excellent discussion of Palestinian elections
I thought this was a strong discussion. I was impressed that the elections were peaceful, and, as Shibley Telhami says, could be seen as a democratic overthrow of a very corrupt regime.
I'm under no illusions about Hamas. I just think that not everyone who voted for Hamas was really voting for the end of Israel. They were voting against the corruption of the Palestinian Authority--a corruption that the United States and the EU have funded for years.
http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/images/fortherecord.php?ID=251
“The 2006 Palestinian Elections: What Next?”
Transcript of Remarks by Dalal Hasan, Edward Abington and Shibley Telhami
For the Record No. 242 (8 February 2006)
Remarks by Ms. Dalal Hasan
Member of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs’ observer team to the 25 January 2006 legislative elections as well as a member of the Jerusalem Fund Board of Directors
Good morning. I’m just going to make a few brief general comments on the process and actual conduct of the election day from monitoring standpoints and then a few observations on the perceptions and implications of the outcome on the ground in Palestine following the election, as well as the gap between perceptions in Palestine versus the way it was received in the United States.
There’s been nearly unanimous consensus on the part of most of the international observation teams that the election was conducted in a free, peaceful and competitive environment. It was highly praised in terms of the level of professionalism and impartiality on the part of the Central Elections Committee (CEC) and its staff throughout the 16 electoral districts. Also in terms of the other parties involved in the elections, from the voters and the party representatives to the indigenous or independent civil society monitors that observed the elections.
All were praised for their professionalism and impartiality and the general level of preparedness and training. The voter education campaign, for example, was extremely well executed from the media’s perspective as well as the CEC, the parties and the candidates themselves. Voters were educated and made informed political decisions. As far as the layers of accountability and transparency, both the party representatives and the independent election monitors from the Palestinian civil society were well represented across all the voting districts. So there were layers of observation to make sure that the process was conducted smoothly and professionally.
The members of the National Democratic Institute’s delegation were highly impressed with the level of transparency and order under which the elections were conducted and took note of the great pride that Palestinians had in exercising their democratic rights to choose their representatives in competitive and open elections. There were a number of monitors who commented that it was almost text-book in its conduct. People were genuinely inspired by the level of civic engagement and enthusiasm that was displayed.
In terms of perceptions of the implication of the election’s outcome, I noted in returning to the United States after a week in Palestine for the elections that the only impression shared on both sides was that this represented a sort of earthquake. In Palestine they were calling it the zinzal, or the “earthquake,” because it wasn’t so much the implications of that earthquake as where the differences lie. That is, it was not so much the success of Hamas itself that struck people in the West Bank and Gaza as it was the degree of the group’s success.
How Palestinians feel about the victory is different from the way it’s been presented in the United States. There has been one particular perception that I think has been carried in the media, namely that unfortunately this was a sort-of landslide for Hamas ideologically and that there was an ideological mandate for rejecting the two-state solution, rejecting the renunciation of violence, and calling for the destruction of Israel. This was absolutely not the mandate that Palestinians gave to Hamas. In fact, the misperception to begin with is that it was a landslide.
Many analysts have now come out, although it is not as widely represented as it perhaps should be, that this was not a landslide. Hamas only actually won 44 percent of the popular vote. The “landslide,” in terms of seats, was a quirk of the electoral system. The structure of the elections law itself was recently changed so that 66 of the 132 seats in the legislature were allocated according to one ballot—a national, closed party list where voters selected a party from that ballot—while the other 66 seats were allocated according to districts. Sixteen electoral districts were each allotted a numbers of seats based on the population distribution, from which individual candidates were to be selected individually, rather than according to their party affiliation.
On your seats you’ll find a map that’s been distributed to sort of illustrate this electoral system. On the national list, Fateh only had one seat less than Hamas: 29 seats for Hamas and 28 seats for Fateh. This was the ballot from which people selected a party. On the ballot which people selected individual candidates for the seats in their district, Hamas won out. You’ll see on these maps, for example, that Hamas won 46 seats to Fateh’s 16.
This was explained by two major factors. First, Hamas was much better organized than Fateh in terms of mobilizing their voters, educating them, and organizing itself as a whole on the level of discipline within the party. Hamas never ran more candidates than there were seats available in that district. Their voters knew exactly how many boxes to fill, whereas Fateh was basically split because there were a lot of Fateh candidates who ran as independents, so they were competing for the same seats and diluted the party’s representation overall. On the other hand, there was also a significant portion of people who did vote for Hamas who are not part of the political party itself and who voted in protest to what they said was a failure of the Fateh-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) leadership.
The mandate was not so much an ideological mandate therefore. I think Hamas recognizes that and it’s been clear in the efforts that they’ve made that they want a national unity front. Immediately, on the day after the elections, the green caps and green campaign paraphernalia were replaced by Palestinian flags. They wanted to make a statement that they weren’t gloating in their victory and that they wanted this to be a cooperative government. They are reaching out to Abbas.
There are people there, Palestinians, who are concerned about the political and social agenda of Hamas. However, the attitude on the ground was more of a wait-and-see attitude. They’re at least giving Hamas an opportunity to see what kind of government is decided upon, how Hamas engages with Abbas and with the international community. Overall I think Palestinians felt sort of a born-again experience—that the vote was in fact on the domestic issues of corruption and good governance and accountability for the peace process. They are inextricably linked, I think.
It was a vote for change more than ideology. It was a vote for the campaign platform of Hamas, not for its charter. The campaign platform of “Change and Reform” is what people voted for and what was the alternative available to them. People did not vote for a platform of destruction of Israel or rejection of the two-state solution. There is a lot of concern among Palestinians that this is the outside perception—that Hamas may be led in one direction or the other depending on how it interacts with the United States and the international community, and vice versa.
Really, what Palestinians saw was an opportunity. The perception that Palestinians voted for a mandate of violence and rejection of the two-state solution is wrong and can hurt positive outcomes of this interaction. It’s a perception that I think Palestinians are keenly aware of and are watching, however. But I’ll leave the political analyses to the other two speakers and look forward to hearing any of your questions. Thank you.
Remarks by Edward Abington
Former U.S. Consul General to Jerusalem and a political consultant to the Palestinian Authority
Thank you very much. I certainly agree with what Dalal just said. This was not a vote for a return to violence or, for that matter, for the charter of Hamas by the Palestinian electorate.
I spent four or five days in Ramallah talking to various Palestinians, PA officials and so forth before the elections and a couple days afterwards. During the election itself, I spent the morning in Ramallah going around to polling stations and then to Nablus, where I spent the afternoon.
