Shamir’s Sham--Palestinian Elections

With the pressure mounting on Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to negotiate peace with the Palestine Liberation Organization, he keeps trying to deflect it by calling for “free democratic elections” in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

To Western ears, the idea of such elections--proposed Thursday in Washington--might sound attractive. But in this context, Shamir is only talking about elections as another excuse to not conduct substantive negotiations about the future of the occupied territories. The Israeli leader still refuses to accept the concept of exchanging land for peace for which U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 is based on.

Instead of negotiating with the PLO, Israel has been carrying out a war against Palestinian nationalism for the past 21 years. Political parties have been made illegal, political discourse forbidden, public assembly is banned and the Palestinian press has been restricted and censored. Nationalist leaders have been placed under house arrest, jailed without being charged or tried, and deported. But with every Israeli action to obliterate Palestinian nationalism, the reverse has resulted. Prisons have become schools of political leadership. Deported leaders have quickly gained senior positions within the PLO. Those injured or killed have become heroes to the rest of society.

For the past nine years, Israel has refused to allow the regularly scheduled municipal elections from taking place because of fears that pro-PLO individuals would sweep the vote. In fact, every single public opinion poll taken in the occupied territories has shown an overwhelming support for the PLO.

But contrary to commonly believed claims, the refusal to speak to the PLO has nothing to do with the organization’s stand on Israel or terrorism. Rather, Israel’s refusal to accept the PLO is directly connected to its refusal to accept the idea of Palestinian nationalism. By dealing with the PLO, an organization that represents all of the Palestinian people, Israel would have to accept that Palestinians are a nation and therefore have national rights.

Shamir’s plan to have elections in the occupied territories circumvents two-thirds of the Palestine nation--those living outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip--and continues to deal with Palestinians only as individuals under Israeli control, not as free nationals of their own land.

The idea of elections, however, raises a number of important issues and questions.

Would Israel suddenly allow Palestinians to carry out a nationalistic election without any interference? Would Israel allow the participation of Palestinians living abroad? Would deportees be allowed to participate? Would Palestinian refugees be included?

Also, would these elections be aimed at finding Palestinian representatives for negotiations, or would they be used as a cover for choosing a legislative council as stated in the Camp David accords? And suppose Palestinians did agree to participate and pro-PLO individuals were chosen. Would they be allowed to meet and communicate with the PLO? (At the present time, meeting, communicating or showing sympathy for the PLO is a punishable crime.)

Finally, if the Israelis would allow Palestinians the freedom to run on PLO platforms, would allow those elected to freely communicate with the PLO and accept directions for negotiations, then Israel would in reality be negotiating with the PLO. Why then do we have to waste all this time? What we need is direct negotiations between the representatives of the government of Israel and the government of Palestine, which was recently declared by the highest body in the PLO, the Palestine National Council.

The past 16 months of intifada have demonstrated Palestinian consensus behind the PLO. The governments of more than 80 countries, the U.N. General Assembly, many Israelis and even a couple of Israeli ministers have supported the idea of PLO-Israel negotiations. It is high time for the government of Israel to accept this fact and immediately start negotiations so that the bloodshed will stop and both Palestinians and Israelis can begin the long and hard process of building for the future of their peoples.