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James Debono
By all accounts the Palestinians, like the Israelis, can boast of possessing the most vibrant and fullest democracy in the Middle East. International monitors have described Palestinian elections as free and fair, a very rare event in the Middle East.
“We should compare this election with elections in other countries in the region,” observes Nabil Eltksalby, a Palestinian student studying human rights in the University of Malta.
Unlike Egyptians and the Jordanians, Palestinians can oust ruling parties like Fatah and elect opposition political forces like Hamas to power.
Qurie’s resignation to make way for a Hamas government was more typical of a mature democracy than of an embryonic one stifled by military occupation. Whether Hamas will do the same next time round is the biggest test for Palestinian democracy.
Nabil notes that Palestinians have exercised their democratic rights despite the many obstacles posed by the occupying forces, some of which were insuperable.
“The separation wall has impeded a large number of villagers from voting,” noted Nabil.
Bader Zina, a refugee living in Malta also expressed his regret that the 4-6 million Palestinian refugees could not vote.
While most national liberation movements in history have degenerated in to a fiefdom of cronies surrounding the charismatic leader, the Palestinians seem keen on their multi party democracy.
In this sense Arafat’s legacy is a mixed one. Certainly the cronyism which characterized his rule is one of the reasons for the disenchantment felt by those who voted for Hamas. His death has also created a leadership vacuum in the secular nationalist movement which was not even filled by the charismatic but imprisoned Marwan Bourgouti.
Former President and foreign Minister Guido Demarco blames the policy of isolating Arafat for rendering the Fatah led Palestinian authority impotent and thus paving the way for a Hamas triumph.
“Now everyone can appreciate what a great loss Arafat’s death was and how mistaken were those whose policy was to keep him isolated,” Demarco says with deep regret.
The way Israel kept treating Fatah even after Arafat’s death is seen as one of the reasons for the triumph of Hamas by two Palestinians living in Malta who spoke with MaltaToday.
Bader Zina believes that Fatah has lost these elections because it was being ridiculed by the Israeli government.
“Israel has humiliated Fatah by backtracking on agreements signed with the
Palestinians. In Sharm El Sheikh the Israelis promised to lift restrictions at border crossings and check points. Yet, now the situation is even worse. After the pull out from Gaza, the Israelis have continued attacking us.”
But by ousting Fatah from power, the Palestinians have also rejected the cronyism which characterized Arafat’s legacy.
On their first chance to vote in multiparty elections, the Palestinians decided to oust an ailing ruling party to elect Hamas, which intelligently portrayed itself as the movement for change and reform as their electoral list was called.
Before the election, many hoped that the participation of Hamas in the democratic game would mellow down the intransigence of this movement whose long term goal remains the creation of an Islamic state on the whole of Palestine and whose methods include maiming and killing civilians on buses and restaurants.
Yet few imagined that Hamas would win enough seats to be able to form a government.
The scale of Hamas’s success indicates that its popularity goes beyond its core constituency of religious fundamentalists.
The ascent of Hamas from armed band to party in government seems to have gone beyond the movement’s own expectations.
Palestinians will now demand concrete improvements in their daily lives and if Hamas does not deliver it will be ousted by the rules of the same democratic game thanks to which Hamas is in power.
But Hamas will not be able to deliver if it does not open a channel of communication with the international community. This will not be possible if it does not tone down its rhetoric and rein in extremists.
“Hamas cannot govern by slogans. Slogans are effective when one is in the opposition. When in government one has to offer real solutions”, says former President Guido Demarco.
Bader Zina thinks that it is too early to judge Hamas in its new role as a political party.
“So far Hamas has acted as a resistance movement and an organisation providing social assistance. One should wait for some time before judging Hamas’s ability to govern.”
But in order to be recognised as an interlocutor Hamas cannot keep on sending militants to blow themselves up on buses.
Without funds from the European Union and the modus vivendi with Israel and the United States, Hamas will not be able to deliver its promises.
But if the democratic will of the Palestinian people is dismissed outright by Israel, the US and the EU, Hamas will be absolved from its responsibility to govern and deliver.
If the Palestinians are punished for voting Hamas, Hamas will remain an opposition party crowned by electoral legitimacy.
By dismissing a democratically elected Palestinian government, the west will be telling Palestinians that their vote is worthless.
Palestinians like Nabil find offence in these double standards.
“The US and European countries like Italy are contradicting democracy by not accepting the results of democratic elections,” he said.
Disputing the legitimacy of a government elected by democratic means is also a non-starter for governments who have used the pretext of democracy to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
While regretting the defeat of Fatah, Demarco argues that the west cannot turn the clock backwards.
“One cannot negotiate by adopting a completely hostile attitude towards Hamas. On the other hand Hamas cannot expect the international community to listen if it does not accept Israel’s right to exist alongside an independent Palestinian state,” Demarco warns.
One cannot but cringe at the prospect of having an elected government hailing from a movement whose members explode themselves to maim and kill Israeli civilians.
But for many Palestinians Hamas is more than that. For the past decade Hamas has run its own welfare system caring for the old, the sick and the needy as foreign aid administered by the National Authority went down the drain due to rampant corruption.
While the EU and the US refer to Hamas as a terrorist organisation, Palestinians like Bader Zina thinks that this is simply the impression given by the western media.
“The attacks by Hamas were always launched in retaliation to Israeli attacks and
one has to distinguish between the aggression of the occupiers and the resistance of the occupied.”
The extra judicial murders of Sheik Yassim and other Hamas leaders by Israeli forces are seen as acts of aggression by Bader.
While many in the west are saying that the biggest question is whether Hamas is willing to come to terms with Israel, according to Nabil the biggest question is whether Israel will deal with Hamas.
“Before Sheik Yassin was assassinated he said that Hamas will be willing to negotiate a historical truce with Israel if it withdraws to its pre 1967 borders.”
According to some observers, Hamas’s victory offers the chance for Israel to deal directly with the men with the most guns and bombs, rather than doing a deal with Fatah alone, with Hamas left on the sidelines. After all, even the British government has come to terms to negotiate with the political wing of the Irish Republican Army in its bid to restore peace in Northern Ireland. What is good for the goose must be good for the gender.
While the prevailing image of Hamas on the media is that of a trigger happy armed band, Bader Zina notes that when Arafat was still alive and Abu Mazen was his Prime Minister, Hamas and other militant factions showed political maturity in accepting an 80-day truce with Israel during which they did not perform one single attack.
“Israel had promised not to launch attacks in the occupied territories during the truce.
but it was Israel who broke the truce.”
Bader Zina observes that just till a decade ago, Israel was not willing to meet the PLO which was branded as a terrorist organisation. Yet finally they came to accept Arafat and the PLO as interlocutors.
But Arafat and the PLO had also come a long way from hijacking airplanes to winning the noble peace price. They had come to recognise Israel and to renounce terror, positions from which Hamas is still light years away.
jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt
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