Haaretz
Tevet 26, 5765
Whoever is elected to head the Palestinian
Authority on Sunday will bear heavy responsibilities but have no real
power to carry them out, a Palestinian author and peace activist warned
yesterday.
The candidates, said Fayssal Hourani, "attribute greater
importance to the election than it really has. Regardless of who is
elected, it is well known that he will have no serious authority. The
burden he will bear on his shoulders is very heavy, but the situation,
under Israeli occupation, doesn't give him the necessary tools [to deal
with it]."
Hourani, 66, was one of the first members of the
Palestine Liberation Organization to meet with Israeli peace activists in
the 1970s. He opposed the Oslo Accord from the start, believing it will
not lead to a two-state solution, but returned nevertheless to the
territories in the wake of Oslo along with other Palestinian exiles.
Today, he divides his time between Vienna, Ramallah and Gaza, and is
working on a study of Palestinian political parties over the last
decade.
Hourani believes that supporters of frontrunner Mahmoud
Abbas [Abu Mazen] have very limited expectations of him. "They see him as
a practical man who might bring about improvements in their difficult
daily lives. They are currently limiting their expectations to concrete
matters such as the ability to study, or to move from place to
place."
There are some among the Palestinian political and economic
elite who hope that Abbas will restart the peace process, Hourani
acknowledged. But he said that he had yet to meet anyone "who thinks that
there will be peace in the foreseeable future."
Hourani himself
does not believe that Abbas will manage to achieve even the limited
improvements for which the voters are hoping. He thinks that Israel will
treat Abbas no differently than it did Yasser Arafat. Nevertheless, he
sees two positive elements in the upcoming election: It has set the
Palestinian political arena in motion, and it proves that the
Palestinians, contrary to Israel's doomsday scenarios, are choosing
Arafat's successor peacefully.
The campaign, he said, had moved the
public debate from narrow issues of "a Qassam [rocket] here or not" to the
truly important questions - what the Palestinians want, what Israel
intends, what America wants and is capable of doing, what the chances are
for a Palestinian state.
What was noteworthy about the campaign, he
said, was that there was no serious argument between the different camps.
All of the candidates, he noted, were against the occupation, for reform,
against the separation fence, with the differences mainly ones of
style.
This was partly because the election had come about so
quickly (Palestinian law mandates new leadership elections 60 days after
an incumbent dies) but also partly because Palestinian political parties
were becoming increasingly less important, Hourani said.
He noted
that the two leading candidates, Abbas and Mustafa Barghouti, both had a
record of being at odds with their parties: Abbas resigned from Fatah's
central committee, while Barghouti quit the Communist Party (now the
People's Party) altogether. "The public doesn't care whether Barghouti is
still in the party or not, or whether Abu Mazen is officially part of the
Fatah leadership," he said.
Hourani praised the fact that Abbas was
using clear and direct language in his campaigning. That, he said, was
something the Palestinians needed. "Due to the adoption of unclear
messages and methods of action, they gave themselves the image of
aggressors, even though they have been hit hard by Israel in recent
years," he said. "Fighting messages obscured the fact that most of the
Palestinian public supports a peaceful solution. Abu Mazen is
reformulating the language and the leadership, and will be careful not to
give Israel excuses to justify its aggressive policy."
This clear
language, he added, was improving Abbas's image among the Palestinian
public.
Asked about Abbas's recent description of Israel as "the
Zionist enemy" that outraged many Israelis, Hourani responded: "I don't
understand what the Israelis want. Should Abu Mazen have termed it `the
neighbor who paid a friendly visit to Beit Lahia and killed six
children?'"