MIDDLE EAST INSIGHT JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1996 VOL XII, NUMBER 2 ELECTIONS IN PALESTINE “Democracy in Palestine: Arafat & Council Elected with Huge Voter Turn-out” By Kenneth W. Stein Ramallah, The West Bank- Just before 7:00 pm on Saturday January 20, 1996, when Palestinian polling station #36 in the Ramallah constituency closed, an eighteen-year-old boy arrived to vote. Ahead of him in line was an illiterate Palestinian woman in her seventies. Appearing with someone to read the candidate lists for her, as the law allowed, she put the "x's" in the corresponding boxes as her grandson read them to her. A Palestinian election commission monitor watched to be sure that her choices were, in fact, appropriately marked. We were in a postage-stamp-sized, unheated, and smoke-filled classroom on the second floor of the Ramallah Islamic school, some 15 miles north of Jerusalem. In a firm but polite tone, Alesandre, a secondary school math teacher and the poll station manager, explained to each voter, as she had done all day long, that on the red "ra 'is" (President/Chairman) ballot they should choose one of two candidates, while on the white ballot as many as seven choices could be made from among the 51 candidates seeking to represent the area of Ramallah in the Palestinian self-governing council. Ramallah was one of 16 constituency districts set up for the election. The number of council seats allocated to a district was based on the proportion of registered voters in that district to the total registered. Facing away from all four election officials were the folded cardboard voting booths, precariously sitting on well-worn school desks. While the procedural explanation took place, three of the election officials checked the identity and registration cards against three separate but identical computer-printed voter election lists. Names, birth dates, and ID numbers were meticulously if not fastidiously reviewed to be sure no one voted twice. Ballots were hand-stamped with the polling station number. Sealed in respective white and red envelopes by each voter, the envelopes were put in wooden boxes, each closed with small padlocks. When the elderly woman gave her sealed envelopes to her grandson for deposit, he instead insisted that his grandmother put the envelopes in the boxes herself. Upon dropping the envelopes in the box she raised her head, and a small embarrassed smile flickered across her face. Her look told us that it was her first time voting. Meanwhile, the young man who was voting recognized Alesandre as a former teacher. Their eyes met. Quietly, he said to her in Arabic, "You told us this day would come." This was the twenty-first and last polling station I had visited during the day, which had begun with a Jerusalem departure thirteen hours earlier. There were another 700 international election monitors spread out over the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip to observe and note the activities in the 1,696 polling stations set up for the Palestinians to elect a President/Chairman and an 88-member self-governing council. Before the day was over, 493 of 578 registered voters at this polling site cast their ballots. Here and elsewhere where the voting was conducted, over 80 percent of the total of 1,013,000 registered Palestinian Arab voters cast their first-ever vote under strictly Palestinian authority. No observer or political analyst attributed any success to any Palestinian organization, secular or Islamic in orientation, which quietly or openly suggested boycotting the elections. Ballot counting lasted from 8:00 pm until after 2:30 am. Each ballot was scrupulously reviewed and painstakingly recorded in the presence of a dozen candidate poll watchers and an independent Palestinian Election Commission monitor. No one stole the vote in voting station #36. The election day atmosphere in and around Ramallah was festive, almost carnival-like. Part of the glee noticed in villages, towns, and in refugee camps was due to the recent withdrawal of Israeli military forces from areas placed under the control of the Palestinian Authority. In comparison, in East Jerusalem, Hebron, and in areas of the Gaza Strip, the election day atmosphere included periods of tension, intense suspicion, and voting/vote-count irregularities. East Jerusalem Arabs were intimidated by a pre-election rumor that if they voted they would lose their identity cards and their eligibility for Israeli social and health benefits. By mutual PLO-Israeli agreement, only five voting stations were set up in East Jerusalem; therefore, buses were provided for East Jerusalem Arabs to cast their ballots in Arab villages in the outskirts of Jerusalem. Few availed themselves of that opportunity. Further restricting voter turn-out to 40 percent in Jerusalem was the heavy presence of Israeli security officials, who were there to deter the possibility of violence between Jewish settlers- who openly threatened to thwart the election in Jerusalem- and Arabs. Those confrontations did not materialize. Early in the day, Israeli video-taping of voter lines in the East Jerusalem post offices, though stopped after requests were made to Israeli officials, also reduced voter turn-out. In Hebron, where the Israeli Army had not yet pulled out completely, voter turn-out was around 50 percent. Without a doubt, the most egregious examples of voter irregularity and intimidation took place in several of the Gaza Strip refugee camps. There, reports of vote manipulation were wider and intimidation more profound. There were observed examples of police officials "helping" voters choose candidates, of individuals voting for their entire families, and of a candidate's poll watcher arrested for speaking to one of the international monitors. Whether Palestinian Authority security personnel or poll watchers associated with Arafat's ruling authority acted on orders from superiors, or were merely over-zealous in their personal actions, is not clear. The Palestine Election Commission deemed irregularities to be sufficient in Gaza North to announce a re-vote in two stations, which took place on January 31. Although no one doubted that Arafat would win the presidential election in a landslide, voters, election