If there is a social system in the world today that conquered, occupied and settled the territories of neighboring countries; that sent its military forces to blast houses of worship with rockets; to destroy historical landmarks, ransack social institutions, and rake houses with machinegun fire; that tore down homes by bulldozers and hit apartment buildings by missiles from helicopters ‚ “setting them ablaze and toppling them, sometimes with people inside ‚” and that left corpses in the streets to rot in the sun or injured civilians to die of unattended wounds because ambulances were barred movement for days on end, then clearly we would condemn it. Except that in Israel such a social system is called a democracy. “The only democracy,” the mantra goes, “in the entire region.”
So would it be impolite to ask what havoc Israel would have wreaked if, God forbid, it had been a fascist state rather than a “democracy”?
All of which brings us to the issue of democracy in the occupied territories. We bring this issue up in light of recent demands, that dominated the public debate over the last two weeks, that the Palestinian Authority become “more democratic.”
If directed at Palestinians in general, the demands are rich in irony. Prominent Palestinians, from intellectuals to journalists, academics to social critics, and legislators to ordinary folk, have long been up front in that regard, maintaining that by disdaining the concept of accountability, the PA was indirectly alienates its constituency and impedes, if not altogether blocks, progress in society.
The American punditocracy, whose members are suddenly getting on their high horse about the need for political and social reform in Palestine, are not only preaching to the choir, but are Johnny-come-latelies. Since 1994, the year the PA installed itself in the West Bank and Gaza, concern about responsible and responsive government has come largely from Palestinians themselves.
So while the PA indeed needs to put its house in order, this is not an issue that most Palestinians engaged in their people’s struggle for political and cultural liberation need to be lectured on.
You may recall the brouhaha caused by that group of legislators in 1997 that issued a paper documenting, among other purported acts of malfeasance by some PA officials, cases of misappropriation of funds ‚ “and called for transparency.” And in 1999, the European Commission funded an independent task force which finally issued a report titled “Strengthening Palestinian Public Institutions.” The task force, to be sure, was headed by Henry Siegman, from the Council on Foreign Relations, but the 30-member panel was composed overwhelmingly of Palestinian experts.
That the recommendations contained in the report went largely unimplemented, does not negate the fact that Palestinians are supportive of transparency, accountability and reform in government.
Ironically, Siegman, writing in the Washington Post last Sunday, said that, yes, true, the changes needed to be made by the PA were formidable, including an independent judiciary, a constitution, financial openness and a reduction in the public payroll, but he added: “Despite prevailing myths about the corruption and incompetence of the PA, the diversion of development funds from donor countries has been marginal, largely because of the strict controls put in place by those countries.”
The irony deepens, however, when you consider that Ariel Sharon ‚ “whose troops in the recent campaign against the West Bank engaged in vandalism of Palestinian institutions, including the buildings of the Education Ministry, where they destroyed or carted off students’ transcripts, computers and lab equipment,” hopped on the bandwagon of those clamoring for reform of the PA.
It would be comical to suggest that Sharon gives a hoot about Palestinian democracy, for clearly his newfound enthusiasm for it is a mere pretext to avoid coming to the negotiating table and to delay the creation of a Palestinian state by making “reform of the PA” a precondition for the resumption of peace talks.
Sure, there are a lot of Palestinians around who want to see political reform, economic progress, social advancement, and institutional transparency in their country, but make no mistake about it: Among these folk, even the most ardent critics of Yasser Arafat will balk at going along with the idea of “reform now” if they see it as a vehicle to remove their leader from power or to delay a settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The reform agenda, as called for by the European governments and the White house is not, all in all, a bad idea. Most Palestinians are not averse to it. But if EU leaders and President Bush allow Sharom to exploit it, that is, to prevent the pursuit of it in parallel with negotiations, thereby justifying the continued occupation of Palestinian land, the more despair we are going to see in Palestinian society, and the more despair there is, the more Palestinian bombers ‚ “like the two that struck last Sunday and Monday,” will come forward.
And they will keep coming forward because Israel cannot fight them, let alone obliterate them, with missiles and tanks. They are the children of a profound despair engendered by a 35-year-old occupation that has created a society whose springs of life have run dry. Their logic, the very architecture of their consciousness, their meditations on life and death, as it were, had been shaped by a reality beyond your comprehension and mine, and by unimaginable pain that is beyond all rational understanding.
The predictable blather offered by some US columnists, we can take, but the pronouncements about it by someone like Ariel Sharon are beyond the pale.
