A dangerous double delay

Palestine's elections

Jun 9th 2005 JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition

A slipping election timetable will favour the Islamists of Hamas

NOBODY said reforming the Palestinian Authority (PA) would be easy. But two delays will now make it a lot harder.

The first, announced on June 5th, was long expected. Months of wrangling about the election due on July 17th to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the Palestinians' parliament, had failed to produce a deal on how many seats to elect from national party lists and how many from local constituencies. Fatah, the PA's ruling party, with a strong brand (the late Yasser Arafat) but weak candidates (crusty timeservers loyal to him), would do better if it ran on national lists. Its rivals stand more of a chance in constituencies, where personal reputations and achievements count. At a pow-wow in Cairo earlier this year, other Palestinian groups had called for a half-and-half system as one condition for them to suspend attacks on Israel. Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, could not reach a compromise within his own Fatah nor in the existing PLC, so he has put off the election indefinitely, though it is expected to be held only a few months late.

Hamas, Fatah's Islamist main rival, protested. Some of its members hinted at resuming violence; and on June 7th a flurry of Qassam rockets was fired from Gaza. But, as both Israel and Hamas knew, the attacks were just muscle-flexing, of a kind the “ceasefire” has seen before. For in reality the election delay suits Hamas. Fatah's unpopularity is growing. Its PLC members, after a decade in their seats, are despised. After Israel's pullout from the Gaza strip this summer, Hamas could do even better in the polls.

More worrying for Mr Abbas was Fatah's decision, a day after he postponed the election, to postpone its own party congress, set for August, when a younger, reformist generation was expected to vote old-guard members out of the party's ruling councils. The old-timers' main hope was to win seats in the PLC election first. Holding it after the congress would have skewered them. That they managed to delay the congress too confirms the resistance that Mr Abbas faces.

That, too, can only help Hamas. In local elections this year it has done well; the third and biggest round may now be delayed too. But the longer voters watch Fatah cling to power while tearing itself apart, the harder its fall. Israel, the United States and (more reluctantly) Europe reject official contact with Hamas, which has carried out many terrorist attacks in Israel and does not recognise the state. But as it takes over local councils, foreign donors increasingly have to deal with it. European diplomats have been discreetly meeting people close to Hamas, though Britain's foreign secretary, on a visit to Israel, said that Britain would ban meetings with Hamas leaders or official representatives. But even American officials have been making off-the-record noises about possible contacts with members of the organisation.

Such recognition that Hamas is much more than just a terrorist organisation is “very important to it”, says a European diplomat. The time for full-blown contacts is far off, and not until after PLC elections will it be possible to judge the party's true strength. But the more Fatah founders, the more Hamas will become a legitimate, democratic representative of many Palestinians: one that nobody can ignore.

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