Another non-election?
by Sarah Irving
[ politics - january 05 ]
Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has been elected the new Palestinian president. As successor to Yasser Arafat (undoubtedly corrupt and latterly ineffective in his Israeli-military-ringed compound, but still seen by many with tinges of rose-tinted freedom fighter) he has a hard act to follow. Especially in the light of the Israeli, US and British governments' claims that he is the "best hope for peace," a "man we can talk to." But will his people have much faith in any negotiations he does manage to have with Israel and the USA?
Many of the Palestinians I spoke to in the West Bank in the week before the election were sceptical about Abu Mazen. Amongst the educated middle class, people active in civil society but wary of party politics, the opinions were often blunt. "Abu Mazen is a thief," said Samer, a Christian in Bethlehem who works with peace groups, "but he will win because Israel and America want him to win. It doesn't matter who people actually vote for." Samer's assessment had two possible strands; that votes might simply be forged by an alliance of Israel and Abu Mazen's ruling Fatah party, or that "people are so tired that they will vote for whoever they think Israel will talk to. We know that Mustafa Barghouti is better, but Israel will not talk to him." Shades of the Nicaraguan elections of 1990?
Aah yes, Mustafa Barghouti. The man whose face challenged Abu Mazen's for supremacy in covering every flat surface in Palestine, and yet whom we've heard so little of in the British press. He is, as Ahmad, an NGO worker from Hebron tells me, seen as "clean." His background is not in party politics but in setting up and running healthcare, education and popular democracy projects throughout Palestine. But, although many Palestinians I speak to - from professors to taxi drivers - share Ahmad's view that he has a "very good programme," Palestinians are not blind to the message behind the fact that on both occasions that Barghouti has sought to enter East Jerusalem to campaign, he has been beaten by Israeli soldiers. No-one thinks that Israel is going to beat up people it sees as prospective negotiation partners. Certainly not the urbane Abu Mazen, in sharp suits allegedly paid for with embezzled Palestinian Authority money.
One thing that enrages the many Palestinians who follow the news is Tony Blair's assertion that they need to start reforming for democracy as the first step to peace and a Palestinian state. They're trying, they say, but if the president they're being handed by Israel and the USA is a corrupt legacy of the old regime, what do people expect? Some speculate that this is a deliberate act by the West to perpetuate stereotypes of the corrupt Arab regime so that there is always a handy excuse for not giving them more autonomy. Others point to the Israeli authorities' ban on presidential candidates campaigning in East Jerusalem and to the fact that there have been only five polling stations set up in this area of over 100,000 Palestinians. And that these Palestinians will have to hand their ballot to an Israeli postal worker, who will place it in the box for them. No-one seems to believe that there is any guarantee that votes for Barghouti or for any of over a dozen other non-Fatah candidates will make it into the box.
In the fortnight before the election, I do manage to find some people who will be voting for Abu Mazen. One is a hotel owner on the outskirts of Bethlehem who already had PA links and who has given up the foyer of his business to election campaigning. During a week's stay there is a constant huddle of young men with bundles of posters and stickers; talking to one of them he seems to share the general desire for peace and a return to economic activity as quickly as possible, but ducks the question when I ask if he thinks Abu Mazen will stand up to Israel's continued building of thousands of settlement homes or staking of claims to Palestinian water sources. There is a whiff of class divisions in the support in this area; affluent Christians with established (if seriously damaged) businesses have more support for Abu Mazen. Later, however, I witness a Muslim employee of one of them (who thinks no-one is looking) surreptitiously pasting a Barghouti sticker to the back of his employer's car.
Umm Mourad, a woman in the isolated village of Yanoun, also tells me that she is considering voting for Abu Mazen. She has six kids to raise and her husband has been in administrative detention (detention without charge by the Israeli authorities) for nine months. Her village is ringed on three sides by a settlement inhabited by Jewish fundamentalists whose website proclaims "Why do you think the Arabs are willing to blow themselves up? Because they know the end is very near, the sands in Yishmael's hourglass have just about run out…" Umm Mourad is afraid to let her children play too far from the house; the settlers (who have also poisoned the village wells, burnt the generator, uprooted centuries-old olive trees and mutilated the sheep) have murdered two people from the 60-strong village in the last two years. She shrugs when we ask her about the election, and expresses disbelief that it will make any difference to her life. But, she says, "if Abu Mazen can bring my husband home from jail, I'll vote for him." She seems unsure whether the new president will indeed be able to achieve this.
