Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
May 18, 2006 - Nathan Brown presented his Policy Brief "Living with Palestinian Democracy." Larry Garber, the New Israel Fund, and Ori Nir, The Forward, served as discussants and Julia Choucair served as moderator.
Three speakers, all of whom were in Palestine to observe the recent elections there, discussed this dramatic turning point. Having demanded clean elections, the international commumity is now forced to deal with the consequences. As the experts discussed, Hamas' new position of power will have a range of implications for Palestine's domestic and foreign affairs.
The victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections has given rise to much soul searching in Washington about who lost Palestine. The main problem, however, is not U.S. policy but the underlying conditions in the last few months that have led to the victory of Hamas and to the impressive showing by both Shia and Sunni religious parties elsewhere in the region.
Hamas’s recent victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections highlights the deep crisis of secular Arabs. In today’s Arab politics, secular parties have either degenerated into marginal forces with no broad popular support or become gatekeepers of repressive regimes.
Since 1967, there were broadly two Israeli positions toward the Palestinians: the “outstretched hand” and the "iron fist" concept. Both have failed. In a discussed held at the Carnegie Endowment, Shlomo Avineri and Martin Indyk considered the historical context that gave rise to failed policies and contemplated prescriptions for a way forward.
Criticism of the PA’s growing authoritarianism gave birth to a “paper Palestine,” in which citizens have rights of free speech and assembly; independent judiciary adjudicates disputes; leaders are selected in elections overseen by an independent electoral commission; and a representative assembly monitors the executive. Yet the institutions that would ensure democracy are missing or lagging.
Mass demonstrations in Lebanon, joint protest rallies of Egyptian Islamists and liberals against the Mubarak regime in Egypt, and municipal elections in Saudi Arabia are just as much features of the current situation as are cease-fire declarations by Palestinian resistance movements and multiparty negotiations for forming a coalition government in Iraq.
The essential ingredient the Arab spring is not what occurred in the White House. It is, instead, what occurred on the streets of Ramallah, Cairo and Beirut.
The upcoming Palestinian presidential elections have raised a variety of questions. Here, experts discuss how the process has worked, what is at stake, and why other Palestinian elections are potentially more important.
On Iraq, the Middle East and the war against terrorism the Kerry team seems to be bereft of new ideas. Without a willingness to listen and respond to the views of Muslim states and peoples, a Kerry administration would be no more able than a Bush administration to reduce wider Muslim hostility, push for peace between Israel and Palestine, or formulate a new strategy in the war against terrorism.