2005-01-20
A Very Slippery "Landslide" for Abbas
(Peter Lagerquist is a freelance journalist based in Israel and the WestBank.)
A chorus of international approval greeted Mahmoud Abbas' victory in thePalestinian Authority presidential election. January 9 was "a historic dayfor the Palestinian people and for the people of the Middle East," declaredPresident George W. Bush, as the final count gave the Fatah party candidatesome 62 percent of the vote -- three times the tally of his nearestchallenger, human rights campaigner Mustafa Barghouthi. Prior to theelection, the Bush administration and the government of Ariel Sharon hadscarcely disguised their wishes that Abbas would be chosen as successor tothe late Yasser Arafat. Since Arafat's mysterious death, pundits anddiplomats alike have heaped plaudits on his erstwhile lieutenant, mostimportantly describing him as a "moderate" for his long-standing calls toend armed Palestinian resistance to Israel's occupation. Indeed, the promiseof some movement -- any movement -- in the moribund Israeli-Palestinianpeace process produced a rare international consensus on the Middle East.The campaigning Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, was publicly endorsed byUS-friendly Arab governments like Egypt and tacitly smiled upon by thechancelleries of the European Union.
Media outlets across the political spectrum also rushed to invest theelection with significance. "Palestinian landslide for Abbas," declared CBSNews; "Abbas wins his mandate," echoed the British Daily Telegraph. Foronce, the left-wing Guardian fell in with its Tory competitor. "Mr. Abbasowes his victory to the silent majority of Palestinians who yearn for normallives in a state of their own. Israel must listen to what they want,"declared its day-after leader. It was just the kind of message that Abbas'campaign manager Muhammad Shtayeh had hoped to implant. "This is the choiceof the people and this means that Abu Mazen has the mandate to implement his program," he affirmed confidently as the polls closed. Both the Guardian and Shtayeh are mistaken, however. The silent majority inthe West Bank and Gaza remained silent on January 9. If their silence wasoverwhelmed by media coverage largely indifferent to the conduct and theactual count of the vote, it is because both the electoral exercise and itsinternational endorsers had a limited interest in what the majority reallywants.
The first public admission came on January 15, with the resignation of 46members of the Palestinian Central Elections Committee in protest atwidespread voting irregularities and intimidation by Palestinian Authorityofficials. If the resignations gave some idea of how jerry-built was Abbas'mandate, the military wing of his own Fatah party demonstrated how scant isthe authority that it bestows. Defying Abbas' calls for a ceasefire despiteescalating Israeli army killings of both Palestinian civilians and militantsacross the Occupied Territories prior to the elections, the al-Aqsa Martyrs'Brigades joined with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in an attack on Gaza's Karniborder terminal on January 13, killing six Israelis. On the day that Abbaswas to be sworn into office, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon respondedby cutting all ties with the Palestinian Authority and loosened what reinshad bound the army in Gaza. Secretary of State Colin Powell weighed in bysternly admonishing Abbas to crack down on the militants. It was a pointedreminder of the constituency to whom the US and Israel believe thePalestinian president should answer -- and confirmation of the misgivingsthat had kept most Palestinians from the previous week's polls.
SIFTING THROUGH THE "LANDSLIDE"
In the run-up to January 9, commentators harped nervously on the question ofAbbas' "mandate." After popular Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, imprisoned byIsrael since April 2002 on charges of "terrorism," finally withdrew hiscandidacy in December 2004, opinion polls consistently cast Abbas as asecure frontrunner. Yet they also showed that on the eve of the elections,as many as 80 percent of some 1.8 million eligible voters in the occupiedWest Bank and Gaza Strip remained either undecided or indifferent to theentire exercise. Many observers therefore regarded with skepticism reportsof a 75 percent turnout that circulated immediately after polls closed. Yetthe following morning, the BBC and CNN reported a participation rate of 66percent, and most of the media followed suit. It is unclear how this numberwas derived, but it is certainly overly optimistic. According to data fromthe Palestinian Central Elections Commission, 775,146 ballots were cast onJanuary 9, meaning that the real proportion of eligible voters who voted was46 percent.
That lower turnout figure means that Mahmoud Abbas -- with 62 percent of thevotes actually cast -- won over about 28 percent of eligible Palestinianvoters. By comparison, according to figures from the International Institutefor Democracy and Electoral Assistance, turnout was 75 percent at the 1996elections that appointed the first Palestinian Legislative Council and 78percent at the poll that anointed Yasser Arafat president of the newlycreated Palestinian Authority (PA). The instant myth of an Abbas "landslide"took root, however, and the wishful thinking was not confined to the press.
