BY CANDACE WAGNER
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza went to the polls January 20 for the first time since the occupation of their land by Israel. Yasir Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), was elected president of the interim Palestinian administration, reportedly with 88 percent of the ballots cast. Another 88 candidates were elected as members of the Palestinian legislature.
Fatah, Arafat's organization, won at least 43 of these seats. But Arafat critics, including independents and Fatah activists who ran after being rejected from their party's offical slate, won some 40 percent of the seats.
The elections were organized after the Oslo agreement signed September 28 by Arafat and then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Samiha Khalil, an outspoken opponent of the Oslo accord, received 9.3 percent of the vote for president.
Arafat will administer two-thirds of the territory of the Gaza Strip and one-third of the West Bank. But Tel Aviv retains control of all borders and has veto power over questions of land and water usage. The interim Palestinian administration in the occupied territories will negotiate with the Israeli state on the next stages of Palestinian autonomy.
Current Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres called Arafat to congratulate him for the electoral victory and to remind the PLO head of his agreement to revoke the sections of the PLO charter that call for a democratic, secular Palestine in place of the state of Israel. Under the Oslo agreement, the PLO has two months following the first meeting of the Palestinian legislature to revise the charter. Peres said that all 483 members of the Palestine National Council (PNC), the Palestinian parliament-in- exile, will be permitted to return if such a vote is scheduled. The PNC is the only body that can alter the charter. The newly elected 88 Palestinian legislators are automatically members of this council.
Whether or not to participate in this election was debated by many Palestinian activists. Daoud Talhami, a member of the Palestine National Council, argued against the Oslo agreement and participation in the elections in an article in the al-Hayat newspaper.
He said the Israeli rulers want "to rid themselves of as many of the burdens of direct military occupation as possible, while preserving its benefits. These include the acquisition of strategic territory, the appropriation of its water resources and control of its economy."
"This entails risks for Israel," he added. "The Palestinian people are not sheep who can be driven to submit to agreements, or to the calculations and plans of the occupiers.
Other Palestinian groups, including Hamas, the main opponent of the PLO in the independence movement, also decided to stay away from participating or fielding candidates.
Hanan Ashrawi, who has been an outspoken critic of certain abuses of authority by the PLO leadership, argued for participation, although she too is a critic of the Oslo accords. "The agreement is flawed and I have said so from the beginning," she told the Palestine Report in November. "But we must deal with reality, not wishful thinking. I would encourage everyone to participate in these elections, because it is a chance to effect real change, and to rectify a negative process."
Ashrawi, one of four women elected to the council, won her seat as an independent. Ashrawi will represent Palestinians in East Jerusalem, where only a small percentage of Palestinians inside the city itself were allowed to vote. Unlike other towns in the West Bank where Israeli troops had withdrawn prior to the elections, Jerusalem is still under occupation.
The Israeli government claims Jerusalem as its historic capital. In October, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem by 1999, supporting Tel Aviv's claim. Negotiations on the city's future between the PLO and the Israeli regime are slated to begin in May.
The January 21 New York Times reported that hundreds of Israeli policemen sealed off streets, watched from roof tops, videotaped voters, and roughed up Palestinian election observers in East Jerusalem. Fewer than 40 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots there.
In all, 700 candidates campaigned for the 88 legislative offices. According to the Associated Press, 75 percent of the 1 million Palestinians eligible to vote cast ballots.
In a primary to nominate candidates for the Fatah slate, residents of Gaza City elected many who had been jailed by the Israeli regime for their participation in the resistance movement inside the occupied territories. In selecting the final slate, the Fatah leadership passed over most of these nominations and appointed older candidates, many of whom had lived abroad for years.
A number of the Fatah candidates passed over for the official slate decided to run as independents against intense pressure from the organization's central committee.
"We ask these people, `Where were you when we were fighting occupation?' " Osami Tibi, 24, told the Washington Post. Tibi accompanied one of the Fatah independent candidates. "These people didn't suffer as we did and they are not aware of the people's interests. They are aware of their own interests," he said.
In Bethlehem none of the candidates from the Fatah slate won a seat. Salah Taamari, a Fatah member who ran as an independent, received twice the votes of the sanctioned Fatah candidate.
Taamari returned from exile a year ago, after serving as a PLO commander in southern Lebanon and a leader of prisoners at the Ansar detention camp in the early '80s. He has led volunteer projects to build schools, clean up garbage, and repair damaged houses. "We can't wait for foreign donations," he told a victory meeting. "We have to depend on ourselves."