America Working Hard to Build the Arab World's Second Democracy

[Phaedrus]

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Palestinians Set to Vote in Elections

By STEVEN GUTKIN


HEBRON, West Bank (AP) - Palestinians formally ushered in the post-Yasser Arafat era on Sunday with their first presidential election in nine years, but the successor to the revered leader - widely expected to be Mahmoud Abbas - doesn't have an easy job ahead of him.

<!--StartFragment --> The vote has the potential to usher in the Arab world's first genuine democracy with a peaceful transfer of power that will augur well for the dream of a Palestinian state. Analysts cautioned, however, that the front-runner will need a strong showing to push forward with his agenda of resuming peace talks with Israel and reforming the corruption-riddled Palestinian Authority.

Four years of bloody conflict with Israel also have deflated expectations. Many Palestinians say they will settle for simpler achievements: jobs, clean government, an end to ubiquitous Israeli roadblocks.

``We don't need theater,'' said 68-year-old Saud Jaradat, a village elder in Sair, near Hebron. ``It's time to start solving our problems,'' he said in a clear reference to Arafat's four decades of roller-coaster leadership.

Underscoring the challenges, Palestinians and international observers said Saturday that Israel was slow to fulfill its promise to ease travel restrictions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to ensure a smooth vote.


Some 1.8 million Palestinians are eligible to vote. More than 2,800 ballot boxes were shipped Saturday to 1,077 polling stations in the West Bank and Gaza.


Only a small fraction of the estimated 120,000 eligible Palestinian voters in Jerusalem will be permitted to cast ballots in the city, however, with the vast majority being forced to travel to special polling centers in suburbs.

 

[WHALE]

Good luck !!! Mahmoud Abbas.

 

[docmercer--banned]

Mazen may wear a suit while Arafat wore fatigues but much of their world view is still the same - the destruction of Israel remains on the "to-do" list ...

The PLO charter calls for the complete destruction of the Israeli state ... Mazen bankrolled the 72 Olympic Massacre in Berlin

This AINT GONNA WORK and if ya think so go read about the history of this conflict ... this is similar to Goebbels being elected to head up Germany in 1946

 

[WildBill]

It better Doc because there is no alternative. In many ways it takes a person on a certain side of the spectrum to introduce change or else it gets no support or credibility. Sort of like now, Kerry could never get a tax increase through Congress, but Bush could under the right circumstances. Abu Mazen isn't a loved guy in Israel, but if he uses his ability to drive his base to a more peaceful tone and gets them to cut out most or all of the suicide bombings, then people will forget his background. A peacenik would just be ignored and has no chance of getting that accomplished.

 

[Marco]

"Sort of like now, Kerry could never get a tax increase through Congress, but Bush could under the right circumstances."

Bush gets a lot of things done under the right circumstances....usually they involve spreading the bribes around and greasing the right wheels.....Bush would just do as he's done all along. Buy the people he needs and make sure to keep a good chunk of the money for himself.

"...cut out most or all the suicide bombings.."

Fat chance. Been happening for decades, and will continue.
The goal of the Palestinians is the DESTRUCTION of Israel, not EXISTING ALONGSIDE Israel. Big difference there.

 

[Phaedrus]

Abbas won. Bush is tickled:

Bush Promises U.S. Help After Palestinian Election

(Reuters)

<!--StartFragment -->WASHINGTON - [size=-1]President Bush praised Sunday's Palestinian elections as an essential step toward the goal of statehood and promised to help the new president, Mahmoud Abbas, in a renewed push for peace with Israel.[/size]

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[size=-1]In a written statement, issued by the White House, Bush said the new Palestinian leadership faces "critical tasks ahead," including fighting terrorism and combating corruption. [/size]

[size=-1][/size]

[size=-1]He called on Israel to "improve the humanitarian and economic situation in the West Bank and Gaza," and said Arab states "must take concrete steps" to deny assistance to militants attacking Israel. [/size]

[size=-1][/size]

[size=-1]Bush said Sunday's presidential elections -- and parliamentary elections that will follow in several months -- "are essential for the establishment of a sovereign, independent, viable, democratic, and peaceful Palestinian state that can live alongside a safe and secure Israel." [/size]

[size=-1][/size]

[size=-1]"The United States is looking carefully at how we can best organize and fund our own efforts to help the parties achieve a lasting peace," Bush said. [/size]

I have always thought that Israel should take the initiative on peace, using my own personal plan for the Green Line, outlined in this post but condensed here:

... this same strategy would end the crisis in Israel overnight -- simply retreat to the Green Line, and let the Palestinians have free reign to do whatever they please, on the understanding that all it will take is for one suicide bomber to come across the line to get every square inch of Palestine carpet-bombed, and Cairo, Damascus and Tehran nuked if they so much as sneeze in the direction of Jerusalem in response.