First of all, I was in Palestine for the 1996 elections and witnessed those. Last year, I went for the presidential elections and saw those elections as well. The level of enthusiasm in this election was higher than the previous two—much higher. The degree of organization, particularly by Hamas, was noticeably higher.
I was struck, as I went around to polling stations, by the presence of Hamas and how, by contrast, Fateh seemed to be extremely disorganized. I had the feeling as I watched people vote and watched the enthusiasm that this was definitely going in the direction of Hamas.
There was a great banner I saw in Nablus and also in Ramallah. It said “Israel and the US say no to Hamas. What do you say?” Obviously a lot of people said “yes” to Hamas. By contrast, I went down to Jericho where I saw an election rally that Saab Erekat held the last day candidates could have rallies. At the end of this three-and-a-half-hours-long election rally, there was a little ten year-old girl who stood up there in a traditional Palestinian dress reading this long manifesto, which basically kept repeating “Fateh fired the first bullet. Fateh threw the first stone,” and trying to show Fateh’s revolutionary credentials. I think the problem is that many Palestinians say “Yes, maybe you fired the first stone, but what have you done for us lately?”
I think that this is what you really have to look at. I believe that much of the analysis of the outcome of the election, which blames it all on Fateh’s corruption and misgovernment, is frankly fairly superficial. For many Palestinians, Fateh, which started the Oslo process and the Palestinian Authority in 1994, was increasingly seen as unable to defend fundamental Palestinian interest. And those interests were creating a Palestinian state, stopping Israeli settlement expansion and colonialism on the West Bank.
Over time, the toleration the Palestinians had for a degree of misgovernment and mismanagement by Fateh increased because Palestinians felt that the occupation was only getting worse. So I think that when you look at Hamas’ victory—and Hamas certainly has to now be considered the most legitimate political leadership in the Arab world by virtue of this election—when you look at Hamas’s victory, you have to understand the failure of the peace process, the way that Israeli occupation has deepened in the West Bank and has become more systematized, and why many Palestinians’ lives are much worse today than ten years ago.
I haven’t been to Gaza for a couple years now, but I go to the West Bank three to five times a year. I must say that what has struck me over the course of the past year is how much deeper the Israeli occupation has become. Palestinians cannot move around except with extreme difficulty. Their economy is suffering tremendously and this, as much as anything else, was the reason that Fateh was thrown out.
There is corruption. There’s no doubt about it. There is mismanagement. There’s no doubt about it. There are seventy thousand people in the security services. In talking to General Ward and General Dayton, the U.S. security advisors who have been out there—they consider that the Palestinian security services are fundamentally incompetent. So when you look at the numbers you can’t really say that that’s how many people are really involved [in the corruption].
So what happens now? I have to say that there are certainly more unanswered questions than answers. Let me just raise a few points. Fateh is in terrible shape. It basically has imploded. The splits between the “old guard” represented by the Fateh Central Committee, people like Abu Ala [Prime Minister Ahmed Qurai’] and others like Hakem Balawi and the younger people, are very severe.
I don’t know how Fateh in the short time can regenerate itself so it is seen as a credible political party among Palestinians. One thing that the Fateh leaders I talked to have said is that Fateh can absolutely not be part of a national unity government or it will be seen as facilitating Hamas’ takeover of institutions, and that the only way it can regenerate itself is by becoming the opposition. I think it’s going to be a fairly long time in the opposition with the way things are going.
Secondly, the PA is bankrupt. It needs $130 million a month just to pay salaries for 135,000 employees and that figure doesn’t even cover recurring expenditures. Israel has released tax revenues of roughly $55 million a month, but what is Israel going to do once Hamas forms a new government? If PA employees are not paid, they’ll stay home. So when people talk about the PA starting to disintegrate, this is one scenario of how it might happen.
On top of this, the election results have dealt a severe blow to the Palestinian economy. The stock market in Nablus, which is not all that big but nevertheless important, has lost one quarter of its value. That is a tremendous drop in capitalization.
In Gaza, the Israelis shut down the Karni Crossing Point several weeks ago so no goods or people are able to go out. The agricultural produce of Gaza, including that of the greenhouses that were part of the deal for the Israelis’ withdrawal from Gaza, is being dumped on the side of the road because they cannot get it out of Gaza.
So, you’ve got a tremendously difficult economic situation for the Palestinians. Frankly, it is hard to see how this is going to change as a result of the election. The Quartet and the U.S. have set three conditions for dealing with Hamas: first, Hamas must explicitly recognize Israel; second, it must renounce violence; and third, it must disarm.
Every Palestinian I’ve talked to said there is no way Hamas is going to disarm—frankly, I don’t think they will either. Palestinians will not disarm in the face of continuing Israeli occupation and Israeli attacks against Palestinians. The dilemma the international community has set up by putting forth these conditions is that these are precisely the same conditions that Fateh had to accept to form the PA and to run the PA.
So, if Fateh failed under these conditions, what incentive is there for Hamas to accept these conditions? I frankly think that Hamas will not accept the explicit conditions called for by the Quartet simply to be in a position just to run the PA in the same way Fateh did. Certainly, Hamas running the PA will be more efficient. There will be less corruption, but essentially, without similar conditions governing Israeli behavior, Hamas is not going to go along with this in my opinion.
Palestinians are facing a time of tremendous uncertainty right now. Number one, what happens to the security services? The security services are dominated by Fateh. One senior security official I talked to said that if Hamas tried to take over the security services, Fateh will take their weapons, all the information and all the equipment out of the police stations and leave them empty for Hamas. Will Hamas’ militia, which although not very large is considered by many outside experts to be much more heavily armed and more dangerous than Fateh or PA security services, stand for that? What happens to the militia? There is room for a lot of conflict over these basic security issues.
By the same token, the Bush administration’s policy is to try to build up President Abbas. This, it seems to me, needs to be carefully thought through because if Abbas tries to emerge as a counterweight to Hamas, in terms of running the government, again this sets up the possibility for serious conflicts between the presidency, which is a weak institution, and the PLC and PA cabinet.
For example, Abu Mazen was quoted in Ha’aretz today as saying that he’s going to control the security services and also the finances. I don’t know how he can control the finances because the Minister of Finance sits in the Cabinet, and it is the Cabinet and Minister of Finance who decide on the budget and how revenues are spent. Here again there is potential for a serious clash between Hamas and Abbas. I frankly do not think that the presidency can prevail under these kinds of circumstances.
More broadly, as I’m sure Shibley will talk about, I think the Bush administration’s policy in dealing with the Palestinians is a conceptual failure. It emphasizes democracy in elections, thinking that the democratic process will solve everything. It’s an approach that has basically ignored the almost 39 years of very oppressive Israeli occupation. And, this approach has undermined not only secular moderates in Palestine but also elsewhere in the region.
