Commentary/Contentions
09 January '11
Today is the second anniversary of the end of Mahmoud Abbas’s four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority. He continues to play the role of “president” but is simply an unelected holdover, lacking the legitimacy to make the compromises necessary to produce a Palestinian state, even assuming he were willing to make them. It may be an appropriate day to reflect on the results of Palestinian democracy.
Abbas ran essentially unopposed in 2005, in an election held less than seven weeks after Yasir Arafat’s death. Hamas boycotted the election and Abbas’s principal Fatah opponent was unavailable, serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison. The seven-week electoral process merely put someone quickly in office whom the U.S. hoped would implement Phase I of the Roadmap by dismantling the terrorist groups and infrastructure — particularly since Israel had announced it would remove 21 settlements from Gaza and four from the West Bank.
Condoleezza Rice said in 2005 that she raised the dismantlement obligation in every conversation with Abbas but understood his need to do it at the right time: “You don’t want him to go to dismantle Hamas and fail.” He assured her he would convince Hamas there should be only “one gun,” and she intimated that he told her privately he would dismantle Hamas with force if necessary. But it did not happen. In September 2005, a settlementrein Gaza was handed over to the Palestinian Authority and was transformed into Hamastan virtually from day one; four months later, elections were held for the Palestinian legislature, and the Palestinians elected Hamas, which later took over Gaza in a coup.
(Read full "The Tragedy of Palestinian Democracy")
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I would like to know, do you think any political institution can ever be truly democratic? It seems as though every time people try to reform their government they always end up replacing old oppression with new oppression. Obviously, this is true for the PA but would you say this case is universal?
ReplyDeleteAs Churchill was once quoted "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." There are many variations in how people think of what a democracy should look like, but one would be hard pressed to find anyone defining the Palestinian Authority as meeting the barest of standards. Many of the nations of Eastern Europe that finally had escaped from under the thumb of their Soviet oppressors, have built societies almost unrecognizable, in the expansion of rights, security, and democracy.Their is a choice.
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