The ongoing joke of Palestinian ‘democracy’ - by Lt. Col. (Res) Maurice Hirsch

Apparently for the PA, holding general elections twice in 25 years is a sign of a “true democracy”.

Lt. Col. (Res) Maurice Hirsch..
JNS.org..
06 December '18..

In a recent Conflict Zone interview, acclaimed journalist Tim Sebastian grilled veteran Palestinian Authority (PA) negotiator Saeb Erekat. While Erekat may not remember the interview as his finest hour, it could—and should have—been much worse had Sebastian pointed out a number of ludicrous statements Erekat made.

During the interview, Erekat argued that the Palestinian Authority is “a true democracy”, that Mahmoud Abbas “won 62% of the vote” in the 2005 elections for Chairman of the PA, and that “Hamas carried out a coup d’état in Gaza” in 2007.

Closer examination of these claims shows their inherent contradictions.

(Continue to Full Column)

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Zoabi and her fellow Arab citizens of Israel will not be heading for Ramallah anytime soon - by Khaled Abu Toameh

...Najat Abu Bakr and many Palestinians dream of the day they too will have a Knesset, a true parliament, where leaders are held accountable. For now – and for the foreseeable future – that day is just a pipedream. Zoabi and her fellow Arab citizens of Israel will not be packing their bags and heading for Ramallah anytime soon, however. It seems that another Arab dictatorship is not their idea of prime real estate.

Haneen Zoabi (left) and Najat Abu Bakr (right)
are outspoken members of parliament -- Zoabi
in Israel and Abu Bakr in the Palestinian territories.
 That is pretty much where the similarities end.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
01 March '16..

What do Haneen Zoabi and Najat Abu Bakr have in common?

Both women are outspoken members of parliament -- Zoabi in Israel and Abu Bakr in the Palestinian territories.

Zoabi, who hails from Nazareth, is a citizen of Israel. Abu Bakr, from the West Bank city of Nablus, is an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the parliament that has been effectively paralyzed since 2007, when Hamas expelled the Palestinian Authority (PA) from the Gaza Strip.

But outspoken participation in parliaments is pretty much where the similarities end.

Zoabi, who resides inside Israel, lives a rather different life from her colleague, Abu Bakr, who is a Palestinian citizen.

Zoabi, the Israeli member of parliament, is a provocateur of long standing who regularly enrages the Jewish-Israeli public. She joined a flotilla "aid" convoy to the Gaza Strip -- a move that left many Israelis furious.

On other occasions, her statements have also been interpreted as a show of solidarity with Israel's enemies. More recently, she received a light sentence after signing a plea-bargain admitting she had insulted an Arab working for the Israel Police.

Zoabi was back in the headlines again last month -- along with two other Arab members of Israel's Knesset, Jamal Zahalka and Basel Ghattas -- for meeting with families of Palestinians who had carried out terror attacks against Israelis.

By all accounts, for that performance she and the other two Knesset members received a mere "slap on the wrist:" they were suspended from attending parliamentary committee meetings for a few months.

Even though Zoabi's behavior and rhetoric are thoroughly abhorrent to many Israelis, including some of Israel's Arab citizens, Israel's president, Reuven Rivlin, along with other Israelis, came out against expelling her and some other Joint Arab List colleagues from the Knesset.

"We cannot allow the Knesset, whose representatives are chosen by the public, to independently overturn the public's choice," Rivlin said, referring to proposed legislation that would allow Knesset members to vote out their colleagues who express support for terrorism.

But let us return to the question: how are Haneen Zoabi and Najat Abu Bakr, our two female parliamentarians, each doing?

While Zoabi, an Arab Muslim citizen of Israel, carries out her duties -- and lives her life -- freely, Abu Bakr has been forced to seek refuge within the Palestinian Legislative Council building in Ramallah.

In short, the two women are living in different worlds.

Since last week, when President Mahmoud Abbas ordered her arrest, Abu Bakr has been holed up inside the Palestinian Authority parliament building. Her crime: blowing the whistle on the financial corruption of a cabinet minister who is closely associated with President Abbas.

Her claim is that the minister has been privately selling water to Palestinians and has illegally taken more than $200,000 from the Palestinian budget.

Collective Amnesia Spells Collective Disaster by David Singer

...If Obama and the Annapolis participants have conveniently forgotten that creating a “democratic Palestinian State” is fundamental to the conflict being ended – then they only have themselves to blame for the chaos and violence that will surely follow should Israel refuse to negotiate within a Kerry framework agreement that omits any reference to a democratic Palestinian State.International treachery and duplicity would surely have triumphed over international diplomacy.

