The first of two scheduled
elections under occupation in the Middle East this month took place in
the West
Bank,
Gaza Strip and parts of Jerusalem on January 9, with
elections in Iraq scheduled for later this
month.
Mahmoud Abbas, the candidate
for Fatah, was elected chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in elections
that were marred by low voter turnout and the inability of candidates other
than Abbas to campaign effectively.
Abbas assumed interim
chairmanship of the PA after the death of Yasser Arafat on November 11, 2004, and was immediately hailed as a “genuine partner
for peace” by the Sharon and Bush governments, both of whom had refused to deal
with Arafat.Abbas, viewed by the
Americans and the Israelis as a moderate and a pragmatist, was one of the
architects of the Oslo peace accords.The accords, which emerged following the
success of the first Palestinian intifada
in putting the demand for Palestinian statehood back on the international
agenda, failed largely because of the Israeli refusal to implement even the
most minor concessions called for under the accords.
Undeterred by Israeli
intransigence, however, Abbas co-authored another accord with former Israeli
Justice Minister Yossi Beilin in 1995; from this document have stemmed all
recent Israeli and American peace proposals.Under the terms of the Beilin-Abbas document, over 130 Israeli
settlements would remain in the occupied territories, with Israeli Defence
Forces remaining active within and around the West Bank and Gaza.The agreement also abrogated the Palestinian
claim to Jerusalem, designating instead the Palestinian village of Abu Dis as the capital of a
Palestinian state.While the peace talks
broke down and have not yet resumed, it was at this point that Israel and the U.S. took serious note of Abbas.
Abbas campaigned for the
chairmanship of the PA on a platform of renewing the stalled peace agreements. He
also repeatedly called on Palestinian militants to give up their armed struggle
againstIsrael.His candidacy received tacit support from the
Israelis and he was the only candidate allowed to travel freely through the
checkpoints throughout the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Jerusalem.His campaign literature was also widely
distributed without any intervention.
Voting Under Occupation
While Sharon,
Bush and most Western observers hailed the elections as a victory for
Palestinian democracy, in reality the elections were mainly an exercise in
futility.
According to a report
published in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz
the day before voting began, the Israeli government
had still not complied with its commitment to ease restrictions on Palestinian
movements.According to an Israeli
Defence Forces (IDF) spokesperson, 14 roadblocks were removed in the West Bank in advance of election day, and “an effort is being made to speed up
passage through roadblocks, but security remains [the IDF’s] top
priority.”On election
day itself, at the two main checkpoints leading into Nablus, for example, those under 25
were barred from entering, while checkpoints throughout the Gaza Strip
continued unchanged.It was Israeli
commentator Gila Svirsky description of voting in Jerusalem that captured best the
absurdity of the day.Determined that
the elections would not be used to affirm the Palestinian claim to the city,
she notes, Israel allowed only 6,000 of the
over 100,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem to actually vote there,
requiring all others to get through checkpoints to vote in stations in the West Bank.Those who were allowed to cast their vote in Jerusalem had to do so at post
offices, with voters handing over their ballots to postal clerks who deposited
them into boxes to be “mailed” to Palestine.“Special attention was given to the location
of the slot,” Svirsky, wrote in Ha’aretz,
noting “the Israeli authorities felt strongly that a slot on the top of the box
would give the appearance of a real ballot box. Therefore, these mailboxes had
slots on the side.”
In the weeks before the
election, several candidates were detained by the IDF, with international media
showing footage of one candidate for chairman of the Palestinian Authority and
his entourage being beaten.A teenager
in Gaza was shot while putting up a campaign poster, with
another 20 Palestinians killed in the final week of campaigning alone.
The absurdity of holding a
so-called free and democratic election under military occupation was not lost
on Palestinians:less than half of the
1.8 million eligible voters took part, down substantially from voter turnout in
the first ever PA elections in 1996, when over 8o per cent of Palestinians cast
their ballots.
Abbas, who western
commentators have described as having a strong mandate, was elected with just
493,039 votes, or with the support of less than 30 per cent of eligible Palestinian voters.