Under
An Iron Fist
By Karma Nabulsi
20 December 2006
The
Electronic Intifada
Palestinians
don't want fresh elections in the occupied territories, but a free vote
for a truly national ruling body.
"Let the people decide
for themselves what they want," declared Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian
Authority president, yesterday. But there already is a national consensus,
an underlying unity in a common platform. The Palestinian people are
agreed: indeed there must be Palestinian elections, but not another
round of elections in the occupied Palestinian territories, for a president
of the Palestinian Authority or for its legislative council.
The elections that all Palestinians
are demanding today (the millions under occupation and the millions
in the refugee camps outside) are for the Palestine National Council,
the parliament in exile, which is the national body that represents
all Palestinians. The PNC is the institutional body that forms the sovereign
base of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which is the sole legitimate
representative of the Palestinian people, recognised as such by the
United Nations, the Arab League, the US the EU, and the Palestinian
people themselves.
The Palestinian people under
occupation have already elected a legislative council under occupation
that represents a portion of the body politic. Today Palestinians demand
elections for the entire Palestinian population. The prisoners' "document
of national unity", agreed this summer, reflects that popular demand,
and made it a primary article of consensus and agreement between the
parties.
The moment Fatah lost power
in the legislative elections to Hamas in January, it was obliged to
take a step that would have brought it closer to the people it sought
to represent. It was obliged to step aside, accept the outcome of that
election, and the brute fact that its party had been defeated. In this
way it could have availed itself of the many democratic benefits that
accrue to those who lose power in an election: the opportunity to reconnect
to constituents, to learn why they had lost, to discover what they had
to do to regain their people's trust, to encourage them to cease being
leaders who worked for others, and begin the difficult but rewarding
process of becoming representatives again.
Instead, they were told they
were still in power, and told by the "international community"
they had to play this role or take responsibility for abandoning their
suffering people to even more cruel fate than what they were currently
enduring in Gaza and the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem.
And so, what we are witnessing
today is the horrific and inevitable outcome of a process of deliberate
coercion, designed to force an occupied people to surrender their elected
representatives. That this coercion is being carried out by the iron
fist of military occupier Israel, which is withholding vital Palestinian
taxes, and its neocon backers, the US administration, is to be expected
- and to be resisted.
What is harder to understand
is just how this coercion can be so flagrantly insisted upon by the
British, by the European Union, by the very actors who should be standing
by the Palestinians - if not for the shared common values of decency
and morality, then as part of their contractual responsibilities as
co-signatories to the fourth Geneva convention, obligating them both
to respect and ensure respect of the treaty that protects a civilian
population under military occupation.
The Palestinian people have
indeed already spoken: for elections to the Palestine National Council,
for lifting the economic boycott of a democratically elected authority;
for liberty and to independence.
Karma Nabulsi
teaches politics and international relations at Oxford University. She
is the author of Traditions
of War: Occupation, Resistance and the Law.
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