The Palestinian elections debate, continued

 My post yesterday on the prospect for Palestinian elections has sparked some interesting commentary and debate, which helps to clarify some key points.  The central point is whether holding elections under the current conditions would be a divisive distraction from the more central push towards a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. 

Here’s Helena Cobban:

I think this is a bad way forward.

For anyone who wants to be able to pull a "two state solution" out of the present demographic morass in the West Bank, the top priority now is not the holding of elections to the body whose proper full name– as Mustafa Barghouthi consistently reminds us– is the Palestinian Interim Self-Governing Authority (PISGA). It is, rather, the speedy and effective conclusion of a final-status peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.

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Elections are necessarily divisive. The last thing the Palestinian people need right now is for further divisions to be sowed among them.

Yes, there should be a Palestinian vote at some point, hopefully soon. But that vote should be, first and foremost, the referendum over whether to accept or reject the final peace agreement that the Palestinian leadership has negotiated with Israel.

That is the only vote that counts. If the elections are speedily concluded it could be held sometime before the end of 2010.

That is certainly what we should all be aiming for– rather than wasting time with planning for and holding yet another round of elections for the interim authority.

 Here’s Nathan Brown, author most recently of "The Green Elephant in the Room":

I think Palestinian elections are absolutely necessary at some point but are no substitute for reconciliation.  In fact such elections are impossible without reconciliation and can’t realistically be coupled to any conflict-ending diplomacy.  Also, if elections are to have any good political effect, they have to be separated from the reconciliation in time (otherwise they are likely to result in a paralyzing power-sharing at best).

I am worried that we are getting a gussied-up “West Bank first” model that has no realistic way of dealing with Hamas, and, for reasons you know, I don’t think elections are a way to deal with the Hamas problem short term.  And trying to use elections in that short term way is precisely what has made the whole electoral machinery break.  The time to focus on January 2010 elections as a solution is long past.

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Everybody is for elections.  They always has been—elections on their terms.  Abu Mazin has been for elections since a couple months after the last ones.  He just insists on making up new rules for them according to his needs of the moment. (He’s been a bit like Norm Coleman after he came out a few votes behind Al Franken—“Hey, why don’t we just forget about the last election and have a new one!”)  Hamas is for elections—for a while it was the only one insisting that they be held in any legally respectable way, but now it seems to be joining the game of trying to rewrite the rules to its advantage.  Fayyad is for elections since he knows that the matter is above his pay grade and disavowing elections would undermine whatever little domestic legitimacy he has.  Egypt is for elections…

These are all strong points, and get at some of the really tough problems here.   Palestinians desperately need legitimate political institutions, mechanisms for accountability, a vehicle for peacefully addressing the deep divisions between Fatah and Hamas, and the reunification of the West Bank and Gaza under a single authority.  Elections can’t solve those problems alone, but I don’t see how the problems can be solved without elections.   

At the same time, Cobban and Brown are right that elections under current conditions could easily become an excuse to delay final status talks until the Palestinians have a "legitimate" negotiating partner — which would be a huge mistake, and which I explicitly rejected yesterday and do again today.  The final status talks on a relatively short time frame do have to be the priority — but the elections should play a role in that.   

Ideally, the elections would be set not for January 2010 but rather pegged to the *outcome* of the final status talks (which should be on a short timeframe, and conducted by a caretaker Palestinian unity government), and then combined with referendum on the final status agreement.  The elections would not take place under occupation, but would instead be the defining moment in the new Palestinian state.  The elections and referendum would greatly enhance Palestinian bargaining power in those talks, helping them to demand the just outcomes which they could sell to their own population. 

The problems with this model are obvious.  It depends on achieving a negotiated unity agreement for the caretake government (which doesn’t seem especially likely right now).  It doesn’t allow the elections to resolvethe rapidly deteriorating internal Palestinian conflicts.  And it would put the elections hostage to a final status agreement which may not happen for a long time unfortunately.  But are there better alternatives out there?  I’m all ears.