‘Our Referendum Is the Intifada,’ Arabs Say in Rejecting Vote

Palestinian activists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Thursday rejected Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s tentative proposals for elections, saying that the plans failed to address the basic question of the future independence of the occupied land.

They were also disappointed that President Bush appeared to support the plan, although they took heart in Bush’s call for an eventual end to Israeli occupation of the territories.

Israeli sources insist that there are many Palestinians who welcome an election to choose Palestinian representatives to peace talks with Israel but who remain publicly opposed because of intimidation by the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Allegiance to PLO

Leaders of the Palestinian uprising have stressed their allegiance to the PLO and have designated it as the sole group authorized to talk peace with Israel. The uprising, known as the intifada in Arabic, will soon begin its 17th month.

“We have our referendum and it is the intifada, “ declared Mamdouh Aker, a physician in the West Bank town of Hebron. “Why call for elections now? We will have elections as soon as Israel withdraws.”

Added Saeb Erakat, an editor at Jerusalem’s Arabic-language newspaper Al Quds: “There was not a sentence about the objectives of the Palestinian people. What are these elections for? Shamir does not say. We want an independent state.

“If Shamir wants to use the word ‘election’ only because it is a beautiful word, then it is not worth discussing.”

Some Palestinians left the door open for an eventual vote, but only under several conditions.

“We want all prisoners released--all the deportees returned. We want to nominate our own leaders and organize our own parties. We need an overall scheme for peace, not peace by installments,” said Halad Ashawwi, a professor at Birzeit University on the West Bank.

Ashawwi and others scoffed at Shamir’s assertion that Arabs are kept in line by PLO terror.

“Are people dying in order to mechanically say yes to the PLO?” she asked angrily, referring to the more than 400 Arabs killed during the uprising. “We are fighting the Israelis and suffering at their hands, and then Shamir comes along and says it is the PLO that is terrorizing us. Ridiculous.”

Bush’s call for Israel to end its occupation only partly satisfied the Palestinians. “The good thing about Bush is, he knows what he does not want. But does he know what he does want?” Ashawwi asked.

Arabs here contend that without the PLO, no solution is feasible. They say that if the PLO is excluded, its followers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip will revolt and millions of Palestinian refugees who live outside the borders of Israel and the occupied lands will continue to feed attacks on Israel.

“If Shamir wants us all to go into the 21st Century with bloodshed, then he should keep the PLO out,” Erakat said.

Palestinians have been mulling over the idea of elections for months. They recall that in 1976, when Israel permitted municipal elections to be held, several pro-PLO mayors were elected. They also recall with trepidation that Israel forced the most nationalist among the mayors to resign and deported several, while others were targets of assassination attempts by Jewish underground terrorists.

More than a year ago, intifada leaders placed municipal elections among a list of demands for ending the violence. Some felt that in any election, pro-PLO candidates would win and thus ratify the group’s dominance in the territories. There were suggestions that the winners could automatically become members of the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s so-called parliament in exile.

These ideas were tacitly dropped last fall once the PLO declared an independent state at the urging of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. “We became citizens of occupied Palestine. We need Palestinian laws and Palestinian supervision,” observed Mahdi Abdel Hadi, a Palestinian scholar in East Jerusalem. “Whoever wants to talk about elections must do it with our leadership--the PLO.”

Over the past few months, scores of Palestinians have been summoned by the military government of the West Bank and Gaza to give their opinion regarding elections. Sources in the military government Thursday said that, on an individual basis, “many” Arabs have shown quiet interest in holding such a vote. Israel has declined to name any of the interested parties, asserting that to do so would put their lives in danger.

The Israeli government has been debating the idea of Arab elections since early this year when Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin laid out a peace plan that placed area-wide elections on the West Bank and Gaza as its centerpiece. Rabin proposed the vote as a means of choosing Arab partners for peace talks.

Shamir came around slowly to the idea of elections after seeing that there was no way that Israel could hand-pick Arab peace delegates or get Egypt and Jordan to select a Palestinian team, Foreign Ministry officials here say.

Part of the debate now centers on the type of election that should be held: either municipal elections for mayors or “political,” area-wide elections.

Shamir, when he has spoken of elections at all, has usually called for municipal elections. He contends that Rabin’s plan presupposes an eventual concession of territory to peace delegates who would emerge from area-wide elections. The prime minister opposes giving up any of the land, and municipal elections suggest submission to Israeli rule over the land as a whole even if peace talks occur, an aide to Shamir explained.

Rabin opposes municipal elections because he worries that the results would bring a rebellious leadership to power, however nominally, in cities and towns--much like in 1976, when elected mayors became the nucleus for a nationalist movement. Leaders elected for talks would control nothing and only come into play if Israel opened negotiations.

Neither Shamir nor Rabin intend to extend the vote to Arab-dominated East Jerusalem. Jerusalem was annexed by Israel in 1967 at the same time the West Bank and Gaza were occupied following the Six-Day War. Palestinians demand that any election include East Jerusalem and that a solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict must put part of the city in their hands.

Concern for Local Issues

Sources in the military government of the West Bank and Gaza Strip say that Israel would tolerate a victory of PLO supporters in either type of voting. They predict that the PLO’s power would be diluted by the victories of some non-PLO candidates as well as by the concern of local pro-PLO leaders for local issues, such as the economy.

“We have met skillful, sophisticated people in the territories. These people could reach an agreement with or without the PLO and the PLO knows that,” said a source in the Civil Administration, the official name of the military government in the West Bank and Gaza.