Pre-election disarray

With more violence marring Fatah's primaries, it doesn't look good for Palestinian national elections in January, reports Khaled Amayreh from the West Bank

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A Palestinian woman cries over her son who was killed by Israelis; and (right) Palestinians look at the dead body of a compatriot

Despite repeated assertions by Palestinian Authority (PA) officials that Palestinian legislative elections, scheduled for 25 January, will be held on time, there are growing fears that the polls will be postponed, pending more favoured "political" and security circumstances.

This week, Fatah, the de facto governing party, held an additional round of internal elections, or "primaries", to select the movement's candidates for the parliamentary vote. The polls, however, were generally marred by violence, thuggery and vandalism, as well as vindictive recriminations, prompting many to doubt their validity. In the small town of Halhul, just one kilometre north of Hebron, gunmen affiliated with Fatah seized ballot boxes and set them on fire.

In other places, scuffling gave way to gunfire, though fortunately there were no casualties.

In Hebron, where former Preventive Security Chief Jebril Rajoub reportedly emerged victorious, receiving 13,000 votes, the city's local Fatah committee on 6 December declared the entire elections "null and void". Rajoub and other winners strongly rejected the committee's decision, dismissing its members as "not knowing what they are saying". Some of the losing candidates said they would quit Fatah altogether while others vowed to form electoral lists of their own, or run as independents.

Fatah's primaries, instead of unifying the movement, have created more internal divisions and not a small measure of bitterness within an already heterogeneous movement. Facing a strong and unified Hamas, the Palestinian leadership (not only in Fatah, but the Fatah-dominated PA), has only six weeks to put its house in order. PA and top Fatah leaders repeatedly referred to the primaries as just "one factor out of many" in the process of selecting the movement's candidates for the legislative elections.

The implication here is very clear; namely, that the senior leadership may not necessarily endorse, as final candidates for the 25 January polls, those who have won in their respective electoral circles in the recent primaries. This being the case, more divisions and turmoil could be expected within Fatah, which might very well lead to one of two scenarios: the creation of two or more Fatah lists to contest the elections, or the cancelling of the legislative elections altogether.

The latter option is not a remote possibility. There are already many Fatah leaders, especially within the so-called "old guard," who are pushing for the postponement of the elections. The growing dominance of (Marwan) "Barghouthi's line," as evident from the outcome of recent elections in the Ramallah and other regions, threatens marginalisation, if not exclusion, for Fatah veterans, many of them in their sixties and early seventies.

Others are worried that if Fatah members can't behave themselves amid internal elections, violence and even bloodshed should be expected when the main competition is between Fatah and Hamas.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to threaten the arrest of candidates deemed as "militants". The Israeli army has already arrested over 1200 political activists, the bulk of whom are affiliated with the Islamic resistance group, Hamas. The threat, which is very serious, underscores the contemptuous indifference with which the Israeli government views the entire Palestinian elections.

It also shows the inherent precariousness of holding elections under foreign military occupation, without security, stability, freedom of movement, and above all, without freedom and sovereignty.

Notwithstanding, Palestinian political factions seem to have made up their minds in favour of holding the elections, hopefully on time. This week, Hamas announced the names of their candidates in the Gaza Strip and much of the West Bank. The list includes a number of prominent political prisoners and Islamist luminaries, including Jamal Natshe, Saleh Aruri, Nizar Ramadan, Muhammed Abu Jheishe, and Muhammed Ghazal. Other candidates include Nayef Rajoub (brother of Jebril Rajoub), Aziz Dweik, Sheikh Hamed Beitawi, Ahmed Al-Haj Ali, and several other professionals and university professors.

Hamas's list in Gaza will also include, inter alia, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, Mushir Al-Masri and Rasha Al-Rantisi, widow of the late Hamas leader Abdul Aziz Al-Rantisi, who was assassinated by Israel more than two years ago.

The popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has also selected its candidates, headed by its Secretary-General Ahmed Sadat, who is imprisoned in Jericho under joint American- British supervision. Other leftist groups have yet to choose their candidates amid desperate efforts to contest the elections with one united list representing the Palestinian left.

According to insiders, efforts to unify the left have so far failed and a report published in Al-Quds Arabic newspaper on 6 December suggested that at least four leftist lists would contest the elections on 25 January. This suggests that the left won't be able to form a credible "third force" that could have a semblance of political weight even remotely corresponding to that of Fatah or Hamas.

In the final analysis, the mere organisation of Palestinian elections can't be considered a foregone conclusion. A sudden outbreak of violence, such as the bombing attack in Netanya, north of Tel Aviv, on Monday, could force the PA leadership to cancel the elections.

Finally, there is a truly surreal aspect in the upcoming Palestinian elections: the leaders of nearly all electoral lists are imprisoned in Israel, some for prolonged periods, such as Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi. This means that even if the elections go ahead unhindered, as many as one-fifth of next Palestinian parliament will not be able to claim their seats.

This prospect alone characterises the entire Palestinian scene.