National unity among Palestinians should serve the national project of resistance and liberation, not set the stage for meaningless, parochial power sharing, writes Azmi Bishara 1. If there's national unity, why have elections? If Palestinian national reconciliation can be achieved through restructuring and reactivating the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and through the creation of a national reconciliation government, what is the point of holding elections? In view of the fact that the Palestinians do not even have a state yet, it seems that the purpose of any national unity government and restructured PLO is to oversee the process of reconstruction and resistance. A framework for national unity, not elections or power struggles, is the more sophisticated form national liberation movements should take under conditions of occupation and against the occupation, even in their primary phases. Meanwhile, the Palestinian factions cannot reach an agreement and the rift persists, so elections cannot be held at all. How could they be? Separate elections, one in Gaza under the supervision of Hamas and the other in the West Bank under Fatah's supervision? Or by using guns as ballots? Some people thrill to the sound of the word "elections" without giving the slightest thought as to what they mean or how they function under occupation, in the absence of a state, and in the absence of an agreement that sets base rules and upper ceilings for their competitors so as to prevent elections from turning from a way to constructively formulate and express common national interests into a mutually exclusive struggle for existence. If Palestinian elections are held after an agreement they will reignite internal strife. If they are held without an agreement, they will deepen the rift to the point of civil war. At that point it would be more appropriate to say that Palestinian elections "broke out". After the last Palestinian elections, praised worldwide for how democratic and fair they were, certain powers decided to impose a blockade in order to prove that the party that was elected was incapable of administering the affairs of the occupied territories in accordance with agreements that the elected party refused to recognise. What guarantee is there that the loser, whoever that may be, will recognise the results of the next elections? So far there is none. Nor is there a guarantee that the elections will not produce more endless turmoil for the Palestinians. That is what happened the last time, in addition to the sidelining of the Palestinian cause, the Palestinian refugees and every other major issue from what are presumed to be the agendas of the chief rival factions apart from the fight for power over a governing authority that has no sovereignty. The chief crime that has been perpetrated since the last Palestinian elections involved more than the refusal to honour the will of the Palestinian electorate and to rely, instead, on the blockade in order to break that will and efface the boundaries between what is and what is not patriotic. It also entailed embroiling the Palestinian people, the Arab people and the friends of the Palestinian people in an internal conflict that escalated to bloodshed and mass arrests on both sides. This crime delivered an enormous moral blow to the Palestinian cause. It cast to the wind all criteria for differentiating between disputes between the people under occupation and their conflict with the occupation itself. God alone knows which problem is more important in the minds of some individuals at present. Just try to imagine new elections against the backdrop of heightened tensions, riddled with bloodshed, followed by the refusal to recognise the results, accusations of forgery, and charges of capitalising on the embargo and conspiring with the occupation and counter charges of conspiring to establish an Islamic emirate. Imagine the stockpile of political experiences that will accumulate and preoccupy public opinion for years, sapping the energies of the Palestinian people while not a single mention is made of the occupation and the conflict with the occupation. What with cultural celebrations in the Arab cultural capital in Jerusalem with no mention of the occupation, and with charges hurling across to Gaza about creating an Islamic emirate, and settlers who are preventing farmers from harvesting their olive crops, there will be no sight on the horizon of an answer to the question as to when Palestinian political forces will devote themselves to the tasks of dealing with the occupation and the tragic state of Palestinian refugees abroad. All we hear at present is talk about compromise solutions that will lead to nothing apart from new elections. All the points in all the initiatives proposed so far are effectively no more than means to pass time and set the stage for another round of elections. The proposed national unity government is not really a national unity government but rather an interim government charged with arranging elections. The proposed agreement does not aim to lay the bases for a programme for building the resistance and setting certain boundaries to negotiations. The document, which not even its drafters believe in, aims to round out corners and smooth over rough spots on the way to elections. There are no goals or mechanisms to arrive at anything, apart from elections after a long blockade. What the Palestinians need now is for the factions to settle their disputes in the interest of building a national unity in which all factions take part through the institutions of the PLO and not just two through a power-sharing agreement. The unity of the Palestinian political struggle must be based on an agreement over a minimum level of consensus. If such an agreement can be achieved, then there is no need for elections before the establishment of a truly independent democratic Palestinian state. If not, then elections will only form yet another link in the conflict. This is not about rivalry within the framework of an agreement