Until Washington can craft a credible policy that addresses both democracy and ending occupation, our policy will fail.
Remarks by Dr. Shibley Telhami
Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution
Good morning. I agree with much of what was said about interpreting Hamas’ victory in terms of what may have lead to its rise. I think it is fair to say that most of us weren’t surprised they were doing well. We sort of expected that Hamas was going to do well and would maybe even overtake Fateh. But I think no one expected they would have the majority they ended up with. I don’t think they did either, so we have to put that in a little bit of a perspective.
What I’d like to do is interpret the implications of this victory more than just to say why it happened. The kind of issues we all have to think about are the dilemmas that Hamas is going to have, the dilemmas the PA is going to face, the dilemmas the international community has, and the dilemmas that the Israelis are going to have dealing with Hamas’ win.
The first thing to note is what was discussed earlier in how much of a democratic experiment this was. It was, and is quite remarkable actually under the circumstances. In fact, it is the first situation where you have a democratic revolution—that’s what it is—where you have not only a government being replaced by another government, but an overthrow of a regime you might say.
It’s wrong to think of Fateh as the dominant party because it was very hard to know the difference between the PLO, broadly speaking, and the PA. Fateh had dominated the PLO. Frankly, the agreement between Israel and the Palestinians was an agreement between Israel and the PLO. The Palestinian Authority was just an outcome later on. If you look at the Palestinian institutions, whether they’re bureaucracies or security services, you cannot draw a line between the party and the Authority.
What you have here is essentially an overthrow of a regime, happening peacefully and democratically. And, so far, being accepted, which is really kind of remarkable. In some ways, I think this is going to be the first real test case for this theory of “one man, one vote, one time.” I don’t think we’ve had that. People have made an argument about Islamic groups saying, “They’ll accept the democracy and then just change the system.” Well, we really have not had any such test at all.
The Algeria test was never allowed to fully take place; it was reversed. Iran wasn’t really either, as the government, or Khomeini, wasn’t elected democratically—it was a real revolution. They set up a limited democracy that is theocratic, but that was a different outcome from this one. This is the only case where we have a real overthrow of an entrenched secular regime by an Islamic party. So, it’s going to become an interesting test case.
From Hamas’ point of view, one of things we have to sort out, which I haven’t sorted yet but which cannot be dismissed, is the fact that at some level we’re talking about it as normal politics, where one party wins and one party loses. It’s much bigger than that.
Let’s face it—this is a huge paradigmatic shift. The one question that we have to sort out is whether Hamas is a nationalist party, and just another nationalist party, or if it is a religious party? I think you can make the argument that it is more nationalist than religious, and there are reasons to think that. Certainly, it was set up as a resistance party, as noted by its Arabic name “the Islamic resistance movement.” You can also make the argument that they have not linked themselves to broader Islamic groups. The Al Qaeda types always considered Hamas to be a nationalist party because Hamas never sent fighters to Chechnya and Afghanistan. So they’re not part of this broader Islamic movement in the view of many of the other, broader Islamist groups.
Nonetheless, Hamas has an Islamist agenda. It uses Islam and religion as a mechanism of legitimization aside from religion. It does matter why they were elected, and I agree with the reasoning that they were elected primarily not because of their advocacy of an Islamic state, but because Palestinians were rejecting Fateh and were fed up. They wanted change.
But [Hamas’ prior agenda] almost doesn’t matter because in the end, when you’re in power, you’re in power and you have to decide what your agenda is. I think one of the big questions that Hamas is going to face is precisely whether it is going to become more nationalistic and therefore stick with its religious agenda as a mobilization agenda but not as an ideological program. Or, is it going to expand it? I think that’s a big question and I think we can’t just dump it now because we want to be positive.
If you look historically, many living in this place and many among us who argued four years ago when the Camp David negotiations failed and the [second] intifada began, when you had all of what was happening by the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza, we said, “Look, what we had in the past was a nationalist paradigm that was legitimated by the PLO in its agreement with Israel, and that was the basis of a two-state solution.”
The two-state solution emerged as a consequence of a nationalist program. You can argue now when you say Fateh did face these conditions by the international community, drop the use of violence, and accept Israel. They did. Fateh did that on the basis of a nationalist program. It was a nationalist program which said the establishment of a Palestinian state supersedes all other issues. It was an intellectual transformation in the outlook of Fateh and the PLO that was made possible by this nationalist program.
Compromise was thus a function of this nationalist program. Now can such a nationalist program emerge logically for Hamas? It remains to be seen. It’s an open question and we can’t just dismiss it. When we argued that this process was deteriorating, our fear was that religious symbols would supersede nationalist symbols. The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians becomes much more difficult to tackle if religion is an issue—is the primary issue. Religion is always an issue in that conflict, it cannot be dismissed. But if it’s the primary issue, then it becomes a real problem to find compromise. If it is a nationalist issue, it is possible to find compromise. I don’t know where this is going to head but I think it requires a lot of consideration.
The second point I want to make is about Hamas’ own immediate dilemmas beyond this big picture, or dilemma. I think they’ve won but they didn’t expect they were going to be the majority. They expected they would do well but I don’t think they were prepared to. You could tell they were not prepared because they’re buying time. They can’t figure out how to proceed just yet. The reality of it is that they won but you have a president who was also elected democratically. Whether or not he still has legitimacy in the eyes of the public, he was elected democratically.
So, the Palestinian balance of power is not clear—there is a little irony here if you recall that when Yasser Arafat was president of the PA, the U.S. put pressure on him to give up some of his powers to the Parliament and government, because he was seen to monopolize it too much. That happened but now the tables have turned around. So things aren’t clear now in terms of who controls the security services, the budget and so forth. They used to be negotiated.
Hamas’ problem now is multifold. At one level existing Palestinian institutions cannot be separated from Fateh and the PLO. What can be done about that? When you can’t just take over and dump everyone, the security services emerges as an area where change is obvious, but how do you incorporate yourself into it? Do you stay outside and leave them the way they are? If you leave them as they are, who pays them?
It is a structural problem for Hamas and a significant challenge. I don’t know how it’s going to be resolved. It’s not just about how the security services are going to behave; there is a fundamental problem here for them in terms of how to deal with this. Do you incorporate Hamas into the services? Do you just increase the size by adding Hamas into the mix of bureaucracy and security services? Where is the money going to come from if you’re going to expand the bureaucracy at the same time that you’re trying to cut corruption? It’s a huge problem.
