News from the Region
The Election Outcome: What Does It Mean?
By Kathy Kamphoefner
Quaker International Affairs Representative- Jerusalem
The January 25th Palestinian Legislative Elections were exemplary in the management of the process by the Central Elections Commission. The Jerusalem QIARs observed the elections at two Jerusalem post offices: at the Mount of Olives and in Beit Hanina. The Palestinian Israeli postal employees were most professional in their handling of the ballots, although voting at postal counters makes a secret ballot impossible. The nearly 2,000 election observers agreed that the elections and the vote counting were impressively clean, with the main violations occurring in campaigning at the polls.
Hamas’ won, in part, due to its record of providing much needed social services without regard to individuals’ political affiliations. They will need to meet these expectations, to provide better health care, jobs, economic and social development, and all-the-while under occupation.
We can take confidence in the election results, even if their outcome is not one we prefer. The democratic process has resulted in a change in the leadership, with 74 of 132 seats taken by Hamas candidates. Western and Israeli media are responding with great amounts of fear and further demonization of Hamas as terrorists. Israel has decided to withhold tax funds from the Palestinian Authority (PA). Another concern is that international donor funds will dry up, funds upon which the PA has depended for its day-to-day operations.
In spite of all the fear, it is a more likely scenario that Hamas will need to move slowly in making changes, in order to form the government and generate support for its policies. The election results are not so much an endorsement of Hamas, as they are a punishment for Fatah. The perception of Fatah corruption and the sense it has done nothing to help the common person were very important in shaping this election outcome.
Large international donors have helped contribute to some of this perception. Certainly the European Union’s work on establishing international accounting standards on the Palestinian Authority’s funds helped curb some of the corruption. Arafat’s patronage system had grown to about $2 million in monthly benefits paid to the disabled, widows and orphans of martyrs, and the like. The PA had begun the process of assigning the administration of benefits to the appropriate ministries and applying real criteria for the awarding of such benefits. This booted some 90% of recipients off the payroll, certainly an unpopular move. But such an outlay of funds was clearly not sustainable in the future. But large donors mostly funded state-building activities: new ministry buildings, democracy programs, rule of law projects, training the security forces and judges, but investing very little in employment or income generation projects which could better serve the public. So the public perception that the PA was feathering its own nests at the expense of serving its citizenry persisted, in contrast with Hamas’ squeaky-clean image.
The democracy-building projects of the U.S. Agency for international Development (USAID) contributed to tensions, as the suggestion that the U.S. is a paragon of democracy is soundly resented. Early in the election campaign, Hamas circulated a leaflet alleging key Fatah candidates were receiving election funding from the U.S. When the Washington Post broke the story on January 22, the Sunday of election week, that $2 million had been funneled anonymously to electioneering activities for Fatah, it probably did little to shift the votes. But the report reconfirmed existing perceptions of Fatah as being too closely tied to the U.S. government for most Palestinians’ comfort, as well as reconfirming the credibility of Hamas’ claims of corruption.
The rumors have already begun flying. For example, one Israeli newspaper published the completely false report that Hamas’ first action was to enact a law requiring all women must wear the hijaab, the Muslim headscarf. More realistically, Hamas has its plate full with far more important concerns. The rumor that international donors will not fund a Hamas-led Palestine is of more serious concern. If donors choose to withhold such funding, it will serve as a kind of collective punishment for the popular vote. Without access to legitimate sources of funding, Hamas will draw financial support for its programs from less desirable channels abroad, from Iran and Saudi Arabia and from other Islamicist movements.
The immediate challenges facing Hamas are to restore order and build national unity, as inter-factional violence and family feuds have increased in recent months, along with kidnappings of aid workers for the purpose of blackmailing the PA for jobs. Clearly there are too many guns inside Palestine now. Immediately following the election results’ announcement, Fatah youth stormed the Parliamentary Building in Ramallah, some 2,000 of them shooting into the air in protest. They were not protesting Hamas’ success; they were protesting the Fatah old guard, demanding their resignations, as they felt the old-style politicians had failed them.
Hamas’ won, in part, due to its record of providing much needed social services without regard to individuals’ political affiliations. They will need to meet these expectations, to provide better health care, jobs, economic and social development, and all-the-while under occupation.
The bread-and-butter issues gave Hamas its win over Fatah. Yet Fatah also was seen as giving up resistance to the Occupation, via the Oslo Process. So the vote is a further repudiation of the failed peace process. Hamas is seen as continuing the resistance. The challenge will be for it to do so as a state actor, rather than in opposition, an outcome even Hamas itself did not anticipate. Since both Israel and the U.S. Administration insist they will not negotiate with Hamas, Israel will continue its unilateral moves and on-the-ground Palestinian resistance will grow. We who work with The Palestinian nonviolence movement hope the Popular Committee’s prediction comes true. The Popular Committees against the Wall predict the next Intifada will be the Nonviolent Intifada. There are representatives of Hamas active in the Popular Committee’s nonviolence efforts; we hope their views will spread into Hamas’ leadership circles and encourage the Islamic Resistance Movement’s shift to using solely nonviolent means.
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