Hailing Abbas' victory by a "large-size vote," Bush described the electionas "further proof" that people in the Middle East want democracy. Washingtonis marketing the January 9 event as a watershed moment in the regionalreform agenda that it has implemented in Afghanistan and is still hoping tocarry through in Iraq. To most Palestinians, however, such comparisons aredecidedly unwelcome. Prior to the elections, some already referred darkly toAbu Mazen as the "Palestinian Karzai" -- in other words, America's stooge.Few have forgotten that the last time a US president used such glowinglanguage to bless a Palestinian election was upon Arafat's victory in 1996.Bush's sense of irony may be famously threadbare, but Palestinians keenlyappreciate that he spent the better part of his first term marginalizing thelast democratically elected Palestinian leader. What use was it to elect apresident, many asked, when the US and Israel could declare him "irrelevant"at will? Most therefore saw little cause to celebrate the ritual enactmentof another Middle Eastern election with foregone conclusions.
ON THE ROAD TO INDIFFERENCE
The extent of this indifference was amply evidenced in Ramallah area pollingstations on election day, for those who cared to see it. In Qalandia refugeecamp -- traditionally a Fatah stronghold -- the turnout was strongest in themorning, as a steady trickle of men and women filed through the camp'sschool and nearby youth center. To boost turnout, the Central ElectionsCommission (CEC) had decided on the eve of the polls to allow voting on thebasis of civil registration, allowing even those who had not registeredahead of the election to cast their polls at special civil voting offices inor near their communities. Civil registries were to be kept at theseoffices, though there were numerous complaints about their maintenance. Inone Ramallah-area office, Palestinian election observers interviewed forthis article claimed that as many as 20 percent of voters were turned awaybecause their names were not on the registry. Other complaints aboutlast-minute changes to the elections procedures emerged later in theevening. By the end, a local community leader estimated that perhaps halfthe camp's eligible voters cast their ballots. However, this turnout proveda rare exception in the vicinity.
At a polling station in the nearby al-Bireh municipality, there were only ahandful of voters -- a picture mirrored along the road leading out fromRamallah, through Beitunia and the southwestern villages of the Ramallahgovernorate. Most of these polling stations fall within what the Osloaccords designated as "Area C," meaning that the Israeli army enjoys fullsecurity and administrative control. The PA does not pretend to have much todo with the daily lives of the inhabitants. The poor quality of local roads,and the fact that most of the rural houses are three- or four-storystructures, testifies to the restrictive nature of Israel's administrativeregime. Largely prevented from breaking ground for construction,Palestinians here build upward. Abu Ahmad (real name withheld), a patriarchin the village of Beit Sira with a glint in his eye, sat on his roof with aview of Israel's "security barrier" and cheerfully decried the impotence ofPalestinian leaderships past and future. "They are all shit: Abu Mazen,Barghouthi, all the Arab leaders." "Besides, they [the Israelis, the US andthe international community] have already chosen for us!" added his wife.
Not surprisingly, there was modest traffic in Beit Sira's election officeand in nearby village centers. Even self-avowed Abu Mazen supporters,waiting outside one village polling station, suggested that he was simplytheir default choice in his capacity as the Fatah candidate. In what provedto be a metaphor for the day's proceedings, party hands and localPalestinian observers often representing the same parties -- some 20,000observers were registered for the election -- often seemed to outnumber thevoters themselves. Leaving Beit Sira along the road leading back toRamallah, the afternoon quiet was interrupted with the sound of forcedenthusiasm. Blaring patriotic music, two pickup trucks rounded a bend,covered in posters and flags and stacked high with young men, dangling outthe windows, exhorting residents on loudspeakers. The Fatah get-out-the-votemachine passed by quickly. In a minute, the road was again empty, thecountryside silent.
