The votes have been counted now for most of the local council elections in the occupied territories. In a sure sign that the Arab world has not yet embraced democracy, more than 80% of eligible voters cast ballots.
Fatah is claiming 66% of the vote, but Hamas exceeded expectations by winning majorities in nine (possibly twelve) of twenty-six councils, which was what made headlines.
Most of the media focused on the Hamas-terrorism angle. Only the Christian Science Monitor’s Ben Lynfield thought to drive around the West Bank and ask the locals what they thought.
“This is the first time Hamas will take responsibility in the society,” says Hafez Barghouthi, editor of the Palestinian Authority (PA) affiliated al-Hayat al-Jadida newspaper. “It is the first time it will have to go beyond criticism of the PA, to work in the field like a party responsible for coordinating daily life, and as a party with a duty to society.”
[I]n the view of Hisham Ahmed, a political scientist at Bir Zeit University, the results of the local elections can be viewed as an expression of dissatisfaction with Mr. Abbas… “No longer can one group declare it has the exclusive power in Palestinian society,” Ahmed says.
Here is Huda al-Asa, newly elected as a town councilor in Obadeiah.
“Hamas and Fatah should work together now. I have run to serve my town, not to deal with politics. My priority would be to serve the women and children in general,” says the diminutive and soft-spoken Ms. Asa, wearing a navy blue hijab. “Our platform calls for building a public library and a medical compound.”
Asa, a nurse who is a mother of five, says it was her experience running a charitable association, the Abadiya Women’s Society, along with the two other women candidates, that contributed to her appeal. “I used to volunteer during sieges and closures, helping women deliver babies and helping injured people,” she says.
All politics is local.
The Palestinian Presidential race also kicked off today. The U.S. papers were quite impressed that the candidates all campaigned under Arafat’s banner (literally, in some cases). The LA Times opened with:
Anyone who didn’t know better might have thought that Yasser Arafat was alive and well and running for Palestinian Authority president.
Why so suprised? The Palestinians don’t particularly care that we’ve labelled Arafat corrupt, a terrorist, etc. To them, he was a great leader. He dedicated his life to Palestinian statehood. He symbolizes their national cause. They forgive him his faults. He’s their David Ben-Gurion (and Ben-Gurion wasn’t such a saint either, by the way). Arafat’s legacy is the starting point for this campaign.
Mahmoud Abbas, in speeches in Ramallah and Bethlehem, outlined his platform thus (as reported in The New York Times):
We are choosing the path of peace and negotiation. If there is no peace here, there will be no peace in the Middle East or the rest of the world.
Israel must pull out of all Palestinian lands occupied in 1967. We cannot compromise on Jerusalem. A state that is cut up by settlements cannot be a state. It will be cantons.
If Israel wants peace, then the prisoner issue must be settled. We want everyone to be a former prisoner, above all else Marwan Barghouti.
And with regard to Hamas and Islamic Jihad,
They told us you have to uproot them. We will not uproot. They told us you have to strike them. We will not strike. They are part of our people, and we will include them.
Hardly anyone here is bothering to report on the other candidates, but Al Jazeerah did a piece the other day on Musafa Barghouti.
“We don’t need a leader who will control us, because we are all languishing under the Israeli occupation. We need a leader who will lead us to freedom and liberation”.
[Barghouti] said he was not running against Fatah per se, saying the movement had in its ranks “many good and patriotic people. But I represent the silent majority which is thirsty for ending this shocking subservience to Israel.”
Al-Barghuthi said Palestinians should never agree to sit down alone with Israel at the negotiating table. “This is like entrusting the lamb to the tiger. We know what would happen in such a situation. Hence, we must insist on an international conference based on UN resolutions and the ruling of the International Court of Justice at the Hague”.
Like Abbas, Barghouti is a pacifist, but he favors more active grassroots resistance to the occupation. He has been effective in mobilizing international volunteers to join Palestinians. He is also more focused than Abbas on social welfare and on building the civil state. The analysis is that he could make a good showing if he captures the Islamist vote plus some of the younger, discontented Fatah members.
Elections
I wish I could feel as sanguine as you do about Hamas. It’s true that they have gained much of their power and respect among Palestinians because on the village and town level, they’ve provided social services, medical clinics, schools, etc. But they also have provided the terrorists and suicide bombers whose pictures hang in many a home and public place. I’m sure that there is a political spectrum among the Hamas leaders and followers on the local level, which ranges from those who will be pragmatic in their pursuit of peace to those who will continue to pursue violent means. We can’t consistently condemn the (also-democratically-elected) Israeli extreme right wing politicians and their followers while portraying Hamas as a completely trustworthy and benign entity (at least symbolically in the image of a diminutive woman who just wants to do good for her town.) I am delighted with the high voter turnout in the O.T., basically encouraged that the results of the election seem truly to reflect the will of the people on the municipal level, but I’m adopting a “wait and see” attitude as to whether these elections lead to internal reforms and a cessation of violence against Israel. Whether Israel takes any initiatives to end the violence by ceasing its assassinations, arrests, and house demolitions, by closing at least some of the checkpoints, and putting a halt to expansion of the settlements remains to be seen. I’m not too sanguine about that, for sure. But I’m not ready to celebrate a kinder, gentler Hamas quite yet! Other forms of Palestinian resistance, as being urged by Abbas and, I think, Barghouti, will prove more effective, I believe, in the long run, in any case.
Hamas
I guess what I’m trying to get at is that not everyone who voted Hamas, or ran on the Hamas ticket, was necessarily embracing all points of Hamas’ credo. We tend to see Hamas through the lens of the relationship with Israel, as if all it represented were suicide bombing and opposition to Israel’s existence. But to Palestinians it also represents:
If called upon personally to judge Hamas my judgement is (of course) negative. But to understand Palestinian politics, I try to see things, as best I can, from the Palestinian perspective as well as from my own.
Andrew Schamess
Nobody every believes politicians anyway
I’m sure the percentage of people voting Hamas because they subscribe to every plank of the platform (if you can call it that) is probably the same as, say, Republicans or Democrats - that is, near zero.
If we’ve learned one thing from our own election, it’s that people vote on issues that are important to them, not the ones that are important to us. Even if they agree with us.