The Fate of Democracy in Palestine

(Published @ The American Strategist. October 22, 2008)


Late into the night of Friday October 3, 2008, in an effort to settle a dispute over whether Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has the power to extend his tenure as President and move elections for the next president of the Palestinian Authority until 2010, there was a meeting of high-level Palestinian officials, including Hamas' Nasser Eddin al-Shaer, the previous deputy prime minister of the PA and President Abbas himself, in Ramallah.

At the core of the dispute is a contradiction between the Palestinian Basic Law and an election law that took effect when Abbas was elected. In short, the Palestinian Basic Law states that the term for the President of the Palestinian Authority is four years, but an election law stipulates that the Palestinian Legislative Council and the President are to be elected in 2010. January 2009 marks the fourth year of Abbas's tenure. The current dispute is striking not because Abbas is trying to extend the reign of his political power (as many politicians do), but because the central question in Palestine is whether he has the legitimacy to do so.

In a strange way, this is the evolution of democracy; the struggle for constitutional legitimacy. Leaders of Hamas have stated that should Abbas unilaterally extend his tenure, Hamas will no longer recognize him as President. One Hamas official stated that, "We will remove his pictures from all the public institutions. Until now our policy has been not to challenge Abbas' legitimacy as the elected leader of the Palestinian Authority... If he wants to seek another term in office, he should contest new elections. By announcing that he will stay in power for another year, Abbas is acting in violation of the Palestinian Basic Law."

Futher, Hamas stated that an interim president would be declared if Abbas does not step down. That would be Ahmed Bahr, an important Hamas leader and the current acting speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council. To this, an official of the Palestinian Authority remarked that "Bahr forgot that he's only the acting speaker of the Parliament and that the speaker is Abdel Aziz Dweik (currently in Israeli jail)."

This legal squabbling between Hamas and Fatah over constitutionality and political succession is meaningful, if only because it stands in stark contrast to the paramilitary takeover by Hamas of the Gaza strip and to the tactical use of violence by both parties to undermine each other...a trend that continues. On Saturday, October 4, 2008, less than one day after Hamas leaders met with Abbas, Fatah was forced to beef up its security team as information leaked that Hamas was considering a coup-style takeover of the West Bank. Subsequently, Hamas denied that such a move was ever in real consideration.

Keeping the feet of Hamas and Fatah to the democratic fire, however, is the role played by an unlikely organization, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. As a warning to the parties in dispute, a leading member of Islamic Jihad declared that if reconciliation over this election dispute did not occur soon, then both parties should expect further violence to erupt.

Like it or not, with all of its thorns, this is democracy in action.