LONESOME PLAYING FIELD
In one way, this silence may be understood as resulting from theinternational parameters that continue to proscribe the political positionsthe Palestinian Authority can adopt. It is also a result of how the mainprotagonists within the Palestinian political arena have positionedthemselves vis-à-vis these parameters. Palestinians supporting the Islamicresistance movement Hamas -- estimated to command 20-30 percent of popularopinion in the West Bank and Gaza -- were unlikely to turn out after theparty opted to boycott the election on the grounds that this would bestowrecognition on the Oslo accords, to which Hamas remains opposed. Meanwhile,the strong showing of Marwan Barghouti in earlier opinion polls highlightedthat a sizable portion of Abbas' own Fatah constituency was less thanenamored with his candidacy, notwithstanding his endorsement both by theparty's senior leadership and the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. Though he hadmoderated his tone before the election, primarily by welcoming Sharon's Gazadisengagement plan, Barghouti was widely seen as less bound than Abbas byIsraeli and US dictates. Further, he continued to insist on thePalestinians' right to engage in armed resistance. That he might therebyhave trumped Abbas, according to some surveys, was all the more poignant forthe fact that he would have done so from an Israeli prison cell.
This left the National Initiative of Mustafa Barghouthi (a distant relationof Marwan) as the only remotely weighty alternative. Ahead of the elections,the Initiative had been endorsed by the Popular Front for the Liberation ofPalestine, following talks in Damascus between Barghouthi and PFLP leaderGeorge Habash. Yet the PFLP, a small Marxist faction, enjoys very modestsupport in the Occupied Territories, largely limited to the West Bank.Meanwhile, as a loose gathering of independent and left-of-centerintellectuals and politicians, the Initiative had no traditional partyallegiances to draw on. Like Barghouthi, many of its leading lights hadretreated from national politics after 1995, to strike out in theWestern-funded NGO industry that flourished in the Occupied Territoriesduring the heyday of the Oslo "peace process." The Initiative couldassociate itself with real efforts to improve the daily lives of ordinaryPalestinians, in the form of ambulance services, mobile clinics and healthcenters supported by the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees andHealth, Development, Information and Policy Institute Investment Program,two NGOs started by Barghouthi. But when added to the fact that few of itspersonalities had dirtied themselves in the resistance trenches of thecurrent intifada, the Initiative's perceived close links to Western money,and by implication also Western interest, exposed it to nationalistsuspicions similar to those dogging Abbas.
To boot, Barghouthi ran on a platform largely similar to Abu Mazen's,calling for an end to armed resistance and reform of the PA. Though thesepromises resonate with the Palestinian street, they carry a double edgebecause the street knows they sound even better to the internationalcommunity. Barghouthi's personal record of organizing civil protestcampaigns, particularly against the wall Israel is building in the WestBank, suggested that by an end to armed resistance he did not mean an end toresistance as such. Not having been part of the PA's notoriously venal innercircle, he also had stronger reform credentials and was better protectedfrom the perception that "reform" meant mainly PA security cooperation withIsrael. As such, the election allowed Barghouthi and many other leftists toreinsert themselves into national politics. But with a limited following anda limited agenda, their role was unlikely to extend beyond infusing theelection with just enough drama to make them credible.
PADDING THE "MANDATE"
Ahead of the election, it was widely speculated that Israel's ubiquitousmilitary presence in the Occupied Territories would prove the biggestobstacle to conducting a "free and fair" ballot. To allay such concerns,hundreds of multinational observers were deployed on election day, includinga 80-strong contingent from the Washington-based National DemocraticInstitute led by the eminence grise of international election monitoring,former President Jimmy Carter. To their relief, Israeli checkpoints didsignificantly ease access to polling places across the Occupied Territories.The notable exception was occupied East Jerusalem, where the Palestinian CEChad been prohibited from operating by the Israeli government. As a smallconcession, Israel allowed instead for 5,300 local Palestinian residents,out of an estimated 120,000 eligible voters, to register with the CEC, andthen cast their ballots in Israel's East Jerusalem post offices. With themain post office located next to a police station, and local residentsperpetually fearful of having their Jerusalem ID cards challenged or revokedby the authorities, final attendance was minuscule. Some Jerusalem residentsdid vote in centers set up outside the city boundaries in Qalandia and AbuDis. Largely, however, the West Bank's historical, commercial and culturalcenter was cut out of the franchise. While it might be odd to claim that"English elections were free and fair, except for in metropolitan London,"such was the equivalent conclusion of the US observer team and mostinternational media outlets.