Phaedrus

 

[WildBill]

Fat chance. Been happening for decades, and will continue.
The goal of the Palestinians is the DESTRUCTION of Israel, not EXISTING ALONGSIDE Israel. Big difference there.

I don't think this is necessarily true anymore. Might have been many years ago, but I think the average Palestinians aren't stupid and don't necessarily support the thinking of the old-line warriors. They realize their best chance is to have peace and then engage the Israelis as their biggest trade partners, but their voice isn't heard as long as terrorists are the ones with the guns and run the show.

Back when nothing was safe and Israel wasn't much richer than the Arab world, this might have been a reasonable assumption. But in a globalized world and you have this huge advantage of connections to a very rich country (for that part of the world) next door, it becomes very easy to decide to forget about destroying them and just work on having them make your lives better. After all if you were to harm their economy, you are just harming yourselves because they have no real friends in the neighborhood. Business and standard of living are the first considerations in the world today, not war and religion. That is old thinking only a small percentage, a vocal one, still cling to. The average guy just wants to have a peaceful life with an opportunity to make things better for his family.

So sure a bombing here and there might happen, but at some point if you have a functioning leader whose policy is peace, the people are going to stand up and tell their troublemaking neighbors to knock it off or be knocked off. They will tell them "every person you kill in Jerusalem is not an infidel to me anymore, they are a potential customer". That is how peace will look in the long run, and I am hopeful it isn't that far off.

 

[Marco]

This fighting has been going on for decades and I'm supposed to believe that the next guy coming down the pike is going to have everybody singing John Lennon tunes in a year or so......

I'll have to see it before I'll believe it.....until then I'll open my Yahoo homepage tomorrow or the next day and see a usual headline of "27 killed in bus bombing near Palestine border"

These people are taught at an early age to hate, and there are plenty there willing to strap on an explosive charge and die for some deep seated religious belief....

Even as tolerant as the US citizens have become of certain people living inside the US, the KKK is still alive and well.

Two or three bombings next week in the middle east should hardly be a surprise to anyone.

 

[eek.]

I suppose it depends on the deal.

The Israelis blew away their Prime Minister (Rabin) when he was about to sign on the dotted line in the nineties.

There's chaos and various factions in Gaza, but the Palestinians have never tried to assasinate their own leader.

 

[docmercer--banned]

The trading of land for Peace is a joke ... especially with dealing with Arabs (Palestinians) that have one goal:

the complete destruction of Israel as a state

Abbas is a certified Jew Killer ... bankrolled the 72 Olympic Massacre and wrote a paper stating the Holocaust basically did not exsist

Lets get real .... Peace is not forthcoming .. any Peace at all will be shortcoming and Israel has time and time again tried to negotiate .. Palestinians are nothing but Arabs kicked out of countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia when they attacked Israel in 1948

Tired of hearing how the Israelis are the agressors in this conflict ... it aint true and never has been

 

[WildBill]

Both sides say the same thing, but notice Doc there is no army roaming the Israeli nation other than their own. But for now, tell me when was the last Palestinian suicide bomber? Hasn't been one since Arafat died I believe. People so far seem to have followed the wishes of Abu Mazen and Israel has mostly stayed out of making moves that could influence the election. I know you don't think peace is possible here, but do you really think it is preferrable to make a mockery of a rare election in the Middle East just because you hate the Palestinians? They aren't going anywhere and the land they reside on now isn't serving Israel much. They might as well cut them loose and let them have something they are required to control. If they get out of line you know the Israeli army will be coming in quickly. Will there be complete peace? Of course not, there will be flare ups. But my belief is the next round of trouble will be internal, the power struggle in Palestine will bring out the guns against each other and I am sensing just maybe the more peaceful side (at least towards Israel) will come out in the end.

