Ramallah, West Bank // For Ramallah resident Hasan Khatib, the municipal elections now looming in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are about citizens getting the services they need from their local government.
“We have streets in Ramallah with no lights, streets that are dirty. There is neglect and this has to change,” said the 39-year old employee of an NGO after completing his voter registration forms at a local secondary school on Wednesday.
“There is also a problem of congestion in the city centre.”
Although local issues are at the fore in the October 8 ballot rather than the national question of what to do about Israel’s 49-year occupation, these elections are expected to have wider ramifications, serving as a litmus test of public support for the two rival movements that dominate Palestinian politics: Fatah, which controls the West Bank, and Hamas, the Islamist movement which controls the Gaza Strip.
Hamas last week surprised many by agreeing to participate in local polling for the first time since 2005, when it took the West Bank cities of Nablus and Qalqilya in a foreshadowing of its stunning victory in parliamentary elections the following year.
While it has in recent years maintained that there could not be fair elections under Fatah rule in the West Bank, this time the hard-line movement has good reasons to give polling a try.
It wants to show the public that it is interested in reconciliation with Fatah, from whom it seized power in Gaza in 2007, creating the split that has bedevilled Palestinian politics and weakened the Palestinian position vis-a-vis Israel.
“Hamas is trying to prove it is not an obstacle to reconciliation, this is one of the messages,” said Ayman Daraghmeh, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council elected on Hamas’s Change and Reform list in 2006.
Analysts say Hamas expects to do well, especially since Fatah is wracked by a split between supporters of president Mahmoud Abbas and those of Mohammed Dahlan, a UAE-based former security chief at loggerheads with the president.
“Hamas thinks it will win or at least that no other party will win,” said Hani Masri, director of the Masarat think-tank in Al Bireh, Ramallah’s twin city. Hamas’s confidence was boosted by recent student union elections at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank in which it bested Fatah’s list and another list comprised of left-wing factions of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
There is a lot at stake in the polling, Mr Masri said. If it goes smoothly, and both Fatah and Hamas are able to claim victories, it could pave the way to an agreement by the two movements to hold the first legislative elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in a decade.
A key factor in determining whether trust is generated that could lead to parliamentary elections will be whether Fatah’s security forces in the West Bank try to influence the municipal polling, Mr Daraghmeh said.
“We are calling on the security apparatus leaders to respect the right of people to participate freely and to not harass them. If they respect this, this will mean an improvement in their behaviour and it will encourage people to participate in legislative and presidential elections.”
Fatah, meanwhile, is concerned Hamas will try to tamper with the polling process in Gaza.
“We don’t trust any procedures Hamas conducts and we ask the Central Elections Commission to ensure transparency and not leave things up to Hamas,” said Issam Abu Bakr, a deputy minister of education who is involved in planning Fatah’s election effort.
Although the CEC’s chair is appointed by Mr Abbas, Mr Daraghmeh says he considers it to be unbiased. The chairman, Hanna Nasser, held meetings with Hamas leaders in Gaza this week to make arrangements for the polling.
Hamas, as part of its efforts to champion national unity, has offered to run joint lists with Fatah. But Mr Abu Bakr dismissed this, saying “there will not only be competition, but vicious competition”.
“We will ally ourselves with independent people and support qualified, respected independent personalities,” he added. “Our criteria is to have candidates of good manners, reputation and skills.”
Mr Abu Bakr said Fatah might join forces with other factions of the PLO in the battle to defeat Hamas.
However, he stressed that Fatah would not allocate places for Dahlan supporters on the lists it backs.
Alaa Yaghi, a legislator who backs Mr Dahlan, took issue with this stance. “Until now we haven’t decided to run on our own. However we hope the Fatah list will represent everyone,” he said.
Some potential candidates of Hamas in the West Bank will not be able to run because they are in Israeli prisons. So as not to prompt further Israeli arrests during the campaign, the Hamas-backed lists will not be explicitly labelled as being part of the movement, Musa Abu Marzouk, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told the Palestinian Information Centre in an interview published on Thursday.
He called on “capable people” to put forward their candidacies for the election as “professionals who could serve the nation”, saying that such people would gain Hamas’s support.
In Ramallah, Mr Khatib, the voter who registered on Wednesday, said that although he considered himself a Fatah supporter, “if I see that a list supported by Hamas will serve me best, I’ll vote for it. I care about services.”
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