Jerusalem's de facto exclusion was not the only "irregularity" to whichinternational observers turned a benign eye. On the day of the election,Palestinian observers were already complaining that by allowing people tovote both on the basis of voter and civil registries, the CEC had opened awindow for double voting -- a concern later echoed to al-Jazeera by MaudJose, coordinator for the multinational monitoring committees. At one civilregistration polling station, an observer affiliated with Barghouthi'sInitiative claimed that members of the Palestinian police and securityservices had refused to be marked with ink after casting their vote. "Thenthey go back and vote in the Muqata [the PA's headquarters in Ramallah]."Reports of other irregularities were coming in from the rest of West Bank."In many districts people were able to wash off the ink and then go back,"says a well-informed source close to the elections. Despite such gaming,however, turnout remained meager. By 3 pm, participation stood at 22percent, noted the source. More surprisingly, Barghouthi and Abbas werereportedly running uncomfortably close. Senior Fatah officials startedworrying and word spread that a meeting had been called, during which one ofAbbas' public relations consultants hit upon the idea of extending votinghours.
"At about 4, 4:30, they came to the front of the building and startedshooting in the air," says one source. "There were soldiers and people withAbu Mazen and they wanted to push back the vote. Then there was a meetingwith Hanna Nasser, the president of the CEC and two, three minutes laterthey came out." Nasser secured the Commission's consent to extend polling bytwo hours. "I was personally threatened and pressured," said seniorcommission member Ammar Dwaik, who along with Baha al-Bakri led the CEC massresignations five days later. In a public statement, al-Bakri noted thatvoting hours are typically extended only when there are long lines at thepolling stations and affirmed that "[t]his was not the case on election day.These procedures had two goals: first, to increase the turnout, and second,to increase the percentage of Fatah voters." Whereas turnout was stillestimated to hover around an anemic 35 percent as the original 7 pm pollingdeadline neared, it rose by 10 percent over the next two to three hours."Full of soldiers and police, in and out of uniform," said the typical lateevening report from Ramallah polling stations. " A late surge in voting --forcing an extension of voting hours -- means it may be some time beforeofficial figures are known," concluded the BBC blissfully after the pollsfinally closed.
Whereas even Dwaik and Bakri shied from alleging that the "late surge" threwthe outcome into question, it did cast further doubt on the substance ofAbbas' mandate. Maud Jose's statement two days after the election sounded anearly but ultimately lonely note of concern. A January 10 press release fromthe US observer mission allowed that "certain last-minute changes by theCentral Election Commission (CEC) to conditions and hours for voting wereimplemented in ways that caused confusion," but applauded the electionoverall. Jimmy Carter, though noting that Palestinians "live under Israelimilitary and political domination," wholeheartedly endorsed the election as"completely free and fair, honest, open and, thankfully, without violence ofany kind, so far as I know, that was important." Mustafa Barghouthi'sInitiative was the chief victim of the irregularities, and late on electionnight his campaign headquarters issued a press release alleging that"Massive Violations of Elections Protocol Call Legitimacy of These ElectionsInto Serious Question." The allegation got little coverage in the media, andby the next day Barghouthi had opted to chime in with the internationalchorus and salvage the Initiative's gains. "The silent majority is no longersilent," he proclaimed, adding wishfully: "We are now the second biggestparty, bigger than Hamas!"
POST-ELECTION EXPECTATIONS
Prior to his election, many Western commentators expected that Abu Mazenwould be amenable to working within US-Israeli parameters for managing theconflict. British Prime Minister Tony Blair's impending Middle East peaceconference confirms that these parameters primarily require an end to anyform of armed Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and thePalestinian Authority's recommitment to maintaining quiet in thosePalestinian enclaves from which Sharon is planning to redeploy Israelisoldiers and settlers. Some hoped that security cooperation would beaccompanied by a reinvigoration of formal Israeli-Palestinian negotiationstoward a final settlement, via Bush's tattered "road map."
By all indications, Abbas himself had more realistic expectations. Whilecampaigning, he made pointedly conciliatory promises to "protect"Palestinian militant groups if they were to observe a ceasefire. TheirJanuary 13 attack on Israel's border terminal in Gaza suggested that suchtalk carries little weight, particularly in the face of ongoing Israelimilitary operations. Yet even in his attempts to coopt rather than crush thescattered Palestinian resistance, Abbas faces an uphill battle. His shallowpopular endorsement on January 9 was first and foremost a vote for Fatah,not for him, and not necessarily for an end to armed resistance, as notedeven by dovish Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki. Abbas has already beenreminded that Sharon's expectations are much blunter.
