Elections impossible

The elections were cancelled as more Palestinians lose faith in a two-state solution, Khaled Amayreh reports from Jerusalem

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American actress Jane Fonda visits the family house of Fatma Kusbeh in Ramallah on Saturday as part of her trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories. Kusbeh lost two of her children during the Intifada

As had been expected, the Palestinian leadership has effectively cancelled the presidential and parliamentary elections that were supposed to take place on 20 January. A statement to that effect, issued by the Palestinian Authority on Sunday, said the organisation of the election on the designated date was rendered impossible by the continued military occupation of Palestinian population centres by the Israeli army.

The statement stressed that the elections would take place "as soon as the Israeli army withdraws from our cities, villages and refugee camps and ... ends its physical, humanitarian and financial siege on our people".

The cancellation or "postponement", of the elections is viewed here as an outcry to the international community to pressurise Israel to end its repression of the Palestinian people and re- occupation of Palestinian population centres.

The cancellation of the elections passed quietly and made no headlines in the Occupied Territories with very few Palestinians bothering to react or even reflect on it.

This is largely explained by the fact that most Palestinians, probably including the PA itself, had never really taken seriously the PA decision three months ago to hold the elections on 20 January as the implementation of the decision depended entirely on Israeli co-operation, i.e. the withdrawal of Israeli tanks from Palestinian towns and villages.

Indeed, the PA could now argue, somewhat convincingly, that Palestinian political reforms, an incessant American-Israeli demand, are being impeded by Israel and not by Arafat as alleged by the Bush administration and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

This fact, the PA leadership now hopes, will help shift attention from the issue of reforms to that of the Israeli re-occupation of Palestinian population centres.

The European Union has shown some understanding of the PA decision to cancel the elections.

A statement issued by the EU said "it was obvious that elections can't be held if there was no free movement for the Palestinians and if [Israeli] tanks continued to rumble in the streets."

For its part, the American administration has not reacted to the Palestinian decision.

Instead, the American Consul-General in Jerusalem Jeff Fieldman handed over the PA the third revised draft of the road map plan as approved by the quartet.

The draft, says Palestinian official Nabil Sha'ath is "soft on Israel and very hard on us".

According to the Israeli Hebrew paper Ha'aretz on 22 December, the new draft contains provisions stipulating that a Palestinian state can only be established "when the Palestinian people have a leadership willing and able to establish a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty".

Moreover, the draft urges Palestinians not only to "dismantle terrorist infrastructure" but also to "confront" anyone involved in terrorist activity. The Palestinians are required to collect unauthorised weapons in the very first stage of implementation of the plan.

The draft contains no provisions requiring Israel to freeze the construction of Jewish settlements even as Palestinians take measures to restore calm and combat violence; nor does it make any mention of such central issues as Jerusalem, borders, or, indeed, the right of return for Palestinian refugees expelled at gun point when Israel was created in 1948.

The most worrying aspect of the draft, however, lies in the elastic and ambiguous conditions it sets for "democracy, tolerance and liberty" while Israel can continue her repression, annexation, building of settlements and acts of assassination and state terror against the Palestinian people.

The PA leadership has not declared its final position on the draft, but most PA officials seem already disappointed with it, to say the least. This is due in no small part to the fact that it leaves most of the central issues -- which represent the crux of the Palestinian problem -- to latter-stage negotiations with Israel. In short, a repetition of the bitter experience of the Oslo-era talks.

Some Palestinian officials seem to be quite disenchanted with the entire US-led efforts and are actually losing hope (and faith) in the land-for- peace formula and the two-state solution prospect.

One of those officials is Saeb Ereikat, the erstwhile PA chief negotiator with Israel.

In an article entitled "Saving the two-state solution", published in the New York Times on 20 December, Ereikat warned that Israel's relentless construction of settlements and settler-only road in the West Bank was killing the prospect of the two-state solution.

"How are we going to reconcile support for Palestinian statehood with Israeli's construction of settlements? It has become clear that what Sharon and many other Israelis want is a "ghetto state" surrounded by Israeli settlements, with no ability to defend itself, deprived of water resources and arable land, with an insignificant presence in Jerusalem and sovereign in name only...Palestinians will never accept such a future."

Ereikat went on, "without a dramatic change in Israeli policy, the possibility of a two-state solution will be relegated to the history books...Israel has a right to peace and security. But if the international community and the Israeli public miss these opportunities, they will have only themselves to blame for the consequences we will all suffer."

This week, the Israeli army confiscated additional thousands of acres of farm land belonging to Palestinian peasants and farmers in the Salfit region, south west of Nablus.

This land will be added to tens of thousands of acres expropriated by the Israeli government for the apartheid fence separating the northern West Bank and Israel.

The fence is not being built along the former border between the West Bank and Israel proper, it is being erected several kilometres into the West Bank, which means that some of the Palestinian farmers' best land will be confiscated by Israel.

In light, more and more Palestinians are asking rather bitterly "where will we have our state, if ever?"