US official hopes Palestinians demand democracy

[P F Tinmore]

Bethlehem - Ma'an - The US State Department's Middle East Partnership Initiative looks to support Palestinian democracy by empowering citizens "to raise demands with their local government" Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Tamara Wittes explained.

Speaking with Ma'an during her visit to the region, Wittes - an expert in Middle East democracy and former Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute - explained what she saw as the role of MEPI in Palestine, whose government exhausted its term on 25 January but continues to lead with no elections in sight.

Maan News Agency: US official hopes Palestinians demand democracy

What is this idiot talking about? The last time there was an election in Palestine, the US had a coup and kicked the government out. How can they hold elections with an illegal government in power?

 

[P F Tinmore]

By linking the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to the Oslo process, the architects had given them a crucial stake in its survivability, even and especially if it failed to produce any political results. For the Palestinian elite that took charge of the PA, the main task all along was to ensure that the Oslo process continues and that the elite remain in control of all the institutions that guarantee the survival of the "process." What the elite did not anticipate was that they could lose control to Hamas, a public opponent of the Oslo process that in accordance with expectations had boycotted the 1994 gerrymandered and Fatah-controlled elections. The 2006 elections, which Fatah was confident it would win, constituted an earthquake that could destroy all these structural guarantees and with them the "process" they were designed to protect. Hence the panic of the Americans who engineered the coup with the aid of Israel and PA security under Muhammad Dahlan to topple the Hamas government, which included kidnapping its members of parliament, government ministers and politicians and holding them hostage in Israeli jails, and finally staging a violent takeover of Gaza that backfired. All attempts since the American failed coup in Gaza have focused on perpetuating the peace process through maintenance of its structures under PA control and away from the democratically-elected Hamas.

Indeed, the destruction of Palestinian democracy was a necessary price to pay, insisted Israel and the Americans, pushed forward by the military efforts of Lieutenant General Keith Dayton.

ei: How surrendering Palestinian rights became the language of "peace"