PALESTINE -- PEACE NOT APARTHEID |
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Chapter 14: THE PALESTINIAN ELECTION, 2005 Yasir Arafat died in November 2004, and Palestinian law required that his successor be elected within a few weeks. Once again, The Carter Center was asked to observe the process, with the National Democratic Institute as a partner. I arrived in Israel on January 6, 2005, and my first meeting was with Prime Minister Sharon, who immediately expressed confidence that he had sufficient votes in the Knesset to overcome opposition to the Gaza withdrawal. He estimated that about 30 percent of the settlers would leave voluntarily (with generous monetary compensation) and the others would resist, perhaps a small number even with violence. The southern Negev, the location of his own family farm, was to be their primary destination for resettlement. We exchanged reminiscences of our joint experiences during the past years, and I thanked him for his positive influence on Prime Minister Begin when I was negotiating peace agreements as president. He stated that Israeli checkpoints would be manned by soldiers during the Palestinian election but would not impede traffic, and that military forces would be withdrawn from the major cities. Having observed Sharon in action for almost three decades, I had no doubt that he would fulfill his promises. Although our team maintained complete neutrality among competing candidates, our hope was that the election of a moderate and respected leader would bring an early resumption of the long-stalled peace process. I urged Sharon to be more flexible in permitting Palestinians to vote in East Jerusalem, but his response was that the arrangements of 1996 would prevail. He reminded me that I had been instrumental in negotiating the agreements and added that no Palestinian polling officials or domestic observers would be allowed to enter the post offices, which would be manned by Israeli employees. Any "disruptive" campaigning would also be forbidden. In fact, one presidential candidate was arrested the next day when he attempted to seek votes among a small crowd near the Lion's Gate. It was obvious to all international observers who spread throughout the occupied territories that the Palestinian people had little freedom of movement or independent activity -- a situation unlikely to change as long as they were surrounded by troops and walls and their land was occupied by Israeli settlers. Prior to election day, we observers had our customary meetings with leading candidates and members of the Central Election Commission. They were confident about their own preparations but concerned that possible violence might erupt because of interference by Israeli officials in preventing Arab voting in East Jerusalem. Whenever I visit a foreign country, I look for opportunities to leave the capital city and visit interesting places. While our observer teams were moving to their posts on Saturday morning, the other delegation leaders joined me in a visit to Nazareth Village, a site that has been developed to emulate the community of Jesus during his youth. Beginning in 1996, Rosalynn and I have joined other Christians, mostly Mennonites, in acquiring land and raising funds for its development. The ten-acre site is in the heart of the city, and we were impressed by its high quality and archaeological and historical integrity. As is our practice, we moved constantly throughout election day, visiting twenty-two voting sites, beginning with the post offices within East Jerusalem, where problems always arise. It quickly became apparent that the Israeli officials had voters' lists that were completely different from the names of people who came to cast ballots, and by noon there had been practically no voting -- just a growing crowd of angry Palestinians. At the main polling site, the only post office larger than a mobile home, there were 3,500 names on the list, with one Israeli clerk checking credentials of potential voters and methodically turning them away. When I finally threatened to call an international press conference, the prime minister's office agreed to ignore the lists and permit all persons registered in Jerusalem to vote at any site, but only international observers and no Palestinians could monitor this process. By this time it was two p.m., and we were able to salvage the participation of only a small number of voters. I also visited Bethlehem and other places in the West Bank and found few problems there or in Gaza. I was up early the next morning to assess the reports of our observer team and to prepare a political analysis and private letter of advice for delivery to Mahmoud Abbas, who had been elected overwhelmingly. I finished these tasks in time to meet before daybreak with leading birding experts from Israel and Palestine, Yossi Leshem and Imad Atrash. We first went to a fifty-acre park in the heart of Jerusalem's urban area, where we watched twenty-four gazelles that live there with no fences or walls to separate them from the adjacent buildings and heavily traveled roadways. We then drove to a small park in the shadow of the Knesset building to observe the netting, banding, and release of migratory birds that fly over the Holy Land to circumvent the Mediterranean Sea. It was wonderful to see Jewish and Arab ornithologists working in harmony on these projects. After joining our delegation leaders to conclude generally positive