The second problem facing Hamas is the demands from the international community, which are not likely to cause them to change their position. I think the reality of it is, as the previous speaker said, that it’s not likely they will make a profound change philosophically. They just won and they won a resounding victory. They won on their agenda and they’re not going to say our agenda fails—particularly if Ed is right about the fact that this wasn’t only about corruption. It was about the PLO being ineffective in bringing anything forth. So what are they going to do?
The easy way for Hamas to deal with this is to leave the PA, all peace issues, and dealing with the international community to the President and to focus on domestic issues and create a layer of separation. They could have a government in which the foreign policy isn’t in their hands—they just have a veto power. Whenever there is an agreement, then people can approach the Parliament. In other words, use the fact that they have Abu Mazen who can talk to the international community as a way of dealing without having to modify their position.
Frankly, the international community too is in something of a bind. Today, Hamas issued a statement saying through [Musa] Abu Marzouk that they will uphold agreements reached by previous governments, or the Palestinian Authority, going along with one of the demands in principle on this. I think in the end, the international community is going to have a bit of a bind in terms of what it demands of whom. You can demand of a government that it must not carry out attacks against civilians. You can demand of a government to recognize Israel in a negotiation. But can you demand that of a party? It’s hard to do with a party.
So Hamas as a party versus the government, even if the government passes resolutions that in effect accept Israel and renounce the use of violence against civilians, can anyone really push beyond that? I think that is the space they’re going to try to negotiate. I’m not sure it’s going to work for them, because there are a lot of challenges. I’m not sure that Abu Mazen or Fateh are going to play along either, so there are going to be a lot of challenges.
I know time is running out, but I want to talk about the funding issue from the point of view the Israelis, the U.S. and the international community as well as the Palestinians. I think it’s interesting to look at the way that Israelis have dealt with the election. In a way there’s been no panic in it in Israel. It’s really been kind of fascinating. There’s been no panic and you’ve had a mixed picture of interpretations in Israel.
There have been demands obviously on the terrorism issue, recognition of Israel, and insistence that Hamas cannot be part of the government that Israel deals with, but there’s no panic. I think this is in part because the Israelis see the dilemma unsettled, and in part because I believe the Israelis are not interested in the short term in seeing renewed violence. I think it doesn’t suit the Center in Israel to have a revival of violence before the elections at the end of March. If Hamas can deliver quiet, they’re happy with the outcome no matter what the consequences beyond that.
I think there is a coincidence of interest in a way to maintain a quiet picture. Even on the issue of the tax that Israel withheld and then released yesterday, if you look at that issue it’s more complex. The instinct, first of all, was to withhold automatically. It became a political issue. And of course who exploited it? First it was Likud. The poll in Israel after the Hamas victory showed that support for Likud dropped actually. It went to 13 seats and the Center’s Kadima party got 44 and 21 for Labor. So it didn’t really work for them.
Israelis also have to think about it from two points of views: first, the collapse which they don’t want. If they have a real economic disaster on their hands, that is a real problem but also they think about it in terms of their responsibilities as an occupying power. Frankly, the international aid going to the Palestinians areas is in many ways relieving Israel of its responsibility as an occupying power. It’s helping, in a way, satisfy that obligation. Thus if it dries up, the Israeli’s legal responsibility on aid is going to increase. So this is a real issue here for the Israelis to consider as well. I don’t think, whether the Israelis know or don’t know, whether Hamas is a pragmatic institution or a religious institution, but they’re keeping their minds open.
A final point on the issue of U.S. aid to Palestine. I think at some level, sanctions are almost automatic from the U.S. Congress. It’s on auto-pilot and it’s very difficult to see who’s going to make the case to not have sanctions, unless the administration for some reason decides they’re going to push to stop it and make it a priority issue, which I don’t know anyone who thinks that’s likely, or unless the Israelis don’t have an interest in drying up the aid—which is as I said is an interesting picture coming from Israel in terms of the aid’s implications.
In some ways if you’re going to play the role that the administration wants to play, and that is strengthening Abu Mazen and Fateh and in a balance-of-power kind of game, it must be noted that the money that goes to the PA is paying the salaries of existing Authority institutions including security service and the bureaucracy, and is actually going mostly to Fateh types. If you dry that up, it will be interesting to see how this affects the balance of power domestically.
The other issue for the U.S. is in terms of how it affects the rest of the world. The U.S. could stop its aid. It would be a significant change but it wouldn’t be crippling. It might even push the Europeans to stop their aid. The Europeans would go along with it to some extent but not entirely, certainly not in terms of aid going to non-governmental organizations there. But what will happen is something really interesting that we already see happening.
I’ve always believed that the issue of Palestine is the prism through which Arabs look at the world, especially at the US, and I still believe that. I think Iraq shifted some of that focus and created a new prism through which Arabs look at the world. In some ways Hamas’ victory now in this environment has refocused attention in the region on the Palestinian issue. The Palestinian issue is again the bigger prism through which people look at the world. Hamas wins.
I think in some ways, one reason why there’s been a shift of focus to the Iraq war has not just been that we had bloodshed and violence and war and destruction. Obviously that was part of it, but the other side is that the Palestinian issue has been in a status quo mode for the past couple of years. There’s been less violence and, since the election of Abu Mazen, the Palestinians have had a good relationship with the United States.
So, the angle of U.S. attention wasn’t so much through the prism of the Palestinian issue on a daily basis as through the Iraq issue. If you refocus the attention on the Palestinian issue and now have an aggressive American strategy focused on imposing sanctions on a democratically elected Palestinian government, I think it would have far reaching consequences across the Arab and Muslim countries. You will have a targeted anger in a way, across the region. You are going to have, I think, a lot more people who are going to send money to the Palestinians. Governments, I would say, like those in the Gulf will probably send even more money now than they did to Abu Mazen. I think you’re going to see a lot more private contributions that are going to come in as well.
In the end, I don’t think there will be the kind of outcome that is desired by those calling for sanctions. For one thing, I have always believed that you can never engineer public reaction, and that even if sanctions worked in applying pain on a people, the people’s reaction is not usually that we hate our government. People in such circumstances always usually look at the outside world and say they hate those who are applying the pain. That doesn’t play well for the United States. So there are many dilemmas ahead and I don’t really know the final outcome. I’m only a political scientist—I can’t say for sure how they’re going to be sorted out.
Thank you very much.
This transcript is distributed by The Palestine Center, an educational program of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development. It can be accessed online at http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/palestinecenter/fortherecord.php.
This transcript is based on remarks delivered by Dalal Hasan, Edward Abington and Shibley Telhami on 6 February 2006 at The Palestine Center in Washington, DC. The speakers’ views do not necessarily reflect those of The Palestine Center or The Jerusalem Fund. This transcript may be used without permission but with proper attribution to The Palestine Center. This transcript will be reissued in the annual compendium of Palestine Center publications.