 

[docmercer--banned]

Wildbill: I dont hate the Palestinians ... I am stating it is wrong to expect to reward Abbas with a state right next door to Israel

The Palestinian Authority employs 30,000 security and police officers in the Gaza Strip. Yet they have not taken the slightest step to restrain terrorist attacks on Israel .... But the relentless mortar and missile assaults on Israeli targets in the Gaza Strip are too egregious to ignore or swallow – particularly in view of charges from Israeli residents of the Gaza Strip that Sharon is deliberately throwing them to the wolves. Furthermore, on December 12, a mixed Palestinian team blew up the Desert Reconnaissance Battalion’s post at the Rafah border crossing to Egypt, killing five Israeli soldiers. Discovered near the Gaza-Israeli crossing six days earlier was the Karni Tunnel which the Palestinians had designed for massive explosions across the Green Line inside an Israeli village - mostly probably Kibbutz Nahal Oz. The Israel officer who made the discovery was killed on the spot in a ferocious Hamas attack

Palestinian groups based in West Bank hotbeds may present the appearance of having mostly turned away from their archetypical massacres of Israeli civilians. In this territory, the Palestinian Authority, namely Abu Mazen, demonstrates a remarkable capability for reining in or at least fine-tuning the level of Palestinian terror as and when it suits him, meaning when he needs international help to gain Arafat’s seat.
This is a far cry from a commitment to dismantle the terrorist organizations, for which he has thus far not lifted a finger. It is a fact that Palestinian terrorism continues – not only in the Gaza Strip, but in mutated form from the West Bank too.

This December saw eight Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israelis. Two Israeli women were slashed to death and two Israeli men were badly injured. In the mixed Jerusalem suburb of Abu Tor, the Shin Beit caught a Palestinian preparing a suicide attack on behalf of the Hebron Hamas – not by himself; he wanted to persuade his 16-year old fiancée to “volunteer” for the deadly role. All these episodes were quickly brushed out of sight:

December 6, two Palestinians stabbed a middle-aged Israeli man in Abu Tor. His assailants escaped after injuring him moderately.

December 21, Ariela Fahima, 39-year old mother of four, died of a slit throat and other knife wounds outside her home in Moshav Nekhosha, southwest of Jerusalem.

December 26, Ziona Spivak, 67, was slashed to death in her apartment at Assa St, Jerusalem. The type and number of her injuries indicated two killers. She is thought to have opened the door to them. There were no signs of a break-in or burglary, but the murderers left the bloodstained knife behind, a common practice of Palestinian terrorists.

Earlier that day, two Palestinians attempted to stab an Israeli guard at Jerusalem’s downtown Klal Center. He drove them off after sustaining light injuries.

December 28, a Palestinian youth was captured near Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs armed with a “shabariya” dagger. He admitted he was about to attack an Israeli soldier or police officer protecting the shrine.

Hebron police admitted two similar incidents had taken place previously this month, neither published....That same night, a young Palestinian woman turned herself into the Hebron police and surrendered a knife which she had intended using against an Israeli.

Some common features stand out from these episodes, aside from the use of a lethal blade. Most were carried out in the early afternoon on the assumption that then security and police officers take their midday meal and are therefore less alert. Moreover, the perpetrators mostly operated in pairs. And the knife offensive has so far focused on Jerusalem and Hebron, which is situated in the southern West Bank about one hour’s drive from the capital.

The Palestinians are believed by terrorism analysts to be testing the ground for Israel’s reaction. There has been none. In fact, the general official approach is to play down each separate incident by suggesting that all avenues, including criminal assault, are under investigation. This approach blurs the issue and conceals the hand behind the attacks.

It also leaves the Israeli public unprepared for Palestinian knifemen on the hunt for victims in broad daylight and without the means to tackle the menace.

Since no one is stopping it, this form of low-grade terror may well multiply and spread to other places. Conspicuous terrorist operations in Israeli cities would damage Mahmoud’s international standing as a peacemaker and negotiator and jeopardize the flow of foreign funds lavished on him since Arafat’s demise. But small-scale attacks with blades rather than bombs permits Palestinian violence against Israelis to persist without compromising Mahmoud Abbas before voting day.

This is in keeping with the fact that no Palestinian official or leader – from Abbas and prime minister Ahmed Qureia down to the lowliest Fatah-al Aqsa Brigades gang chief – has offered any commitment to give up terrorism or eradicate it. The shift to knives is merely a pragmatic tactic to keep world criticism off Palestinian backs.

It just so happens that 18 months ago, an Israeli couple was brutally hacked to death outside the Hadassah medical center in Jerusalem on the night of June 5, 2003, the same day that Abu Mazen, together with President George W. Bush, Israeli prime minister Sharon and Jordan’s King Abdullah, met in Aqaba to endorse the Middle East roadmap.

That double murder went almost unnoticed in Israel and is still tagged unsolved by the Jerusalem police.

Israeli authorities, by their low-key handling of these crimes, are helping to plant the illusion in Israeli minds that a new post-Arafat era has arrived and that Abu Mazen promises to lead the Palestinians to peace negotiations while stamping out the war of terror initiated by his predecessor.

This is not the impression the Palestinians are getting from their future leader. They see Israelis continuing to die at their hands without interference and take it to mean that terrorism will persist under Abu Mazen’s rule too.