Over before it began, Abbas' honeymoon was always likely to be short.Speaking in December 2004 at the annual Herzliya conference, Sharon warnedthat he would put the new Palestinian president's performance to a toughtest. "In this part of the world this means actions, not words, and results,not effort," he intoned ominously. If Sharon is to be judged by his ownstandards, Abbas will find it difficult to convince either the Palestinianpublic or militants that there is much to talk about with Israel. Israelisettlement construction in the West Bank has proceeded apace over the lastyear, impeded neither by the US presidential election nor by Arafat's death.Already in October 2004, Sharon's senior political advisor Dov Weisglass hadfamously dispelled still prevailing illusions about the Gaza disengagementplan: "The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of thepeace process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent theestablishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on therefugees, the borders and Jerusalem.... The disengagement is actuallyformaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary sothere will not be a political process with the Palestinians." Should Abbasfail to sell this future to Palestinians, it is more than likely that hewill be dismissed, like his predecessor, as the man who failed, whether forlack of will or ability, to seize the opportunity generously dangled infront of him.
WAITING FOR THE OTHER VOTE
In the meantime, Abbas' main task will be to downsize Palestinianexpectations and attempt to secure the modest relief that many hunger for.It was telling that one of the strongest and most common arguments in hisfavor was that he was likely to bring "quiet and some sort of easing oflife," as one Ramallah businessman put it. The apparent backing of theinternational community, Israel and the United States for Abbas boosted theperception that he would be able to secure greater donor assistance andeasier access to the Israeli market. In a population worn down by fourfruitless and costly years of the intifada, these aspirations are notlimited to the middle class.
The January 9 election therefore highlighted the shrinking parameters withinwhich Palestinian national aspirations are now debated, even amongPalestinians. Seeking to strengthen his nationalist credentials on the eveof the election, Abbas promised that he would not cross "red lines" in anynegotiations with Israel. To wit, he vowed he would insist on Israeliwithdrawal to the 1967 borders, the establishment of East Jerusalem asPalestine's capital and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Inmaking this pledge, Abbas evoked the example of Yasser Arafat, though it isknown through the EU's publication of the Taba protocols that the latePalestinian leader was ready to stretch those red lines considerably,particularly as regards the right of return. That Abbas has articulated nostrategy for securing those national objectives may therefore be secondaryto the fact that his posturing offered no opportunity for debate on thoseobjectives -- including the question of whether a "two-state solution" aspackaged by the present Israeli government is even desirable from aPalestinian perspective.
This impasse illustrates the limitations of the Palestinian Authority as avehicle for Palestinian national debate and action -- limitations that Hamashas in its own way aptly gauged. The institution continues to operatelargely at the sufferance of Israel and the international donor community.Disbanding the PA as a security apparatus and relocating Palestinianpolitical decision-making in a broader institution -- like the PLO -- hasbeen a matter of fringe debate for some time in the West Bank and Gaza. Thatdecision, if taken, would have the added benefit of reinserting thePalestinian refugee diaspora -- even more marginalized by the election thanEast Jerusalem residents -- in debates that will decide their future. Butthe PA's dissolution is now less likely than ever, with Fatah as well partof the leftist opposition now invested in its dubious electoral mandate.
It remains for the May Palestinian Legislative Council elections, in whichHamas has opted to participate, to provide a better picture of the formalpolitical landscape that will take shape after Arafat's death. But it isalready clear that any new departures in the strategies guiding Palestinianpolitics will have to be formulated within the political parties. As theelection showed, Fatah remains the main political party for the time being.One of the conditions upon which Marwan Barghouti was reported to haveabandoned his candidacy was that the party would finally agree to hold itsfirst elections in over ten years. Such a vote, most assume, would lead tothe ouster of the old guard that oversaw Abu Mazen's ascent to the top, andwho in so doing skirted the party caucus that Barghouti and many others hadcalled for. The first question is therefore whether the Fatah elections willbe held at all. If not, Hamas is waiting in the wings. Meanwhile,Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza will keep waiting for an electionthat might make a decisive difference in their lives: Israel's.
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For a detailed argument about the turnout, see Ali Abunimah, "Media GrosslyExaggerate Palestinian Voter Turnout," Electronic Intifada, January 10,2005. http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3508.shtml
For background on the strategy behind the disengagement plan, see MouinRabbani, "Gaza's Wars of Perception," Middle East Report Online, October 14,2004. http://www.merip.org/mero/mero101404.html
Middle East Report Online is a free service of the Middle East Researchand Information Project (MERIP).