statements about the election, I went to Ramallah to meet with Abbas and his key advisers. The Israelis had ruled out any negotiation with Arafat, and now they would have the partner they had seemed to want. I outlined my thoughts and gave Abbas my written notes, presuming that the new president would soon be engaged in direct talks with Israeli leaders. He reported that the inauguration ceremony would be in two days but expressed doubts that the Israelis wanted peace talks. The Palestinian group's opinion was that both Sharon and Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had long wanted to abandon Gaza while concentrating on the colonization of the West Bank. They pointed out that Palestinian leaders had accepted all provisions of the Quartet's Roadmap for Peace, but that Sharon had publicly rejected most of its key provisions. There was no doubt that Abbas had the support and respect of his people and that he was dedicated to the immediate pursuit of a peace agreement in accordance with the Roadmap. He needed the full support of American and Israeli leaders as he struggled to forge at least a partially trained and equipped security force, deal with a crumbling economy, and earn the respect and support of the international community. Also, the members of his Fatah Party faced the imminent political challenge of Hamas Party representatives, who were showing impressive success in local elections and had announced their intention to field a full slate of candidates in the upcoming campaign for the Legislative Council. This would be a contest between the long-dominant political organization of Arafat and the PLO and a much more militant group that refused to acknowledge Israel's right to exist and insisted on the right to use violence against Israelis, whom they considered to be enemies occupying their land. It was on this trip that we saw the most disturbing intrusions of the great dividing wall being built by the Israelis, which I will assess in Chapter 16. Described as a "security fence" whose declared function was to deter Palestinian attacks against Israelis, its other purpose became clear as we observed its construction and examined maps of the barrier's ultimate path through Palestine. Including the Israeli-occupied Jordan River valley, the wall would take in large areas of land for Israel and encircle the Palestinians who remained in their remnant of the West Bank. This would severely restrict Palestinian access to the outside world. "Imprisonment wall" is more descriptive than "security fence." After returning to America, I went to the White House and gave a personal report to President Bush, emphasizing my concern about Israel's rejection of the Roadmap's terms and the building of the wall. I also relayed Mahmoud Abbas's desire to begin comprehensive peace talks at an early date. The president repeated his commitment to the Roadmap and said that his new secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, was taking office that same day and that one of her top priorities would be a persistent and aggressive search for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Israeli settlers were removed from Gaza in August 2005, with 50,000 troops there to minimize violence. This left behind the Arab inhabitants of the tiny area. There was some predictable controversy in Israel, with extreme right-wingers bitterly opposed to any withdrawals of Israeli settlers and with some peace groups claiming that unilateral actions would lead to the abandonment of long-range peace proposals. *** Let's take a quick look at Gaza. Its population has soared in recent years as Palestinian refugees have poured in from other areas occupied by Israel. In 1948 there were 90,000 natives, the population more than tripled by 1967, and there are now more than 1.4 million -- 3,700 people living within each square kilometer. Although there are metropolitan areas with greater population density (such as Manhattan), this is supposed to be a self-sufficient entity, similar to a small and isolated state-separated from the West Bank by forty kilometers of Israeli territory. Gaza has maintained a population growth rate of 4.7 percent annually, one of the highest in the world, so more than half its people are less than fifteen years old. They are being strangled since the Israeli "withdrawal," surrounded by a separation barrier that is penetrated only by Israeli-controlled checkpoints, with just a single opening (for personnel only) into Egypt's Sinai as their access to the outside world. There have been no moves by Israel to permit transportation by sea or by air. Fishermen are not permitted to leave the harbor, workers are prevented from going to outside jobs, the import or export of food and other goods is severely restricted and often cut off completely, and the police, teachers, nurses, and social workers are deprived of salaries. Per capita income has decreased 40 percent during the last three years, and the poverty rate has reached 70 percent. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has stated that acute malnutrition in Gaza is already on the same scale as that seen in the poorer countries of the Southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day. This was the impact of Israel's unilateral withdrawal, even before Israel's massive bombardment and reinvasion in July 2006 after being provoked by Hamas militants.
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