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I'm under no illusions about Hamas. I just think that not everyone who voted for Hamas was really voting for the end of Israel. They were voting against the corruption of the Palestinian Authority--a corruption that the United States and the EU have funded for years.
http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/images/fortherecord.php?ID=251
“The 2006 Palestinian Elections: What Next?”
Transcript of Remarks by Dalal Hasan, Edward Abington and Shibley Telhami
For the Record No. 242 (8 February 2006)
Remarks by Ms. Dalal Hasan
Member of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs’ observer team to the 25 January 2006 legislative elections as well as a member of the Jerusalem Fund Board of Directors
Good morning. I’m just going to make a few brief general comments on the process and actual conduct of the election day from monitoring standpoints and then a few observations on the perceptions and implications of the outcome on the ground in Palestine following the election, as well as the gap between perceptions in Palestine versus the way it was received in the United States.
There’s been nearly unanimous consensus on the part of most of the international observation teams that the election was conducted in a free, peaceful and competitive environment. It was highly praised in terms of the level of professionalism and impartiality on the part of the Central Elections Committee (CEC) and its staff throughout the 16 electoral districts. Also in terms of the other parties involved in the elections, from the voters and the party representatives to the indigenous or independent civil society monitors that observed the elections.
All were praised for their professionalism and impartiality and the general level of preparedness and training. The voter education campaign, for example, was extremely well executed from the media’s perspective as well as the CEC, the parties and the candidates themselves. Voters were educated and made informed political decisions. As far as the layers of accountability and transparency, both the party representatives and the independent election monitors from the Palestinian civil society were well represented across all the voting districts. So there were layers of observation to make sure that the process was conducted smoothly and professionally.
The members of the National Democratic Institute’s delegation were highly impressed with the level of transparency and order under which the elections were conducted and took note of the great pride that Palestinians had in exercising their democratic rights to choose their representatives in competitive and open elections. There were a number of monitors who commented that it was almost text-book in its conduct. People were genuinely inspired by the level of civic engagement and enthusiasm that was displayed.
In terms of perceptions of the implication of the election’s outcome, I noted in returning to the United States after a week in Palestine for the elections that the only impression shared on both sides was that this represented a sort of earthquake. In Palestine they were calling it the zinzal, or the “earthquake,” because it wasn’t so much the implications of that earthquake as where the differences lie. That is, it was not so much the success of Hamas itself that struck people in the West Bank and Gaza as it was the degree of the group’s success.
How Palestinians feel about the victory is different from the way it’s been presented in the United States. There has been one particular perception that I think has been carried in the media, namely that unfortunately this was a sort-of landslide for Hamas ideologically and that there was an ideological mandate for rejecting the two-state solution, rejecting the renunciation of violence, and calling for the destruction of Israel. This was absolutely not the mandate that Palestinians gave to Hamas. In fact, the misperception to begin with is that it was a landslide.
Many analysts have now come out, although it is not as widely represented as it perhaps should be, that this was not a landslide. Hamas only actually won 44 percent of the popular vote. The “landslide,” in terms of seats, was a quirk of the electoral system. The structure of the elections law itself was recently changed so that 66 of the 132 seats in the legislature were allocated according to one ballot—a national, closed party list where voters selected a party from that ballot—while the other 66 seats were allocated according to districts. Sixteen electoral districts were each allotted a numbers of seats based on the population distribution, from which individual candidates were to be selected individually, rather than according to their party affiliation.
On your seats you’ll find a map that’s been distributed to sort of illustrate this electoral system. On the national list, Fateh only had one seat less than Hamas: 29 seats for Hamas and 28 seats for Fateh. This was the ballot from which people selected a party. On the ballot which people selected individual candidates for the seats in their district, Hamas won out. You’ll see on these maps, for example, that Hamas won 46 seats to Fateh’s 16.
This was explained by two major factors. First, Hamas was much better organized than Fateh in terms of mobilizing their voters, educating them, and organizing itself as a whole on the level of discipline within the party. Hamas never ran more candidates than there were seats available in that district. Their voters knew exactly how many boxes to fill, whereas Fateh was basically split because there were a lot of Fateh candidates who ran as independents, so they were competing for the same seats and diluted the party’s representation overall. On the other hand, there was also a significant portion of people who did vote for Hamas who are not part of the political party itself and who voted in protest to what they said was a failure of the Fateh-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) leadership.
The mandate was not so much an ideological mandate therefore. I think Hamas recognizes that and it’s been clear in the efforts that they’ve made that they want a national unity front. Immediately, on the day after the elections, the green caps and green campaign paraphernalia were replaced by Palestinian flags. They wanted to make a statement that they weren’t gloating in their victory and that they wanted this to be a cooperative government. They are reaching out to Abbas.
There are people there, Palestinians, who are concerned about the political and social agenda of Hamas. However, the attitude on the ground was more of a wait-and-see attitude. They’re at least giving Hamas an opportunity to see what kind of government is decided upon, how Hamas engages with Abbas and with the international community. Overall I think Palestinians felt sort of a born-again experience—that the vote was in fact on the domestic issues of corruption and good governance and accountability for the peace process. They are inextricably linked, I think.
It was a vote for change more than ideology. It was a vote for the campaign platform of Hamas, not for its charter. The campaign platform of “Change and Reform” is what people voted for and what was the alternative available to them. People did not vote for a platform of destruction of Israel or rejection of the two-state solution. There is a lot of concern among Palestinians that this is the outside perception—that Hamas may be led in one direction or the other depending on how it interacts with the United States and the international community, and vice versa.
Really, what Palestinians saw was an opportunity. The perception that Palestinians voted for a mandate of violence and rejection of the two-state solution is wrong and can hurt positive outcomes of this interaction. It’s a perception that I think Palestinians are keenly aware of and are watching, however. But I’ll leave the political analyses to the other two speakers and look forward to hearing any of your questions. Thank you.
Remarks by Edward Abington
Former U.S. Consul General to Jerusalem and a political consultant to the Palestinian Authority
Thank you very much. I certainly agree with what Dalal just said. This was not a vote for a return to violence or, for that matter, for the charter of Hamas by the Palestinian electorate.
I spent four or five days in Ramallah talking to various Palestinians, PA officials and so forth before the elections and a couple days afterwards. During the election itself, I spent the morning in Ramallah going around to polling stations and then to Nablus, where I spent the afternoon.
First of all, I was in Palestine for the 1996 elections and witnessed those. Last year, I went for the presidential elections and saw those elections as well. The level of enthusiasm in this election was higher than the previous two—much higher. The degree of organization, particularly by Hamas, was noticeably higher.
