Two upcoming
elections in Israel and the Palestinian territories will play a
major role determining the future course of Israeli-Palestinian
relations. Israel's March 28 elections, which once appeared likely
to return Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister, now have been plunged
into uncertainty by Sharon's failing health. The Palestinian
elections, scheduled for January 25, are even more uncertain and
could be postponed at the last minute.
Sharon's grave
illness has suddenly clouded the Israeli political picture. The
Israeli Prime Minister, first elected in 2001 and re-elected in
2003, appeared to be headed toward another electoral victory before
he fell victim to a major stroke on January 4. A poll taken just
before he was hospitalized indicated that his Kadima ("Forward")
Party would win 42 seats in the 120-seat Knesset (Israel's
parliament), the Labor Party 19 seats, and the Likud Party 14, with
the remaining seats split among many small parties.
Sharon has been
temporarily replaced as prime minister by his deputy, former
Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert. Sharon's stroke may deal a mortal blow
to the Kadima Party, which he cobbled together in November after
leaving the Likud Party due to disagreements over his unilateral
withdrawal from Gaza last year. Olmert, who lacks Sharon's popular
support and political charisma, will have a difficult time holding
together Kadima's ambitious members, who hoped to retain power by
riding on Sharon's coattails.
The chief
political beneficiary of Sharon's incapacity is likely to be Likud
Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who stands to inherit many of the
voters who would have voted for Sharon. Netanyahu also may try to
coax some of Kadima's leaders who defected from Likud back into the
fold. But if Olmert manages to maintain the unity of Kadima and
replaces Sharon as its candidate for Prime Minister, the election
could produce a severely divided Knesset that would lead to a
coalition government made up of many different parties. The Labor
Party, under the new leadership of leftist apparatchik Amir Peretz,
could then take advantage of the bitter Likud-Kadima rivalry to
gain more seats in the Knesset and elbow its way into the next
government.
As uncertain as
the Israeli elections now appear to be, the Palestinian elections
are roiled by even more unpredictable factors. Mahmoud Abbas, a
weak and indecisive leader who succeeded Yasser Arafat as President
of the Palestinian Authority, faces major challenges to his
leadership from within Fatah, his own political organization, and
from Hamas, the radical Islamic movement that pledges to destroy
Israel and continues to be the leading source of Palestinian
terrorism.
There is a bitter
struggle within Fatah between Arafat's old guard, led by Abbas, and
a new generation fed up with the corruption, cronyism, and
authoritarian leadership that are Arafat's legacy. Abbas's old
guard supporters were severely defeated in primary elections by
younger leaders, and a bitter power struggle is now underway to
determine how many of the younger leaders will be included on the
Fatah list in the January 25 elections for the Palestinian
Legislative Council. If a satisfactory power-sharing agreement is
not negotiated, Fatah could break up into two or more factions,
further undermining Abbas's crumbling power base.
Even if Fatah
remains intact, it is expected to lose many seats to Hamas, which
is competing in the general elections for the first time. In 1996,
Hamas boycotted the elections because it opposed the Oslo peace
process, but now that Oslo is dead it seeks to gain power through
elections while continuing its terrorist campaign. Israel has
refused to cooperate in facilitating elections that would empower a
terrorist organization. It also has threatened to block voting in
East Jerusalem, which it annexed as part of its capital after the
1967 war.
In past elections
Israel allowed Palestinians in East Jerusalem to vote at post
offices using "absentee ballots" that would not undermine its claim
to sovereignty there, but it is not disposed to do so this time and
thus aid Hamas. Abbas has seized on Israel's lack of cooperation
and has threatened to use it as a pretext to postpone the
elections, which already have been postponed once before.
The United States
has pressured Israel to facilitate Palestinian voting in East
Jerusalem and to accept a political process that could empower and
legitimize a terrorist movement determined to destroy Israel.
However, promoting democracy as an antidote to terrorism will only
work if the political parties participating in elections are
required to disavow terrorism, as Hamas has not.
The Bush
Administration instead should make it clear that popularity alone
as measured at the ballot box does not make a genuine democracy. It
should strongly insist that two other criteria are benchmarks to
determine whether a political party that wins an election can be
considered truly "democratic": a violence test and a values
test.
A genuine
democratic party must reject violence, intimidation, and terrorism,
not only against its own people but also against other nations,
even if they are historic enemies. There should be no tolerance for
the fiction of distinguishing between a "political wing" and a
"military wing." Militias and terrorist organizations must be
dismantled before a party is accepted as a participant in
elections.
In terms of
values, political parties must not advocate racial or religious
discrimination. Many European states ban neo-Nazi and other racist
political parties. Parties that demonize other religions, as Hamas
does, are hardly fit to participate in elections. If Hamas
candidates do win, the international community will face a real
dilemma whether to ostracize them or gamble on the possibility that
they can be persuaded to moderate their radical stance.
The overarching
policy of the U.S. government should be to guide emerging, but
incomplete, democratic systems towards stability and political
maturity. This involves much more than encouraging people to vote.
The United States must establish benchmarks before the elections,
not afterwards. Otherwise, the United States will put itself and
Israel in an untenable position by helping Hamas come to power
through a "one man, one vote, one time" election process.
James
Phillips is Research Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies in the
Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a
division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for
International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.