over principles. It is about conflict in the absence of common principles and in which anything goes because there is no state, which is to say no constitutional framework for regulating conflict. This has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with civil strife revolving around the struggle for power before a state is even in sight. Imagine the effects of the moral dimensions of all this on the values of entire generations. Imagine what it means for an entire generation of Palestinians to grow up in the midst of such conflicts for years to come. If the situation continues as it is for another decade there will be nothing left of the Palestinian cause. What counts is not the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority president or the Palestinian Legislative Council after January. Nothing and no one is legitimate outside the framework of the struggle for liberation. Liberation is won by means of an organised movement in which all groups and institutions are united behind that aim, derive their legitimacy from their pursuit of that aim, and work together in concert towards the realisation of that aim. Liberation is not won by elections. One of the strangest things in this contemporary Arab world of ours is that existing states do not hold elections for the purpose of the peaceful rotation of authority while a people under occupation are expected to elect their leaders in the absence of the state institutions needed to guarantee that the results of their elections will be respected. What a tragic irony it is when countries that have never had free elections in the many decades since their independence speak so fluently about the need to hold elections for the rotation of authority over a people half of whom are under foreign occupation and the other half of whom are displaced and scattered around the world. If national unity -- which should be the current goal -- can be achieved there is no need for elections. If not, elections are impossible. Clearly all efforts must be pitted behind reconciliation and national unity. 2. On dealing with Israel and the Arab peace initiative. There were two main dangers in the Arab peace initiative. The first was that it would not improve Saudi Arabia's image in the West and US public opinion (which was the real aim after 11 September). The second was that it would sacrifice major principles in the Arab position without receiving anything from Israel in return. There is no need to dwell on the first danger. With regard to the second, Israel reacted in two ways. The first was expressed by Shimon Perez's "Bravo! Encore! That's the way to behave. Now let's see some more concessions!" The more practical response was Sharon's incursion into Ramallah and siege of Arafat's compound. It is not just that Israel opposed the articles of the Arab peace initiative in substance. It refuses to negotiate with the Arabs collectively, insisting instead on separate negotiating tracks and separate peace deals. It doesn't even recognise the existence of the Arabs as a nation to begin with. So, we have the following: a separate peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, another one with Jordan, and a third interim one with the PLO. The last has failed because the Palestinians and Israelis cannot come to an agreement on any of the crucial so-called final status issues, and because at least two of these -- Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees -- call into play the entire Arab condition. But Israel wants the Arabs to bless and facilitate Palestinian concessions and it wants to exploit these in order to further normalisation. Recognition and normalisation are Israel's sole goal in the negotiating process. It is not interested in a solution to the Palestinian cause. If it could obtain normalised relations in exchange for just negotiating with the Palestinians, as occurred in the wake of Oslo, it would double its wins. There is nothing innocent about the renewed interest in the "Saudi initiative". In all events, there is nothing innocent in politics, let alone Israeli politics and, above all, Shimon Peres's politics. Israel's aim, obviously, is to turn it into a basis for negotiation in exchange for normalisation. The Arabs were wrong to have reaffirmed the initiative after Israel had rejected it. They made an offer. Israel turned it down, and that was that. Keeping it pending serves nothing but to expose it to becoming a negotiating subject, which is to say, a new ceiling from which the Arabs will be expected to make concessions. The only way to handle an initiative that almost jettisoned the Palestinian right to return (which is why Peres stressed the "Saudi initiative" as it stood before the Beirut summit when the reference to UN Resolution 194 was added) is to accept it as it is and to negotiate on how to implement it. To negotiate over the provisions is to void it of substance and to hand the occupation power the prize of normalisation. But the occupation power hopes to achieve more than that general and important goal. It has set its sights on other aims that have inspired its recent "positive interest". First, it wants to strengthen its alliance with Arab "moderates" against the forces of "extremism" by pulling the carpet of the Palestinian cause out from under the obstacles to normalisation. Second, it wants to inject new life into the separate negotiating tracks, either by creating a new track that would soon be made obsolete, as occurred with the Madrid conference, or by including "moderate" governments in the negotiations as a way to grease the extraction of concessions from the Palestinian leadership. In both cases, the aims are spurious. It seems reasonable, therefore, to compel Israel to make a choice: either to accept the initiative as it stands or to reject it. Israel must not be given the opportunity to circumvent such crucial demands as withdrawing to 4 June 1967 borders on all fronts (including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights) and the Palestinian right to return.
