Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

Good News on the Palestinian Front

This seems encouraging: Ha’aretz reports that Palestinian proponents of liberal democracy are mobilizing to provide an alternative to the gunman kleptocracy of Fatah on the one hand and the Islamist theocracy of Hamas on the other.

An earlier attempt in this vein, in which now prime minister Salam Fayyad took a leading role, yielded paltry results at the polls. This time, however, Palestinian liberals hope to benefit from widespread disgust at the internecine fighting between Hamas and Fatah.

This is certainly good news.

But, in the interest of finding a dark cloud in every silver lining, I do have to confess a certain concern that the emergence of such a movement as an electoral force might split the vote of Palestinian opponents of Hamas. It’s worth recalling that Hamas, in its 2006 electoral victory, won a parliamentary majority without winning a majority of the popular vote. The Islamist movement’s victory was due in large part to Fatah’s inability to maintain a united front. Instead, candidates aligned with Fatah competed with one another, handing the election to the more disciplined Hamas.

The recent rout of Fatah in Gaza underscored that Palestinians desperately need an alternative to Hamas that is dedicated to building democracy, advancing human rights and fighting corruption. One can only help that efforts to build such a movement do not yield unintended consequences.

UPDATE: The New York Times reports that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is planning on ending constituency-based voting in the next elections. That’s where Fatah’s disarray resulted in Hamas picking up a ton of seats. By moving to a more strictly proportional system, Abbas would be removing the danger that a third party could siphon votes from Fatah thereby handing victory to Hamas. So my silver lining no longer has a dark cloud accompanying it.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.