officials, and local police did their best to show that this was a different Middle Eastern Arab election, in which civic responsibility did not mean "rubber stamping" the incumbent president or party. Amongst Palestinians on election day, palpable pride in the election process was noticeable. In the weeks before the assembly election, the campaigns for the Council were charged with enthusiasm, with political literature, pamphlets, and palm cards amply distributed. Pictures of candidates were plastered over seemingly every vacant wall space. Candidates' slogans and banners hung across the main streets. What kinds of conclusions can be reached about the conduct of these elections? Overall, it would be fair to say that as a transitional election, its technical preparation was excellent and its conduct was very good. Civic education projects undertaken in the months prior to the election by many non-governmental organizations, such as the National Democratic Institute, paid off with high voter interest, knowledge about the democratic process, and political participation. Procedures for carrying out the election were most often executed with great precision. On the other side of the ledger, council candidates, like Hanan Ashrawi, who had been the spokesperson for the Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid Middle East peace conference, complained impassionedly that those candidates who were associated with Arafat and the pre-existing Palestinian Authority had an upper-hand as "incumbents" in access to the media, press coverage, and in using their perks of office. There were irregularities in the tabulation of results, but they apparently Were not systematic, deliberate, or officially-sanctioned; rather, they had to do with the lack of experience or knowledge about how to transmit election results or how to do so in a timely fashion to District and Central Election offices. It appears that in less than 5 percent of the Council races did the tabulation of results have a direct impact upon who was to be seated in the Council. No comparisons could be made to the violence exhibited in the first round of the Egyptian national elections held last November, where more than 20 civilians died and dozens more were injured. Palestinian Arabs on the West Bank were clearly on a mission to show that they would not become automatic supporters of Arafat's politics or policies. Haidar Abdul Shari, a fervent nationalist who was head of the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Conference, and who assailed Arafat's autonomy accords with Israel as too conciliatory, told Le Nouvel Observateur in January that "we are taking part in these elections because we want representatives who take seriously their task of exercising control over the executive, by which I mean Arafat." In exit polls undertaken by Khalil Shakaki of the highly-regarded Center for Palestine Research and Studies in Nablus, it was shown that the overwhelming victory for Arafat as President of the Council "should not be taken as an unlimited mandate to him from the Palestinian people." Shakaki' s survey found that voters both want and expect the newly-elected council to have as much or more authority than that of the President. Two-thirds of voters expected the Council to have a significant role in decision-making on important issues; and two-thirds of the voters believe that guarantees for freedom of the press and human rights should take precedence, even if this contradicts what the Authority may see as national interest. Only 20 percent thought that the national interest should take precedence over freedom of the press and human rights. Most Palestinians realistically understood that these elections did not select an independent parliament. This was an elected council with its prerogatives severely circumscribed by agreements painstakingly negotiated between Israel and the PLO; this council cannot renegotiate the terms of those agreements which give to the Council prerogatives of implementing powers of authority in municipal fields already transferred to the Palestinians. The Council could draw up a Palestinian Bill of Rights if it saw fit, but the source of authority for the Council is the Israeli military administration, even though it has withdrawn from one-third of the territory in the West Bank and Gaza. Many Palestinians
saw these elections as an important crossroads for finalizing the mix
of Palestinians from inside the territories with those who struggled
against
For Israelis, these
elections were seen as a Palestinian ratification of the September
1993 and September 1995 Oslo agreements; those agreements specifically
called for the transfer of civilian authority to the Palestinians with
Israel retaining security control over more than two-thirds of the
West Bank. Most Israelis want Arafat and his newly-elected assembly
to be held accountable for maintaining tight security in the areas
under their control.
There were two outcomes of this election, one on the national level and the other local. On the level of high politics, these elections effectively consummated a portion of the agreement which Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made at Camp David with President Jimmy Carter in September 1978 to elect "a self-governing authority" for the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The elections were a phase in a series of interim arrangements between Israelis and Palestinians aimed at reaching a satisfactory political understanding between them. For Palestinians, democracy was not born on January 20, 1996; there remains considerable anxiety about Arafat's transparent autocratic rule. Elections alone do not make democracies, but relatively free and fair elections, as these were, reflect a sense of Palestinian personal entitlement and pride in participating in determining their own future. Promoting individual rights and freedoms is directly contrary to the concept of communal identity, which is the core of faith advocated by militant Islamic groups. In conclusion, from
polling data, candidate interviews, and from personal accounts volunteered
by Palestinian Arabs, there is no interest at all in celebrating the
end of
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