Giant Steps in Palestinians’ Trip to Polls

Never mind that the winner appears a foregone conclusion or that the blink-of-an-eye campaign included not a single direct debate among candidates. As Palestinians head to the polls today to choose a president, they are flush with the sense of democracy in the making, if tempered in their hopes that the historic vote will significantly improve their lives.

“We are enthusiastic about the election because we hope there might be change,” said Amal Shkeir, 30, a West Bank villager who was in Ramallah for medical tests.

Her husband, Yusef, used to be a construction worker in Israel, but that job was ended by the grinding conflict with Israel that began in 2000. These days, he snares sporadic work in the West Bank but says the family’s fortunes have fallen to “zero.” The couple might have to borrow to pay for Amal’s CT scan to pinpoint the cause of a neurological problem.

But both said the vote had raised their aspirations. “We are not alone in being excited about the election,” Amal said. “Everybody is.”

The head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Mahmoud Abbas, is widely favored to defeat six rivals in the first election for Palestinian Authority president since Yasser Arafat, who died in November, prevailed over token opposition in 1996. The balloting comes amid a whirl of electoral activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. During coming months, municipal elections will resume in hundreds of cities, towns and villages, and a separate campaign for the Palestinian parliament is planned for summer.

Polls suggest that Palestinians are generally satisfied with how the presidential election is being conducted and expectant that the post-Arafat period will yield changes.

“They are searching for peace,” said Ayoub Mustafa, a researcher at the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. “People here think that maybe the election will change what happens on the ground.”

Yet amid the lofty talk of historic turning points and evolving democracy, ordinary Palestinians exhausted by the violence also voice a weary-sounding refrain. They say their hopes for change are clouded by doubts that Abbas or another candidate can reach peace with Israel and dramatically improve their lives any time soon.

It will be enough, they say, if the new president succeeds in persuading Israel to ease travel restrictions and military raids in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel plans to withdraw from Gaza this year.

On Saturday, Palestinian election officials complained that Israel had not fulfilled its promise to remove roadblocks around towns and cities to make it easier for voters to reach polling places. Israeli officials said soldiers were withdrawing from population centers as promised, despite a shooting attack near the West Bank city of Nablus a day earlier that killed an Israeli soldier and left three wounded.

“Maybe it’s going to change all of our lives. Maybe it will take off the occupation. Maybe we will have a country. Nobody knows,” said Ahmed Mansour, 23, a security guard who said he planned to vote for Abbas. “Maybe it will be better. Maybe it will be worse.”

Mansour said Israeli road closures and checkpoints had stretched a brief, six-mile trip from his village to his job in a Ramallah shopping center into a 21-mile journey that could take hours.

Israel says its checkpoints and sporadic incursions into population centers are needed to avert more suicide bombings and other attacks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as in Israel. Israeli leaders say it is up to the new Palestinian leaders to rein in armed groups and anti-Israeli incitement if the two sides are to revive reconciliation efforts.

But Nisreem Khalaf, a 43-year-old gift shop owner in Ramallah, said control over Palestinians’ daily lives rested so firmly in Israel’s hands that she wasn’t getting her hopes for peace up too much.

“Maybe with a new president, there will be some improvement, economically and socially. Maybe the [checkpoints] will be easier. Maybe they’ll be lifted. That would be a start,” she said. “Nobody believes there will be peace or an end to the conflict. But we all hope there will be some stability.”

Khalaf, a Palestinian American with relatives in the United States, said she had not traveled abroad since the intifada broke out because she feared Israel would prevent those of her children without U.S. passports from reentering. She used to visit Jerusalem and other places in Israel but now stays in Ramallah, Khalaf said. There is almost no point in filling her car’s gas tank anymore, she said sourly, because there is nowhere to go.

Khalaf said she planned to vote for Abbas, although she did not admire him or the Fatah movement, for which he is the standard-bearer.

But Khalaf and other voters said Abbas, who was viewed as a relative moderate by Israel and the United States, had the best chance of making progress toward peace. Abbas said last week that he was prepared to revive talks with Israel.

Palestinian voters are approaching the election with a pragmatism born of the dismal results of two uprisings since the late 1980s and frustration with the Palestinian Authority under Arafat, said Bahjat Itayem, who teaches a course on American democracy at a branch of Al Quds University here.

“After two intifadas and the experiment of the Palestinian Authority, people want to have some kind of solution,” he said.

Itayem said the quest for results had helped boost backing for the 69-year-old Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen. Abbas lacks Arafat’s charisma and, until recently, registered in the single digits in polls measuring the popularity of Palestinian figures.

“A lot of people are not convinced about Abu Mazen, but they’re going to vote for Abu Mazen anyway,” Itayem said. “Why? Because he’s going to deliver.”

Analysts note that Palestinians are used to electing leaders of trade unions, student associations and other civic groups -- a tradition that puts them ahead of most of the Arab world when it comes to exercising democracy.

There is little question that the contest for Palestinian Authority president lacks the zest of a neck-and-neck race. Abbas, whose Fatah movement has long dominated Palestinian politics, boasted a nearly 3-to-1 lead over his closest rival, physician Mustafa Barghouti, in a recent poll in which he garnered the support of 65% of respondents.

In addition, the candidates have almost uniform stands on the central Palestinian conditions for making peace with Israel, from freeing prisoners to the creation of an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital. The vote’s only drama may be over turnout and the margin of a presumed Abbas win -- likely indicators of how sweeping a mandate he could claim.

Manuel Hassassian, a political science professor at Bethlehem University, said the winner would not need a landslide. “Even if he wins by 51%, he’s in power and we have to support him,” he said.

Hassassian said it was unfair to apply the yardsticks of Western-style democracy to this election. More important than who wins or by how much, he said, is that the vote foster democratic institutions, from political parties to advocacy groups, and a sense among Palestinians of their rights and civic obligations.

“This is an interim period. We shouldn’t be measured by, is this democracy? It is democracy in the making,” Hassassian said. “Elections are only a tool. Democracy is a process.”

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Presidential candidates

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* Mahmoud Abbas, 69. Leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, nominated by the ruling Fatah movement as successor to the late Palestinian Authority president, Yasser Arafat. A former prime minister under Arafat. Considered a pragmatist and a moderate, he has said he wants to reopen peace negotiations with Israel.

* Mustafa Barghouti, 50. Not affiliated with any political faction. A physician and human rights activist, he says he represents the middle ground between Fatah and militant Islamist groups such as Hamas.

* Bassam Salhi, 44. Head of the formerly communist Palestine People’s Party. A resident of the Al Amari refugee camp outside Ramallah who has been arrested by Israel several times.

* Taysser Khalid, 65. Candidate of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a militant PLO faction. Khalid returned to the West Bank city of Nablus from Syria in 1995. He was arrested by Israel in April 2002, at the height of an Israeli military crackdown in the West Bank, and released a year ago.

* Abdel Karim Shaber, 44. A Gaza City lawyer running as an independent. He identifies with Islamic causes but is not a member of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

* Saed Baraka, 49. An Islamist running as an independent. A businessman and Arabic teacher from the Gaza Strip. Was arrested by Israel and deported to Lebanon in 1989 because of alleged links to Islamic Jihad. He returned to Gaza in 1996 and is a member of the Palestinian National Council, the PLO’s parliament in exile.

* Abdelhalim Ashkar, 46. An Islamist running as an independent. Originally from the West Bank village of Saida, he is a U.S. resident who is under house arrest in Virginia, awaiting trial on racketeering and obstruction charges.

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Los Angeles Times