http://www.jordantimes.com/wed/opinion/opinion2.htm
Undermining democracy, again, in Palestine
Hasan Abu Nimah
The PLO Executive Committee's recommendation that Palestinian Authority
Chairman Mahmoud Abbas call for early elections, both for his post and
for the legislative council, is ill-advised and wrong.
The Palestinian Legislative Council was elected less than a year ago. It
barely had a chance to function, due to the Western-backed boycott and
to the fact that Israel has kidnapped and is holding hostage large
numbers of its elected members. But to dissolve it now would be a
prescription for additional turmoil and political conflict.
The idea of dissolving the Hamas-led government and the PLC has been
contemplated (and declared) by Abbas for a long time. Abbas, his local
cronies in the Fateh movement, and the foreign powers which encourage
and support them, have never reconciled themselves to the fact that
Hamas won the PLC election fair and square. Rather than stand aside and
allow Hamas to govern, as the rules of democracy dictate, they have
hatched various plans to try to overthrow the Hamas Cabinet and replace
it with one to their liking.
In order to disguise the blatantly undemocratic nature of this effort,
Abbas has been seeking ways to make the attempt to remove Hamas appear
legal. But one major obstacle is that the law developed by Palestinians
under occupation does not grant Abbas the power to dissolve the
legislature. He had hoped that the international siege, Fateh-organised
strikes and other forms of pressure would force Hamas out. Instead,
Hamas seems to be doing much better than expected. The strikes are
crumbling, and Hamas has gained sufficient international support and
financing to begin to counteract the effects of the siege.
So now, the so-called "institution of the presidency", the EU and
US-backed shadow government made up of Abbas and his numerous advisers,
are racing against time. Hence, the engineered "recommendation" by the
unaccountable and unelected PLO Executive Committee to dissolve the
democratically elected legislature.
The new theory is that if Abbas does not have the power to call an
election for the PLC, by resigning he would trigger one automatically.
Even this is not true, based on precedent. When Yasser Arafat died,
elections were held only for his office. Nevertheless, Abbas' apparent
willingness to stage new elections indicates a certain confidence that
his discredited party, which failed to win the elections even though it
had millions of dollars in secret support from foreign sources, can now
win. That is a possibility, but what if Hamas wins the elections again?
And what guarantee does the "institution of the presidency" have for the
planned results unless the outcome of the elections is to be decided
beforehand: this kind of democracy.
All these underhanded manoeuvres are being wrapped up in the claim that
there is a "national crisis" and therefore the people should decide on
the way out. But this is totally manufactured. The crisis exists only
because Fateh refuses to recognise the clear result of the election: it
lost. More importantly, it refuses to recognise that Hamas won on the
basis of a political programme which is radically different from its
own, including an end to the corruption and defeatism that Fateh made
the hallmark of the Palestinian Authority since that body was
established in 1994 under the Oslo accords.
As soon as it was elected, Fateh colluded with a Western campaign to
force Hamas to adopt its failed policies, above all to unconditionally
recognise Israel's right to exist as a racist state, without defined
borders, but with illegally annexed Arab lands and annexed Jerusalem --- a
state which gives special, superior rights to one group of people based
on their religion.
Hamas refused these conditions, but did not shut the door to a
reasonable accommodation with Israel. What it rejected was the same path
of sterile negotiations, which, after more than a decade, left the
Palestinians with even less than before, as rapacious Israeli colonists
gobbled up their land. Hamas won the right to redefine the terms of
negotiations so that Palestinian rights and interests, not Israeli ones,
guide Palestinian participation in any peace process. Actually
redefining the terms has become an absolute necessity, after the mess
and the endless concessions the PA had offered, for redirecting the
straying course of the peace process.
Yet, by refusing to again unconditionally recognise the right of Israel
to exist as a Jewish state (there have been many similar Palestinian
recognitions before), as well as the other agreements reached previously
between Israel and the Palestinians (none of which Israel ever
respected), Hamas was declared unfit to remain in office and,
consequently, was subjected to an international boycott led by Israel's
blindly supporting so-called international community.
Instead of the Palestinian Authority president's rejecting the boycott
and the collective punishment of his people and of the government which
he appointed and was sworn in before him, he joined the boycotters. He
allowed and even encouraged foreign visitors and foreign governments to
avoid the Palestinian government and its Cabinet members. He also
encouraged the trend of dealing and showing willingness to only deal
with, and give money to, the "presidency" and not the government.
By acquiescing, obviously willingly, to this trend, he legitimised the
boycott, encouraged it and gave it full cover, thus shifting the blame
entirely to Hamas for its failure to understand "the language of the
international community". That "language" of duplicity, injustice and
sheer hypocrisy was never questioned.
Instead of tacitly helping the boycott and collective punishment of the
Palestinian people for practising their right to elect a government, and
blaming Hamas for it, Abbas should have stood by his government,
declaring his unwavering objection to dealing with the Palestinians as
two factions, the good and the bad, the moderate and the "terrorist". He
should have refused, and should have instructed his numerous advisers,
to refuse to meet any foreign official or to conduct any business on
behalf of the government in office, especially when the intention was to
consolidate the boycott and sideline the government.
Such a dignified, and indeed a correct stand would have discouraged the
boycott, and probably would have caused its quick collapse, and saved
the Palestinians. It could have solved the problem in a way more
compatible with the Palestinian interests. What Abbas and his Fateh
party have chosen instead, sadly, is to inflict more harm on their
people and their elected representatives. What they seem to be choosing
now is to plunge an already risky situation in further turmoil. That
should never be an option.
+++
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