Palestinian divide deepens with day of local elections

While the American presidential election dominates international news, Palestinians on the West Bank are caught in their own election fever. After years of stagnation and mismanagement, over half a million Palestinians will return to the polls on Saturday to vote for new local leadership. But the regressive nature of the Palestinian political landscape threatens to derail the municipal elections before the first ballot is cast, succinctly demonstrating the current Palestinian leadership's lack of vision.

Back in 2006 - the last time Palestinians went to the polls - Hamas won a surprising number of seats in the Palestinian parliament. This victory laid the groundwork for a bitter falling out with Fatah, the party that has historically represented Palestinians, and dominates the Palestinian Authority. Brief armed clashes between the parties gave way to division of control between Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza.

And in spite of hopes that Egypt's new leadership would push the Palestinian factions closer together, the division looks far from disappearing.

Developments connected to the upcoming local elections confirm this. No vote will be held in the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip in protest at what the Islamist party claims to be Fatah intimidation and lack of a fair playing field. The party has encouraged its members in the West Bank to boycott elections, further deepening division between the West Bank and Gaza. Last summer saw a documented rise in arrests of Hamas party members in the West Bank in raids conducted by American-trained Preventive Security Forces.

This sustained assault on the ranks of Hamas is nothing new. Almost as soon as Hamas assumed power in Gaza, the party complained that PA security forces were cracking down on its members in the West Bank. The situation has grown worse over the years with larger raids and increasing use of detention without trial for Hamas members as a means of keeping them from political activity.

The absence of Hamas is not the only major obstacle for the upcoming election; Fatah is also showing serious signs of internal division.

Of the more than 350 districts in the West Bank, only 169 will hold elections due to lack of candidates. In districts with expected high voter turnout like Ramallah and Bethlehem, some Fatah activists have split from the party and filed their own list of candidates after the party removed them from ballots for refusing to toe the official line. Lack of internal discipline, a reason often cited for Fatah losses in the last round of elections, has seemingly entrenched itself in the party.

With the United Nations statehood debacle promising to return after the American election, long standing cracks inside Fatah are growing too large to ignore. Waves of arrests of former Fatah members in the northern West Bank village of Jenin this summer, as well as last month's large economic protests, are unavoidable signs of Fatah's growing inability to govern the limited territories that are granted by Israel.

There are some bright spots to be found in the upcoming election saga, despite the problems on display across the Palestinian political spectrum.

For one, where voting will take place, it is expected to be fair and transparent. This is due in no small measure to the tireless work of the Ramallah-based Central Elections Commission, the body charged with electoral oversight. In fact, the 2006 balloting marked one of the first episodes in the modern Middle East when an opposition party won power through the ballot box.

While the process of voting in Palestine might be fair, transition of power is more convoluted. In the traditionally conservative city of Hebron, one surprising ticket is trying to take advantage of the deadlock and infighting to push forward a radically bold agenda. For the first time in Palestine, an all-female list of candidates is running for local leadership. Led by Maysoun Qawasmi, a journalist and women's rights activist, the list called By Participating, We Can aims to elevate the visibility and position of women in political life.

Under a quota system, at least three seats are guaranteed for women on the 15-seat Hebron city council. Ms Qawasmi, who wears a traditional headscarf, wants to change this, all the while harbouring no illusions about the difficultly of reforming a religiously conservative society.

"If I register my list in the electoral committee, I will win - even if I don't have any seats," Ms Qawasmi told me in her cluttered Hebron office recently. "I need one generation, 33 years to change, but I am beginning. Let my daughter do something for change."

Given the political stagnation that has hung over the Occupied Territories for the past six years, Ms Qawasmi might just have ideal timing to plant a seed of change in the Palestinian political imagination. She is introducing a new discussion into the local political discourse at a time when national unification has never seemed further away and stagnation is the first word on many people's minds when it comes to politics.

Listless and without a clear strategy to combat Israel's relentless campaign to entrench occupation beyond repair, the Palestinians are desperately in need of a paradigm shift. Despite the small glimmers of hope for change, the upcoming local elections are merely demonstrating how far away such a shift might be.

Joseph Dana is a journalist based in Ramallah

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