gaza.

Lesser but similar harassment has fallen on the Palestine People's (formerly Communist) Party candidate, Bassam Salhi and the Democratic Front's Taysir Khaled, usually when they canvas in East Jerusalem. As for the two Gaza based candidates -- Abdul-Kareem Shubeir and Sayed Baraka -- these have yet to receive permission to take their campaign to the West Bank. The other challenger, Haleem Ashqar, is under house arrest in the US, allegedly for his ties to Islamist groups. "If these violations continue, it would be a joke to talk about democratic and fair elections," railed Salhi at a press conference in Ramallah on 3 January.

Abuses are also collective amongst the Palestinians. According to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights, up to three per cent of the Gaza electorate may be denied their vote on 9 January for having been on the other side of Egyptian border on 12 December, when the army closed Gaza's sole Palestinian civilian crossing point as punishment for an ambush that left five Israeli soldiers dead.

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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/724/fr1.htm