A Vote for a Palestinian Candidate Is Also a Vote for an Independent State

The term never appears on the ballot, of course, but when Palestinians go to the polls for the first time today, they will be casting their votes in favor of a Palestinian state.

Not only do all 674 candidates running for public office support the goal, but in the very act of electing their own government, Palestinians are taking a first step toward building a sovereign state.

The election lacks many of the trimmings of democracy and drama of a Western-style political race.

The two-week campaign was short on rules of fair play, such as equal access to the media and freedom of the press.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is virtually assured victory in the vote for president of the Palestinian self-rule area, and most of the candidates running for the 88-member legislative council come from his political movement.

But in the end, most Palestinians seem to be taking the long view. They want to vote and to have their own elected leaders after a 28-year Israeli occupation and, before that, decades of foreign rule.

“This process is far more important than who wins,” said Anis Qaq, a candidate for a council seat from East Jerusalem. “Choosing the representatives of the people is partially achieving the right to self-determination. . . . We are in a transition from a revolutionary movement to a pre-state to a state.”

While not entirely democratic, the campaign served to focus Palestinians’ attention on issues of democracy. The candidates’ rhetoric went beyond that of the decades-long liberation movement--of heroes and martyrs in the battle for an independent Palestine--to the problems of Palestinian nation-building.

Many of the more than 1 million Palestinians who registered to vote attended campaign get-togethers throughout the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and, for the first time, enthusiastically grilled their prospective leaders on such issues as health care, education, public works and a state of law.

Apparently most registered voters were not planning to heed the call of radical Islamic groups and secular leftists to boycott the elections.

Despite threats of violence from Islamic radicals and Jewish settlers in the West Bank who also oppose the peace agreement, pollsters have predicted that about 75% of those who registered will turn out to cast their ballots.

It was unclear whether the fatal shooting of three Palestinians by Israeli soldiers outside the West Bank town of Janin on Friday would affect that turnout.

The Israeli army said the Palestinians fired while trying to run a roadblock and that Israelis responded.

Palestinian officials said the shooting victims were activists from the Islamic group Hamas, which opposes the election and is feared to be planning a revenge attack against Israel for the killing of bomb maker Yehiya Ayash.

The election is the result of the 1993 peace agreement between Arafat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and it is, in effect, a referendum on the accord.

Palestinians who participate in the vote are accepting the peace process that has granted them autonomy in exchange for putting down their weapons and rocks against Israel.

This is also one of the key points for Israelis, who seek assurances in the election that the Palestinian people are behind the accords that Arafat has signed in their name.

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Only one candidate campaigned against Arafat’s peace process, and she was also the only candidate to challenge Arafat directly in the race for president of the Palestinian Authority. Samiha Khalil, a 72-year-old political activist from Ramallah, charged that Arafat had settled for too little in the self-rule accord and promised to abolish it if elected.

Her line may have been popular among nonvoters from Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine--groups that oppose the peace accord because it did not immediately establish a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and that still aim for the destruction of Israel.

Among voters, however, Khalil is not considered a serious challenger.

This was was evident at her scheduled rally in East Jerusalem’s Hakawati Theater this week, attended by a bevy of reporters and election observers but not average Palestinians.

Pollsters estimate that Arafat will win the election with between 65% and 80% of the vote. This would be an important stamp of approval for a man who, through his strategic alliance with the Jewish state, has alienated or abandoned much of his old political base among Palestinian exiles and other more radical sectors of his Palestine Liberation Organization.

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The election will create a new sort of opposition in Palestinian politics. While all of the candidates support Arafat’s Fatah group within the Palestine Liberation Organization, they do not necessarily support all of Arafat’s policies and decisions.

Fatah ran a slate of candidates for the 88-seat council, and many of those who did not make the list ran as independents. These include the outspoken Qaq and Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi, a former spokeswoman for the Palestinian peace negotiating team.

No one expects the council to act as a strong, independent branch of government or to reduce the authority of the executive. But if some of these independent candidates win, they are likely to serve as a loyal but critical opposition.