Triumph or Disaster? Palestinians’ Upcoming Election Looks to Be Both

Anis al Qaq, fresh-faced candidate for the Palestinian self-governing authority, listened empathetically Thursday to the frustrated would-be voter who buttonholed him during a campaign walkabout.

“I don’t know where to vote,” the shopkeeper in the walled Old City complained.

“I don’t know where to vote either,” Qaq admitted before rushing on to shake more hands.

Will the first-ever election for a Palestinian self-governing authority be a triumph for nascent Palestinian democracy, or a political farce and technical disaster? Just eight days before Palestinians are due to go to the polls, observers are sharply divided over the answer to that question as they survey the mix of campaign fever and voter confusion evident across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

International observers are encouraged by the fact that close to 700 candidates are vying for spots on the 88-seat governing council. They point approvingly to the lively campaign activity--with candidates plastering the West Bank and Gaza with their posters and blanketing the territories with leaflets as they search for votes.

For the first time, Palestinians have a chance to question their would-be leaders face to face, and they seem to be reveling in the opportunity.

“I have learned so much about my people,” said Qaq, who has made 108 campaign appearances. “I have learned about their problems, their suffering, their desire to start building the Palestinian state.”

In the Bedouin village of Sawahreh, an elegantly coiffed and well-tailored Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi, former spokeswoman for the Palestinian peace negotiating team, was taken aback by the blunt questions fired at her by a teenage girl who squeezed into a preschool room to hear her speak.

“Is sister Dr. Hanan Ashrawi like everyone else who comes, hears our problems and then does nothing?” asked Sousan Zuhdi Shaheen, 15.

“That’s a beautiful question,” Ashrawi replied. “I can tell you that the important thing is that you follow up after election. There is no magical solution. The most I can promise you is that every problem within my capabilities to solve, I will exert all my efforts to find a solution.”

And in the refugee camp of Shuafat, Ahmed Korei, the key negotiator of the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement that made the Jan. 20 election possible, found himself defending the Palestine Liberation Organization against an angry Muslim militant who said the whole agreement is a sellout of Palestinian rights and an affront to Islam.

“I thought like you in the 1950s,” an angry Korei shouted at the man as they faced off in an unfinished community center after Korei addressed an all-male audience of camp residents. “The time has come to be practical.”

Ian Blackley is impressed by such exchanges between voters and candidates, and by the rapid organization of voter lists, polling stations and election officers by the Palestinians.

“I think it is all going remarkably well, considering this is a first-time election being carried out on short notice,” said Blackley, spokesman for the European Union’s election observer mission in the West Bank.

But Palestinian activists and critics of the election process are far less charitable.

“It’s a mess,” declared Hazzem Kutteneh, coordinator for the Palestinian Domestic Monitoring Committee.

Kutteneh complained that the brief campaign period--the official campaign got underway only last Friday, and the election is scheduled for Jan. 20--has given candidates too little time to acquaint voters with their platforms and has given voters too little time to understand the mechanics of participation.

“We’ve just printed manuals on how to vote, and we’re going to rush them to the voters,” Kutteneh said.

Other critics cite the fact that every meaningful Palestinian opposition party, including the Islamic group Hamas, decided not to field candidates in the election. The only real contest here is among various factions of Fatah, the largest PLO grouping. Fatah has lists of candidates in each district, and dozens of other Fatah candidates are running despite their absence on the official list.

Qaq and Ashrawi, for example, are Fatah loyalists but running as independents.

“I don’t think being on a list is important,” Qaq said. “What is important is that my platform is the essence of Fatah principles.”

Because so many of the candidates identify with Fatah, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat is virtually guaranteed a council that will offer broad support to his ongoing peace negotiations with Israel.

Given that the composition of the council is fairly certain and that Arafat is considered a shoo-in for its presidency in a separate race, the attention of many Palestinians has turned to other issues--such as the wrestling match with Israel over voting and campaigning in Jerusalem.

Israelis and Palestinians feel they have much at stake here. Because Israel regards Jerusalem as its eternal, undivided capital, it only grudgingly agreed to allow the Palestinians living here to vote in the election and run as candidates. Palestinians desperately want the election to help them bolster their claim to at least East Jerusalem, which Arafat says will be the capital of the future Palestinian state.

The council’s jurisdiction, once elected, will include only the West Bank and Gaza, not Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel after the 1967 Middle East War, Israeli law will still apply and all official Palestinian Authority activity will still be banned.

So although seven seats on the council have been allotted to Jerusalemites, they will not actually represent their city in the council. And Israel considers the 45,000 Palestinian voters who reside within the municipal boundaries to be voting as absentees in the election for the council.

That assumption has led to some absurd struggles. The Israelis agreed to let the Palestinians vote only in post offices in Jerusalem, where they say the ballots will be going into “postal boxes,” not ballot boxes. The Israelis want those ballots then carried by Israeli postal workers to Palestinian polling stations outside the municipal boundaries for counting on election day after the polls close.

“They want to pretend that they are delivering the mail to us, not ballots,” said Mohammed Shtayyeh, deputy chairman of the Palestinian Central Election Commission.

Because only 5,000 voters living within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries can be processed in the post offices on polling day, Israel says the other 40,000 must vote outside the municipal boundaries, in the larger Jerusalem district that the Palestinians have carved out, which includes several outlying villages.

But the Palestinians protest that such arrangements will make it difficult, if not impossible, for many voters to cast their ballots. They want people who cannot vote in the post offices to vote in schools inside Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries.

“Especially the elderly will have trouble traveling far from their homes to vote,” said Shtayyeh.

And so the negotiations continue, and many Jerusalemites still do not know where they will vote.

“We are in continuous session with the Israelis over Jerusalem,” Shtayyeh said.

Blackley said he is unconcerned about the last-minute haggling.

“Eight days is a lifetime in the Middle East,” said Blackley. “In the Middle East, things often get done beyond the last minute, and still they somehow work out.”

In the end, he said, “they will reach agreement, and Palestinians in Jerusalem will know where to vote.”