Testing democracy

Are fundamental changes in the Middle East possible or are the protagonists unable to overcome the shackles of the past? asks Mohamed Sid-Ahmed

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The last few months have brought important changes to the most prominent arenas of conflict in the Middle East: in Palestine, with Arafat's sudden death and the election of Abu Mazen as head of the PLO; in Israel, with the emergence of a deep rift in the Likud coalition and the creation of a government that includes Peres as vice- premier; in Iraq, where the situation has become so critical that The New York Times, America's most prestigious newspaper, is calling for the postponement of the Iraqi elections scheduled to be held at the end of this month.

Abu Mazen's landslide victory in the Palestinian presidential elections surpassed expectations and guaranteed a comfortable majority for the Fatah candidate (67 per cent). The international monitoring group, which included Jimmy Carter and John Kerry from the United States and former French prime minister Michel Roccard representing the European Union, praised the elections as democratic and fair. However, Abu Mazen failed to convince Hamas and Islamic Jihad not to boycott the elections and to renounce violence in resisting Israeli occupation.

Although the Bush administration and Sharon's government welcomed the results of the Palestinian elections, both Sharon and Abu Mazen have adopted a cautious line towards one another, not only because the distrust that has built up over years of failed hopes and broken promises remains high, but also possibly to avoid falling victim to failures similar to those which confounded Bill Clinton's attempts at Camp David to hammer out a deal between the protagonists. There is also the fear that Sharon's freedom of manoeuvre is constrained, and that the understanding he has reached with Peres cannot counteract the rebellion he is facing from members of his own party, led by Netanyahu.

The real question now is whether the forces of change are stronger than the forces of mutual distrust and hatred, or whether the peace process will continue to be held hostage by the historical enmity between the two peoples. Moreover, can Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan become the basis of an agreement between him and Abu Mazen? Sharon wants the withdrawal from Gaza to be the last step in Israeli withdrawals from occupied territories while Abu Mazen wants it to be the first. Can these two antipodal stands be reconciled?

Clinton's aspiration to go down in history as the man who succeeded in resolving the intractable Middle East conflict led him to organise a meeting at Camp David between Arafat and then-Israeli prime minister Barak shortly before his second term came to an end. The meeting ended in failure, as did the repeated attempts he made to bridge the gap between the protagonists up to the last minute of his presidency. These failures triggered the second Intifada, which continued for four years and, unlike the first Palestinian uprising, took the form of an armed resistance. The Israelis retaliated ferociously, and the confrontation claimed many casualties on both sides, taking the level of mutual hatred to new heights. The parties are understandably wary of risking another similar failure which could, this time around, plunge the entire region into a new and uncontrollable spiral of violence.

As it is, the situation is far from stable. Iraq, which is poised on the brink of a civil war between Sunnis and Shias, is a focal point of the frustration and despair that is building up in the Arab world, and it is hard to see how matters will be helped by the upcoming elections.

2005 is meant to be a year of elections all over the Middle East, a year of building institutions and of testing democracy in practice. The test will be particularly taxing for the Palestinians who will be holding legislative elections in mid-2005 and municipal elections at the end of the year. This faces both Palestinians and Israelis with difficult choices. Will the Palestinians succeed in implementing democracy systematically? And if they do, will Israel acknowledge their success?

Moreover, does the successful conduct of the Palestinian elections offer hope of a similar success story in the Iraqi elections? Or could the failure of the Iraqi elections bring about a failure on both fronts? The future of the Middle East, and perhaps of the whole world, could depend on the answers to these questions.

What Sharon wants is not to end Israel's occupation of the territories it annexed in 1967. To justify hanging on to the spoils of war, he accuses the Palestinian Authority of not renouncing terrorism and holds it responsible for any acts of violence carried out by Palestinians. The PA responds that it has proved itself capable of upholding democracy, as demonstrated by the absence of any significant fraud in the recent elections and the smooth and orderly political transition that was successfully carried out in extremely difficult conditions.

What the Palestinians want is the restoration of their occupied territories and the restitution of their legitimate rights including the right of return and the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

How to "contain" the Palestinian opposition and convince it through dialogue, and without resorting to violence, to renounce the use of violence? Are there "democratic" means by which pressure can be brought to bear on opposition groups? Can some sort of compromise be worked out, whereby all parties agree to observe a cease-fire for a specific period that would be renewed only if it proves mutually beneficial in practice? Can there be a functional distribution of roles between Abu Mazen and his prime minister Ahmed Qurei whereby the president would handle the political aspects and the prime minister the administrative? This would allow Abu Mazen to focus his efforts on the inter Palestinian dialogue while Qurei would be in charge of whatever disciplinary measures are needed. Moreover, what role can Farouk Qadoumy (Abu Lotf) be called upon to play? Qadoumy is the last surviving member of the original Fatah leadership. Chosen to replace Arafat as head of Fatah, he is known to be closer to the organisation's hawks than to its doves and has spoken out openly against the agreements signed by the PLO with Israel.

The Palestinian Authority will be hard-pressed to observe its commitment to democracy in the face of the challenges it is facing not only from militant Palestinian factions but also from Israeli extremists. Sharon's far-right opponents in the Likud will not sit quietly by while he attempts to work out a deal with the Palestinians that involves conceding a single inch of occupied territory, however skewered it may be to Israel's advantage. If he wants to avoid a fate like Rabin's, he must bow to the pressures of his real constituency, which is made up of the settler movement and other right-wing forces. Already, despite earlier statements that he would give Abu Mazen time to re-organise his security forces, he responded to last Thursday's suicide bombing by cutting all ties with the Palestinian Authority.

Will the inclusion of Shimon Peres as "the senior deputy prime minister" in Israel's new coalition government be a moderating factor that can temper Sharon's intransigence, or will it, rather, help him push his hard-line policies through by cloaking them in less provocative terms? Is the new government, made up of Likud, Labour and the ultra-orthodox United Torah Judaism Party, better placed to push the peace process forward or just the opposite? Can we see Sharon, Peres and Abu Mazen joining forces against the Israeli far- right, or would such a regrouping be more likely to work in concert, albeit implicitly, against the Palestinian hardliners who still advocate the use of violence in the struggle against Israeli occupation? It is still too early to predict the answers to these questions, but what is certain is that the way they are answered will determine the future of democracy throughout the region.