I was struck, as I went around to polling stations, by the presence of Hamas and how, by contrast, Fateh seemed to be extremely disorganized. I had the feeling as I watched people vote and watched the enthusiasm that this was definitely going in the direction of Hamas.
There was a great banner I saw in Nablus and also in Ramallah. It said “Israel and the US say no to Hamas. What do you say?” Obviously a lot of people said “yes” to Hamas. By contrast, I went down to Jericho where I saw an election rally that Saab Erekat held the last day candidates could have rallies. At the end of this three-and-a-half-hours-long election rally, there was a little ten year-old girl who stood up there in a traditional Palestinian dress reading this long manifesto, which basically kept repeating “Fateh fired the first bullet. Fateh threw the first stone,” and trying to show Fateh’s revolutionary credentials. I think the problem is that many Palestinians say “Yes, maybe you fired the first stone, but what have you done for us lately?”
I think that this is what you really have to look at. I believe that much of the analysis of the outcome of the election, which blames it all on Fateh’s corruption and misgovernment, is frankly fairly superficial. For many Palestinians, Fateh, which started the Oslo process and the Palestinian Authority in 1994, was increasingly seen as unable to defend fundamental Palestinian interest. And those interests were creating a Palestinian state, stopping Israeli settlement expansion and colonialism on the West Bank.
Over time, the toleration the Palestinians had for a degree of misgovernment and mismanagement by Fateh increased because Palestinians felt that the occupation was only getting worse. So I think that when you look at Hamas’ victory—and Hamas certainly has to now be considered the most legitimate political leadership in the Arab world by virtue of this election—when you look at Hamas’s victory, you have to understand the failure of the peace process, the way that Israeli occupation has deepened in the West Bank and has become more systematized, and why many Palestinians’ lives are much worse today than ten years ago.
I haven’t been to Gaza for a couple years now, but I go to the West Bank three to five times a year. I must say that what has struck me over the course of the past year is how much deeper the Israeli occupation has become. Palestinians cannot move around except with extreme difficulty. Their economy is suffering tremendously and this, as much as anything else, was the reason that Fateh was thrown out.
There is corruption. There’s no doubt about it. There is mismanagement. There’s no doubt about it. There are seventy thousand people in the security services. In talking to General Ward and General Dayton, the U.S. security advisors who have been out there—they consider that the Palestinian security services are fundamentally incompetent. So when you look at the numbers you can’t really say that that’s how many people are really involved [in the corruption].
So what happens now? I have to say that there are certainly more unanswered questions than answers. Let me just raise a few points. Fateh is in terrible shape. It basically has imploded. The splits between the “old guard” represented by the Fateh Central Committee, people like Abu Ala [Prime Minister Ahmed Qurai’] and others like Hakem Balawi and the younger people, are very severe.
I don’t know how Fateh in the short time can regenerate itself so it is seen as a credible political party among Palestinians. One thing that the Fateh leaders I talked to have said is that Fateh can absolutely not be part of a national unity government or it will be seen as facilitating Hamas’ takeover of institutions, and that the only way it can regenerate itself is by becoming the opposition. I think it’s going to be a fairly long time in the opposition with the way things are going.
Secondly, the PA is bankrupt. It needs $130 million a month just to pay salaries for 135,000 employees and that figure doesn’t even cover recurring expenditures. Israel has released tax revenues of roughly $55 million a month, but what is Israel going to do once Hamas forms a new government? If PA employees are not paid, they’ll stay home. So when people talk about the PA starting to disintegrate, this is one scenario of how it might happen.
On top of this, the election results have dealt a severe blow to the Palestinian economy. The stock market in Nablus, which is not all that big but nevertheless important, has lost one quarter of its value. That is a tremendous drop in capitalization.
In Gaza, the Israelis shut down the Karni Crossing Point several weeks ago so no goods or people are able to go out. The agricultural produce of Gaza, including that of the greenhouses that were part of the deal for the Israelis’ withdrawal from Gaza, is being dumped on the side of the road because they cannot get it out of Gaza.
So, you’ve got a tremendously difficult economic situation for the Palestinians. Frankly, it is hard to see how this is going to change as a result of the election. The Quartet and the U.S. have set three conditions for dealing with Hamas: first, Hamas must explicitly recognize Israel; second, it must renounce violence; and third, it must disarm.
Every Palestinian I’ve talked to said there is no way Hamas is going to disarm—frankly, I don’t think they will either. Palestinians will not disarm in the face of continuing Israeli occupation and Israeli attacks against Palestinians. The dilemma the international community has set up by putting forth these conditions is that these are precisely the same conditions that Fateh had to accept to form the PA and to run the PA.
So, if Fateh failed under these conditions, what incentive is there for Hamas to accept these conditions? I frankly think that Hamas will not accept the explicit conditions called for by the Quartet simply to be in a position just to run the PA in the same way Fateh did. Certainly, Hamas running the PA will be more efficient. There will be less corruption, but essentially, without similar conditions governing Israeli behavior, Hamas is not going to go along with this in my opinion.
Palestinians are facing a time of tremendous uncertainty right now. Number one, what happens to the security services? The security services are dominated by Fateh. One senior security official I talked to said that if Hamas tried to take over the security services, Fateh will take their weapons, all the information and all the equipment out of the police stations and leave them empty for Hamas. Will Hamas’ militia, which although not very large is considered by many outside experts to be much more heavily armed and more dangerous than Fateh or PA security services, stand for that? What happens to the militia? There is room for a lot of conflict over these basic security issues.
By the same token, the Bush administration’s policy is to try to build up President Abbas. This, it seems to me, needs to be carefully thought through because if Abbas tries to emerge as a counterweight to Hamas, in terms of running the government, again this sets up the possibility for serious conflicts between the presidency, which is a weak institution, and the PLC and PA cabinet.
For example, Abu Mazen was quoted in Ha’aretz today as saying that he’s going to control the security services and also the finances. I don’t know how he can control the finances because the Minister of Finance sits in the Cabinet, and it is the Cabinet and Minister of Finance who decide on the budget and how revenues are spent. Here again there is potential for a serious clash between Hamas and Abbas. I frankly do not think that the presidency can prevail under these kinds of circumstances.
More broadly, as I’m sure Shibley will talk about, I think the Bush administration’s policy in dealing with the Palestinians is a conceptual failure. It emphasizes democracy in elections, thinking that the democratic process will solve everything. It’s an approach that has basically ignored the almost 39 years of very oppressive Israeli occupation. And, this approach has undermined not only secular moderates in Palestine but also elsewhere in the region.
