Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

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Check points en route to polls for Palestinian election

It was not your average trip to cast your vote; you could not plan on standing in line shortly before you go to work or stop by and drop your ballot over lunch break. Despite news of easing Israel’s military grip and blockade, for Palestinian voters, it meant long, humiliating lines to pass through Israeli military road blocks and check points to reach a polling station, or a long, muddy, cold trek around the hills to avoid the humiliation of the young soldiers with long M-16s.

Yet, Palestinians turned out to vote at a rate of 65 percent, a few percentage points higher than that of U.S. presidential elections in November, to choose their new president. The last presidential elections there took place in 1996.

Some may like to be taken by the fact that free elections took place in an Arab nation, since much of what the mass media likes to talk about is the lack of democracy there, until it is brought on by the United States. However, what is miraculous here is holding such a successful election within an oppressed minority, under institutionalized military rule. Such institutional success under intolerable, oppressive conditions is unprecedented.

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The winner of the elections, by a significant 62 percent, is Mahmoud Abbas. More than anything on his agenda, Palestinians voted for Abbas based on his acceptability by the Americans and Israelis. As for a long time, Israelis maintained that former Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat, was an unfit partner for peace, and conveniently, the United States adopted that position. Not swayed by the argument, Palestinians were nonetheless eager to allow Israelis and the American administration no more excuses to refrain from working toward just and lasting peace.

Early indications from the White House seem encouraging. President Bush invited Abbas to visit Washington. It is hoped that such initiative leads to real effort and mobilization toward achieving a just peace that would spare Palestinian and Israelis alike. Ideally, such efforts would recognize the human rights of Palestinians to be equal to those of the Israelis, a recognition that will lead to a principled and just peace in historical Palestine, one that includes equality for Jews and Arabs under the law, constitutional guarantees of minority rights, institutionalized toleration for cultural autonomy, the basic right of the citizens to live where they choose, and the right to take full part in democratic processes.

Largely powerless, Palestinians remain on the receiving end of this effort, but once their rights are recognized, their armed resistance groups will no longer resort to arms to bring attention to their plight, and the public at large will acknowledge Israelis as neighbors and partners in a shared future. The current U.S. negotiation parameters of ending violence abruptly and the regularly disregarded demand to dismantle Israeli colonies and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian territories are impractical and no longer viable as an approach for a real settlement.

In the meantime, Abbas’ real challenge will be rebuilding a state that has been systematically destroyed by constant bulldozing, bombardment, and other methods of obliterating life and infrastructure. He is charged with rebuilding civic institutions, allowing for the resumption of normal life, such as making available work and education, ending corruption, reforming bureaucracies, and organizing and unifying the internal structure to deal with political developments. Such progress and improvement in quality of life are the beginnings of the process, headed by the new Palestinian leader, to prepare Palestinians for a shared future with the Israelis, a natural result of the impracticality of partitioning the tiny strip of land into different geopolitical entities segregated by walls and fences.

Differences in socioeconomic status, drawn along ethnicity lines, and discriminatory and disproportional distribution of the land’s wealth and resources are the main reasons behind maintaining the military occupation of the minority Palestinian population, resulting in incitement, and thus, retaliation expressed through violence. Improving the living standards of the Palestinian population and recognizing their human and civil rights are key to lifting the tension and to creating an atmosphere hospitable of peaceful coexistence.

To that end, significant assistance and backing of the new Palestinian leadership are essential requirements from the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and the rest of the international community. Potential efforts to discredit Mahmoud Abbas by Israel and its supporters must be resisted and confronted. And until Isreal’s recognition of the human rights of the Palestinians, pressure must be applied to Israel in the form of economic, social and political isolation. Similar was the case of the Apartheid regime in South Africa, when such grassroots pressure from around the world brought about free elections in 1994 in which all ethnicities and sectors of the society could participate.

Fayyad Sbaihat ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in chemical engineering.

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