PALESTINIANS DIVIDED
Palestinians last held a general election in January 2006 and the last presidential elections took place in January 2005. Since then, Palestinians have been divided between two governments; Fatah, which controls the occupied West Bank through the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Hamas, the Islamist movement threw out Abbas’s forces and seized control of Gaza in June 2007 in the clashes that followed the polls. Attempts at reconciliation have repeatedly failed over the last 14 years and the two rivals been entangled in a bitter power struggle ever since. They have faced longstanding criticism for clinging onto power without holding elections.
This time, though, sources in the West Bank and Gaza say that all signs indicate that Palestinian elections — first for parliament and then for the presidency — may actually take place as early as February 2020, after the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, whose mandate expired in 2009 and is becoming increasingly unpopular, announced plans for a vote at the UN General Assembly in September. Hamas shocked many when it accepted Abbas’s call and both sides have since reaffirmed their willingness to hold elections.
BUMPS IN THE ROAD
Jerusalem
The first major obstacle is East Jerusalem, home to 360,000 Palestinians and considered the capital of a future Palestinian state by the PA. In a speech in Ramallah this week, marking the 15th anniversary of the death of his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, Abbas said that there would be no new Palestinian elections unless they include east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. In a related development, an east Jerusalem-based group called The Popular National Congress, which is dominated by Abbas loyalists, said that any elections that do not include Jerusalem are rejected and doomed to failure. The head of the group, Bilal Natsheh, said that Israel would be held fully responsible for the failure of the elections if it doesn’t allow east Jerusalem residents to participate in the vote. He pointed out that Israel had previously permitted the Palestinian elections to take place also in east Jerusalem.
PA officials have expressed fear that Israel would not allow any presidential or parliamentary elections to take place in neighborhoods located within the Jerusalem Municipality boundaries as it rejects any sovereign activity by the Palestinian Authority in East Jerusalem. Israel annexed East Jerusalem following the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, a move condemned by the UN and the international community. It considers that the “two parts of Jerusalem constitute the capital of Israel.”
PA officials appealed to the EU to intervene with Israel so it would allow the vote to take place in east Jerusalem. The officials also demanded that Israel allow east Jerusalem residents who hold Israeli-issued ID cards to present their candidacy and cast their ballots in the PA elections, when and if they take place.
Lawmakers are looking at “creative solutions” for the question of how to conduct elections for Palestinians in Jerusalem, according to Palestinian political analyst Zaha Hassan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
One way is to set up polling booths outside of Israel’s current boundaries, Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) representative for Jerusalem, Bernard Sabella, told Al Arabiya English.
The method was tried previously during the last Palestinian elections in 2006 where voting stations for Jerusalemites were erected in Al-Ram, a Palestinian town northeast of Jerusalem. However, the location requires voters to travel a longer distance.
Hamas
Since the 2006 elections, several attempts to hold an election have failed to materialize after Fatah and Hamas were unable to reach agreement on the implementation of their reconciliation accords. This bitter divide has undermined any coherent and unified national Palestinian strategy. Multiple agreements have been signed between the two, but all collapsed with both trading blame for the faltering cooperation.
Analysts have long said that new elections are impossible without improved relations and national reconciliation, but according to a senior adviser to the president, Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian proposal will help resolve the current Palestinian division and stalemate and help usher in reconciliation by means of creating an elected national unity government. “The offer for elections is to produce a representative unity government regardless of who wins,” he told Arab News. “The idea combines democratic and pluralistic principles. It will not be the winner takes all but a representative government based on election results. Once a unity government is established with all parties in it, we can move to the next step of presidential elections,” he said.
While there are some signs of reconciliation, hurdles remain, and if the current election negotiations mimic that of previous years, Palestinian factions will agree on an election taking place, but then disagree on details.
Upon returning from New York where Abbas called for elections, he formed a committee whose mission, according to official Palestinian media, is to consult with various Palestinian factions to reach an agreement on his initiative. He asked the head of the Central Elections Commission, Hana Naser, to go to Gaza on October 7 to assess the reactions of Hamas and other factions. While some criticized Abbas for seeking the help of a technocrat like Nasser, the reactions of Hamas and others were positive. But despite the indirect negotiations, the PA, and the Palestinian factions, particularly those in the Gaza strip, have failed to reach an agreement. No agreement means that elections will not take place in the Hamas-ruled Gaza strip.
Although Hamas immediately accepted Abbas’s call, it did ask or further clarifications. The core demand of the Islamist group is an election that includes the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), and the PA presidency and, most importantly, the Palestinian National Council (PNC) – the legislative component of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).
“Hamas is likely to reject the inclusion of Gaza if the elections are limited to the PLC and exclude Abbas’ own position and the PNC. Without a PNC vote, the reordering and resurrection of the PLO would remain elusive — a belief that is shared by other Palestinian factions, ” Palestinian Journalist Ramzy Baroud wrote in Arab News.
But even if all the obstacles are overcome, some experts still doubt that either Fatah or Hamas would be willing to give up their power if they lose in the elections “For the plan to work, it requires a high level of political will from the top,” writes Hani al-Masri, director of the Masarat think tank in Ramallah, who is largely pessimistic about the chances of elections taking place.