Until Washington can craft a credible policy that addresses both democracy and ending occupation, our policy will fail.
Remarks by Dr. Shibley Telhami
Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution
Good morning. I agree with much of what was said about interpreting Hamas’ victory in terms of what may have lead to its rise. I think it is fair to say that most of us weren’t surprised they were doing well. We sort of expected that Hamas was going to do well and would maybe even overtake Fateh. But I think no one expected they would have the majority they ended up with. I don’t think they did either, so we have to put that in a little bit of a perspective.
What I’d like to do is interpret the implications of this victory more than just to say why it happened. The kind of issues we all have to think about are the dilemmas that Hamas is going to have, the dilemmas the PA is going to face, the dilemmas the international community has, and the dilemmas that the Israelis are going to have dealing with Hamas’ win.
The first thing to note is what was discussed earlier in how much of a democratic experiment this was. It was, and is quite remarkable actually under the circumstances. In fact, it is the first situation where you have a democratic revolution—that’s what it is—where you have not only a government being replaced by another government, but an overthrow of a regime you might say.
It’s wrong to think of Fateh as the dominant party because it was very hard to know the difference between the PLO, broadly speaking, and the PA. Fateh had dominated the PLO. Frankly, the agreement between Israel and the Palestinians was an agreement between Israel and the PLO. The Palestinian Authority was just an outcome later on. If you look at the Palestinian institutions, whether they’re bureaucracies or security services, you cannot draw a line between the party and the Authority.
What you have here is essentially an overthrow of a regime, happening peacefully and democratically. And, so far, being accepted, which is really kind of remarkable. In some ways, I think this is going to be the first real test case for this theory of “one man, one vote, one time.” I don’t think we’ve had that. People have made an argument about Islamic groups saying, “They’ll accept the democracy and then just change the system.” Well, we really have not had any such test at all.
The Algeria test was never allowed to fully take place; it was reversed. Iran wasn’t really either, as the government, or Khomeini, wasn’t elected democratically—it was a real revolution. They set up a limited democracy that is theocratic, but that was a different outcome from this one. This is the only case where we have a real overthrow of an entrenched secular regime by an Islamic party. So, it’s going to become an interesting test case.
From Hamas’ point of view, one of things we have to sort out, which I haven’t sorted yet but which cannot be dismissed, is the fact that at some level we’re talking about it as normal politics, where one party wins and one party loses. It’s much bigger than that.
Let’s face it—this is a huge paradigmatic shift. The one question that we have to sort out is whether Hamas is a nationalist party, and just another nationalist party, or if it is a religious party? I think you can make the argument that it is more nationalist than religious, and there are reasons to think that. Certainly, it was set up as a resistance party, as noted by its Arabic name “the Islamic resistance movement.” You can also make the argument that they have not linked themselves to broader Islamic groups. The Al Qaeda types always considered Hamas to be a nationalist party because Hamas never sent fighters to Chechnya and Afghanistan. So they’re not part of this broader Islamic movement in the view of many of the other, broader Islamist groups.
Nonetheless, Hamas has an Islamist agenda. It uses Islam and religion as a mechanism of legitimization aside from religion. It does matter why they were elected, and I agree with the reasoning that they were elected primarily not because of their advocacy of an Islamic state, but because Palestinians were rejecting Fateh and were fed up. They wanted change.
But [Hamas’ prior agenda] almost doesn’t matter because in the end, when you’re in power, you’re in power and you have to decide what your agenda is. I think one of the big questions that Hamas is going to face is precisely whether it is going to become more nationalistic and therefore stick with its religious agenda as a mobilization agenda but not as an ideological program. Or, is it going to expand it? I think that’s a big question and I think we can’t just dump it now because we want to be positive.
If you look historically, many living in this place and many among us who argued four years ago when the Camp David negotiations failed and the [second] intifada began, when you had all of what was happening by the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza, we said, “Look, what we had in the past was a nationalist paradigm that was legitimated by the PLO in its agreement with Israel, and that was the basis of a two-state solution.”
The two-state solution emerged as a consequence of a nationalist program. You can argue now when you say Fateh did face these conditions by the international community, drop the use of violence, and accept Israel. They did. Fateh did that on the basis of a nationalist program. It was a nationalist program which said the establishment of a Palestinian state supersedes all other issues. It was an intellectual transformation in the outlook of Fateh and the PLO that was made possible by this nationalist program.
Compromise was thus a function of this nationalist program. Now can such a nationalist program emerge logically for Hamas? It remains to be seen. It’s an open question and we can’t just dismiss it. When we argued that this process was deteriorating, our fear was that religious symbols would supersede nationalist symbols. The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians becomes much more difficult to tackle if religion is an issue—is the primary issue. Religion is always an issue in that conflict, it cannot be dismissed. But if it’s the primary issue, then it becomes a real problem to find compromise. If it is a nationalist issue, it is possible to find compromise. I don’t know where this is going to head but I think it requires a lot of consideration.
The second point I want to make is about Hamas’ own immediate dilemmas beyond this big picture, or dilemma. I think they’ve won but they didn’t expect they were going to be the majority. They expected they would do well but I don’t think they were prepared to. You could tell they were not prepared because they’re buying time. They can’t figure out how to proceed just yet. The reality of it is that they won but you have a president who was also elected democratically. Whether or not he still has legitimacy in the eyes of the public, he was elected democratically.
So, the Palestinian balance of power is not clear—there is a little irony here if you recall that when Yasser Arafat was president of the PA, the U.S. put pressure on him to give up some of his powers to the Parliament and government, because he was seen to monopolize it too much. That happened but now the tables have turned around. So things aren’t clear now in terms of who controls the security services, the budget and so forth. They used to be negotiated.
Hamas’ problem now is multifold. At one level existing Palestinian institutions cannot be separated from Fateh and the PLO. What can be done about that? When you can’t just take over and dump everyone, the security services emerges as an area where change is obvious, but how do you incorporate yourself into it? Do you stay outside and leave them the way they are? If you leave them as they are, who pays them?
It is a structural problem for Hamas and a significant challenge. I don’t know how it’s going to be resolved. It’s not just about how the security services are going to behave; there is a fundamental problem here for them in terms of how to deal with this. Do you incorporate Hamas into the services? Do you just increase the size by adding Hamas into the mix of bureaucracy and security services? Where is the money going to come from if you’re going to expand the bureaucracy at the same time that you’re trying to cut corruption? It’s a huge problem.
The second problem facing Hamas is the demands from the international community, which are not likely to cause them to change their position. I think the reality of it is, as the previous speaker said, that it’s not likely they will make a profound change philosophically. They just won and they won a resounding victory. They won on their agenda and they’re not going to say our agenda fails—particularly if Ed is right about the fact that this wasn’t only about corruption. It was about the PLO being ineffective in bringing anything forth. So what are they going to do?
