Israel interferes in the Palestinian electionsIsrael interferes in the Palestinian electionsReprinted from Middle East International, No.517, 19 January 1996
As Palestinians ready themselves for their first national suffrage on 20 January, the mood in the occupied territories has swung from initial enthusiasm to one of deepening disillusion. This has little to do with the logistical problems of 676 candidates running for 88 seats in the new Palestinian council inside an official campaign ti me of less than three weeks . Or how the 1,013,235 registered Palestinian voters (around 70 per cent of the potential electorate) will manage to navigate the various Israeli army checkpoints and actually cast their votes in a truncated electoral jurisdiction made up of areas under Palestine National Authority control, areas partially under PNA control (such as Hebron) and wholly Israelicontrolled areas (such as Jerusalem).
The real Palestinian anger derives from recent Israeli actions on the ground which, in the view of Jerusalem candidate, Hanan Ashrawi, amount to "blatant interference in the internal Palestinian political arena". If Israeli Prime Minister Peres intended the elections to be a means to consolidate Arafat's base in the autonomy, the actions of Israel's security services appear bent on taking that base away. Israel has to decide what it wants with the PNA elections, says Ashrawi, "peace or domination".
On 5 January, Yahya Ayyash was handed a mobile phone inside the "autonomous" Gaza Strip. It blew half his head away. Ayyash was not just a Hamas member; he was the alleged "Engineer" behind a spate of Islamist-inspired suicide missions that have killed 50 Israelis in the last 20 months. Israel has neither claimed responsibility for the hit nor tried to deny involvement. "The elimination of Ayyash was a top priority for us," was all the internal security minister, Moshe Shahal, had to say. PNA security officials state bluntly that Israel's General Security Service (Shin Bet) was behind the killing, probably through the intermediary of a Palestinian collaborator.
Since September 1995, there had been a de facro hold on military operations brokered between the PNA and Hamas, tacitly reconfirmed at their "reconciliation" talks held in Cairo last month. In the year's last quarter, only one Israeli had been killed, admits the Israeli monitor, Peace Watch. But Hamas' unilateral cease-fire is unlikely to hold much longer. "Of course there will be revenge," says Gaza's Hamas spokesman, Mahmud Zahar. "The only way to get Israel to stop these attacks on Palestinians is to make the price too high for them."
The question is when. For Arafat, it is imperative that the Islamists do nothing that will jeopardise either the elections or Israel's ongoing redeployment in the West Bank. Islamist sources suggest that "a deal" may be struck to stall any retaliation until after 20 January and possibly beyond Israel's redeployment in Hebron (due to be completed by April 1996). But this cannot be guaranteed. On 8 January, Islamic Jihad issued a statement pledging that Israel would "pay a heavy and accelerated price" for Ayyash's assassination.
Israel is assuming that the price is likely to be paid soon. On 6 January, the army declared a five-day closure of the occupied territories, a security measure that has put "incredible limitations" on the work of the PNA's new Central Elections Commission (CRC), according to Muhammad Istaya, a member of the commission. Palestinian election observers complain that they have had to wait "for over a week" to receive Israeli "entry permits" enabling them to cross from one "autonomous zone" to another. Some have been denied permits altogether.
The restrictions are especially tight in Jerusalem, harbouring Palestinian suspicions that they are less to do with security than with ensuring Israel gets the political result it wants in the city - the lowest possible Palestinian turn-out. Soldiers are preventing candidates who live outside Jerusalem's municipal boundaries from campaigning inside the city. "There are 54 candidates running for the seven seats in Jerusalem, more than half of whom come from the villages" outside the nlunicipal borders, says independent candidate Zaid Abu Zaid. "This means condidates from within the city can canvas freely; those from without are canvassing illegally." Israel is allowing only 4,000 out of a Jerusalem city electorate of 49,000 to vote at booths inside the city itself; the rest will be shipped out to outlying villages, with the likely effect that many old and sick voters may simply not vote.
The crack-down reached its head on 14 January when Ashrawi, along with two other candidates, was prevented from entering Jerusalem because, said the army, "her car was plastered with election materials." Her driver and one of her campaign workers were beaten; Ashrawi herself was roughed up. "Israel does not want Palestinians in Jerusalem to vote," says Fatah candidate, Zahira Kamal. "Last week we were allowed in, now we are not."
These violations have so far been met with wholly inadequate responses from the 1,000 or so international observers supposedly on hand to ensure that the elections are "free and fair". Such passivity has merely added to a sense of Palestinian cynicism. "Let's be honest", said one domestic observer, for Israel and the international community "the only important thing is that these elections happen; not that they are correct."
Cynical is also the best way to describe Israel's treatment of Palestinian political prisoners. On 10 and 11 January, Israel released 1,030 prisoners. This was in line with a pledge made in the Taba Agreement signed last September that between 1,000-1,200 prisoners would be freed by "the eve of the Palestinian elections". An annex to the agreement stated that all women, sick, elderly and under-age detainees would be freed, leaving only those convicted of "serious crimes" (i.e. military operations against Israeli targets) still incarcerated.
But those actually released included "very few from these categories", says Palestine Prisoners Committee spokesman Isa Qaraqi. Rather, there were around 200 criminal prisoners released and 160 workers arrested recently for not possessing permits to work in Israel. None of the 36 female prisoners were released, triggering on 11 January an open-ended hunger strike by 25 of them. "We feel we have been sold a kind of deception," said Ziyad al-Atrash, who chairs the PNA's Higher Military Liaison Committee. Qaraqi talks of an impending "explosion" among the 3,800 political prisoners still interned in Israeli jails.
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