David Singer..
J-Wire.com.au..
03 February '14..
H/T Daphne Anson

US Secretary of State John Kerry has missed his own deadline of 31 January by not releasing his eagerly anticipated framework agreement designed to help end the 130 years old Jewish-Arab conflict. It will now be released by 21 February according to US Envoy Martin Indyk.

Whilst speculation is rife as to its contents – it appears certain that there will be one crucial omission – that any Palestinian State created must be democratic – which could doom any further negotiations.

A democratic Palestinian state finds its genesis in the 2003 Bush Roadmap – the foundation which underpins the current negotiations. The Roadmap stated:

“A two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved … through Israel’s readiness to do what is necessary for a democratic Palestinian state to be established,

“A settlement, negotiated between the parties, will result in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours.”

The full text of the Roadmap was presented to Palestinian and Israeli leaders by the Quartet mediators – the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia – indicating strong international support for a democratic Palestinian State as the end game to success.

By 27 November 2007 – when negotiations under the Bush Road Map were non-existent – President Bush assembled the following star-studded list representing their designated countries and organisations to announce that negotiations were set to commence in December:

The King of Palestine has been insulted

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
29 March '13..

Last week President Obama used his speech in Jerusalem to Israeli students to once again prop up the idea that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is a reliable partner for peace. Despite his refusal to negotiate and his unwillingness to grab an Israeli offer of statehood in 2008, Abbas is still widely viewed in the West as a moderate and a good alternative to the extremists of Hamas. But, as was the case with his predecessor Yasir Arafat, the need to believe in the myth of Palestinian moderation tends to overshadow the truth about Abbas and his rule over the West Bank.

A little more light was shed on Abbas today as the New York Times—whose pages have been filled with cheerleading for the Palestinian Authority—published on its website last night a story about what happens to Palestinians who criticize the PA’s supremo. As Robert Mackey notes on the paper’s news blog The Lede:

A Palestinian court on Thursday upheld a one-year jail sentence for a journalist convicted of insulting President Mahmoud Abbas with a pastiche image posted on Facebook. Another Palestinian was given the same sentence last month for posting a humorous caption beneath an image of Mr. Abbas kicking a soccer ball on the social network.

The journalist, Mamdouh Hamamreh, said that he did not create or publish the composite image that compared Mr. Abbas to a character from a Syrian historical drama who collaborated with French colonialists. The court, applying part of the old Jordanian legal code that criminalizes insulting the king to an Internet jibe against the Palestinian president, was not swayed by Mr.Hamamreh’s s argument that he had played no part in the decision by the person who did upload the image to Facebook to draw it to his attention by adding his name as a tag to the text that accompanied it.

These incidents are just one more reminder that since its inception 20 years ago, the PA has been a corrupt tyranny that tramples on the rights of those people under its control. But the truth is, as was also the case with Arafat, the desire of many in the West as well as in Israel to have a Palestinian interlocutor causes them to ignore the PA’s sins or to whitewash them. Since we need Abbas to be the moderate alternative to Hamas, we cling to the idea that he really wants peace and even imagine that Israel will be better off if he and his cronies are put in charge of an independent state and tell ourselves it doesn’t matter if he is a petty tyrant or even a criminal. Indeed, that is what a lot of hardheaded Israelis have been telling us for years. But are they right?

The Tragedy of Palestinian Democracy

Rick Richman
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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The End of Palestinian Democracy?

Asaf Romirowsky/Jonathan Schanzer
The Weekly Standard
15 July '10

Posted before Shabbat

Saturday, July 17, was the day Palestinians were slated to hold a municipal election in the West Bank. But the elections were scrapped. Initially, only groups like Hamas rejected the vote. Then, last month, the Palestinian Authority (PA) opted to postpone the elections entirely. The legislative process came to a screeching halt. The ongoing civil war between Hamas (which controls Gaza Strip) and Fatah (which controls the West Bank) puts the Palestinians in a state of limbo, with no new elections planned.

What does this mean for Palestinian democracy?

Palestinian intellectuals and activists have long argued that democracy is a natural fit for the Palestinians. After the Israelis conquered the Palestinian territories in the 1967 Six Day War, they ensured that the Palestinians elected their own leaders through municipal elections in 1972 and 1976. Two decades later, during the first intifada, Palestinians built upon this tradition by electing uprising leaders.

(Read full article)

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