West Bank villages went to the polls on Saturday. One way for a Palestinian Authority run its course to maintain a semblance of democratic life, as she gave up to organize the presidential and legislative elections, for fear of defeat.
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It is voting day in Palestine, but who knows and who cares? In Abu Dis, a suburb of Jerusalem perched behind the Mount of Olives, in the shadow of Israeli wall that separates the occupied territories of the Holy City, not an election poster will brighten the streets. For municipal elections, Saturday, Dec. 11, the electoral commission has not deigned to send polls to this small town of 25,000 inhabitants. What for?
The political factions and tribal major clans of Abu Dis agreed in advance. They present a single list. Winners of office. Hamas is not there: the Islamist movement is boycotting the elections, the first since 2017 in the West Bank in its stronghold in Gaza, where elections simply do not occur. The mayor of Abu Dis, Ahmad Abu Hilal, observed that with spite. He threw in the towel: it does not represent this year. “The Palestinian Authority [PA] needs an election any. Enact the villages, it is easier for her, but no one here wants it.”
Mr. Abu Hilal, an entrepreneur of the placid, apolitical building, is the son of a chieftain who ruled the affairs of the city of 1967, when the Israeli conquest of territories, until 2000. He believes that the AP did “everything backwards. They should first reconcile with Hamas and then elect a Parliament.”
major cities expected to vote in March 2022
That was the plan. It derailed. In April, President Mahmoud Abbas, 86, has indefinitely postponed the presidential and legislative elections, the first scheduled in the occupied territories since 2005. AP ran the risk of “losing” symbolically East Jerusalem, the Arab part the city occupied by Israel, who forbade the election. Washington and the European Union did nothing to compel it. They showed limited enthusiasm for the vote, which would have fired Hamas from its isolation in Gaza. Abbas himself was afraid of losing control of an exercise “democratic” he endeavored to control from start to finish.
Since then, the AP appears at an end. In financial semi- bankruptcy, while Arab and international donors continue to cut or reduce their subsidies. Without vision, without perspective, since the new Israeli government, in power since June, refused to commit any political negotiation with it. “The PA gives us a bone. They want to make us happy with this election,” said one European diplomat, who asked. State media did not cover the campaign. Major cities, Hebron, Nablus, are supposed to elect their mayors later, in March 2022. But no one knows if these second municipal will take place.
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