The easy way for Hamas to deal with this is to leave the PA, all peace issues, and dealing with the international community to the President and to focus on domestic issues and create a layer of separation. They could have a government in which the foreign policy isn’t in their hands—they just have a veto power. Whenever there is an agreement, then people can approach the Parliament. In other words, use the fact that they have Abu Mazen who can talk to the international community as a way of dealing without having to modify their position.
Frankly, the international community too is in something of a bind. Today, Hamas issued a statement saying through [Musa] Abu Marzouk that they will uphold agreements reached by previous governments, or the Palestinian Authority, going along with one of the demands in principle on this. I think in the end, the international community is going to have a bit of a bind in terms of what it demands of whom. You can demand of a government that it must not carry out attacks against civilians. You can demand of a government to recognize Israel in a negotiation. But can you demand that of a party? It’s hard to do with a party.
So Hamas as a party versus the government, even if the government passes resolutions that in effect accept Israel and renounce the use of violence against civilians, can anyone really push beyond that? I think that is the space they’re going to try to negotiate. I’m not sure it’s going to work for them, because there are a lot of challenges. I’m not sure that Abu Mazen or Fateh are going to play along either, so there are going to be a lot of challenges.
I know time is running out, but I want to talk about the funding issue from the point of view the Israelis, the U.S. and the international community as well as the Palestinians. I think it’s interesting to look at the way that Israelis have dealt with the election. In a way there’s been no panic in it in Israel. It’s really been kind of fascinating. There’s been no panic and you’ve had a mixed picture of interpretations in Israel.
There have been demands obviously on the terrorism issue, recognition of Israel, and insistence that Hamas cannot be part of the government that Israel deals with, but there’s no panic. I think this is in part because the Israelis see the dilemma unsettled, and in part because I believe the Israelis are not interested in the short term in seeing renewed violence. I think it doesn’t suit the Center in Israel to have a revival of violence before the elections at the end of March. If Hamas can deliver quiet, they’re happy with the outcome no matter what the consequences beyond that.
I think there is a coincidence of interest in a way to maintain a quiet picture. Even on the issue of the tax that Israel withheld and then released yesterday, if you look at that issue it’s more complex. The instinct, first of all, was to withhold automatically. It became a political issue. And of course who exploited it? First it was Likud. The poll in Israel after the Hamas victory showed that support for Likud dropped actually. It went to 13 seats and the Center’s Kadima party got 44 and 21 for Labor. So it didn’t really work for them.
Israelis also have to think about it from two points of views: first, the collapse which they don’t want. If they have a real economic disaster on their hands, that is a real problem but also they think about it in terms of their responsibilities as an occupying power. Frankly, the international aid going to the Palestinians areas is in many ways relieving Israel of its responsibility as an occupying power. It’s helping, in a way, satisfy that obligation. Thus if it dries up, the Israeli’s legal responsibility on aid is going to increase. So this is a real issue here for the Israelis to consider as well. I don’t think, whether the Israelis know or don’t know, whether Hamas is a pragmatic institution or a religious institution, but they’re keeping their minds open.
A final point on the issue of U.S. aid to Palestine. I think at some level, sanctions are almost automatic from the U.S. Congress. It’s on auto-pilot and it’s very difficult to see who’s going to make the case to not have sanctions, unless the administration for some reason decides they’re going to push to stop it and make it a priority issue, which I don’t know anyone who thinks that’s likely, or unless the Israelis don’t have an interest in drying up the aid—which is as I said is an interesting picture coming from Israel in terms of the aid’s implications.
In some ways if you’re going to play the role that the administration wants to play, and that is strengthening Abu Mazen and Fateh and in a balance-of-power kind of game, it must be noted that the money that goes to the PA is paying the salaries of existing Authority institutions including security service and the bureaucracy, and is actually going mostly to Fateh types. If you dry that up, it will be interesting to see how this affects the balance of power domestically.
The other issue for the U.S. is in terms of how it affects the rest of the world. The U.S. could stop its aid. It would be a significant change but it wouldn’t be crippling. It might even push the Europeans to stop their aid. The Europeans would go along with it to some extent but not entirely, certainly not in terms of aid going to non-governmental organizations there. But what will happen is something really interesting that we already see happening.
I’ve always believed that the issue of Palestine is the prism through which Arabs look at the world, especially at the US, and I still believe that. I think Iraq shifted some of that focus and created a new prism through which Arabs look at the world. In some ways Hamas’ victory now in this environment has refocused attention in the region on the Palestinian issue. The Palestinian issue is again the bigger prism through which people look at the world. Hamas wins.
I think in some ways, one reason why there’s been a shift of focus to the Iraq war has not just been that we had bloodshed and violence and war and destruction. Obviously that was part of it, but the other side is that the Palestinian issue has been in a status quo mode for the past couple of years. There’s been less violence and, since the election of Abu Mazen, the Palestinians have had a good relationship with the United States.
So, the angle of U.S. attention wasn’t so much through the prism of the Palestinian issue on a daily basis as through the Iraq issue. If you refocus the attention on the Palestinian issue and now have an aggressive American strategy focused on imposing sanctions on a democratically elected Palestinian government, I think it would have far reaching consequences across the Arab and Muslim countries. You will have a targeted anger in a way, across the region. You are going to have, I think, a lot more people who are going to send money to the Palestinians. Governments, I would say, like those in the Gulf will probably send even more money now than they did to Abu Mazen. I think you’re going to see a lot more private contributions that are going to come in as well.
In the end, I don’t think there will be the kind of outcome that is desired by those calling for sanctions. For one thing, I have always believed that you can never engineer public reaction, and that even if sanctions worked in applying pain on a people, the people’s reaction is not usually that we hate our government. People in such circumstances always usually look at the outside world and say they hate those who are applying the pain. That doesn’t play well for the United States. So there are many dilemmas ahead and I don’t really know the final outcome. I’m only a political scientist—I can’t say for sure how they’re going to be sorted out.
Thank you very much.
This transcript is distributed by The Palestine Center, an educational program of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development. It can be accessed online at http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/palestinecenter/fortherecord.php.
This transcript is based on remarks delivered by Dalal Hasan, Edward Abington and Shibley Telhami on 6 February 2006 at The Palestine Center in Washington, DC. The speakers’ views do not necessarily reflect those of The Palestine Center or The Jerusalem Fund. This transcript may be used without permission but with proper attribution to The Palestine Center. This transcript will be reissued in the annual compendium of Palestine Center publications.
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