JERUSALEM, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- The Palestinians Wednesday elect their new Legislative Council and move from a system in which one party was dominant to a problematic multiparty democracy.
Following these elections, the Islamic Hamas will become part of the new setup. The United States, the European Union and Israel consider it a terrorist organization, but the vote is expected to increase the Palestinian Authority's legitimacy at home.
Some 1.3 million Palestinians have registered to vote in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Each voter will get two ballots. One is to choose the preferred party. Eleven parties are competing for 66 seats in the new legislature and those seats will be divided on a proportional basis.
Sixty-six more seats will be distributed on a regional basis. The Palestinian territories have been divided into 16 regions and in the second ballot voters will select their preferred candidates by name; of the 414 candidates, 250 are running as independents.
"Now, for the first time there will be a real competition," said Shalom Harari, a Fellow at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv.
There is no strong figure like Yasser Arafat had been in the previous elections in 1996.
"Now all the figures are equal. Not one Gulliver and all the others are dwarfs," Harari said.
Fatah was the dominant party in the first elections in 1966, partly because Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine boycotted them. Now those groups are running. The Islamic Jihad is still boycotting the elections but it does not have much public support.
Even last year's presidential elections, won by Mahmoud Abbas, did not enjoy such broad participation and were boycotted by Hamas.
Hamas' green flags, Fatah's yellow and the Popular Front's red this week fluttered over A-Ram's dusty, crowded streets. Banners were strung across streets and the security barrier that Israel built there carried posters of the different parties and candidates. None smiled.
Fatah's top candidate, Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in Israel for his role in the deaths of Israelis during the intifada, was shown in a brown prison uniform, clasping his handcuffed hands over his head. Nine other candidates are also in jail.
Part of the campaign was televised. One of the livelier debates was between Mohammad Dahlan, who headed the Preventive Security Service in the Gaza Strip and was later minister of Civil Affairs, and Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar. There, they sometimes did smile.
Dahlan recalled returning from a meeting with U.S. and Israeli officials when his car was bombed "for reasons known to Hamas."
You're asking who bombed your car, asked al-Zahar. Who shot at you the third day after Arafat's funeral? Did Hamas shoot at you and at Abu Mazen?
Fatah, which wants to negotiate a settlement with Israel, nevertheless focused on highlighting its role in fighting the Israelis, possibly to win hard-liners' votes.
Riad Malki, who heads the Panorama Center for Promoting Democracy and Community Development, noted Fatah's candidates were selected on the basis of their role in fighting the Israelis and the years they spent in jail. "The most important criteria for the selection of Fatah candidates was their history of struggle," he noted during a talk at the Hebrew University's Truman Center.
In a Ramallah rally, people applauded when Fatah claimed credit for a lone gunman who killed seven Israeli soldiers. A Fatah election advertisement ran the emblem of al-Aseifa, its militant wing in the 1960s.
In Hebron, the former head of the Preventive Security in the West Bank, Jibril Rajoub of Fatah, is running against his brother Nayef, of Hamas.
"I fought the Israeli occupation when my brother was playing with kids," Jibril told reporters. "Hamas is like those who embark on pilgrimage while pilgrims are coming home," he added, according to Al Jazeera.
Hamas toned down its rhetoric and largely abided by a cease-fire agreement.
It probably realized it had to show moderation to win support. Pollster Khalil Shikaki said in a report published by the United States Institute of Peace that, "Palestinian willingness to compromise is greater than it has been at any time since the start of the peace process... A majority of Palestinians support a compromise."
This, therefore, did not seem to be the time to beat the war drums.
Hamas did not amend its constitution, which seeks to destroy Israel. It insisted its strategy of armed struggle will succeed where Fatah's failed.
"When we took up arms and launched our armed struggle, we succeeded in less than five years to force the Israelis to withdraw from the Gaza Strip," Al Zahar told Al Jazeera TV. The Israelis withdrew in the summer, ending a 38-year occupation.
However, Hamas' election platform does not talk of destroying Israel. Some of its candidates sounded pragmatic.
Aziz Dweik, who was campaigning in the Hebron area acknowledged that, "eventually we will have to distinguish between the ideological and the political."
Hamas recognized the need to show "political responsibility" and "moderation" once it reaches parliament or joins the next government, he said, according to a Hamas website.
Hamas' main goal is to restructure the Palestinian society into an Islamic society, noted Malki.
At least 40 percent of its candidates are doctors, university professors, highly professional and qualified people. All of them are either members of Hamas, the Islamic Brotherhood or have a very clear religious tendency, he noted.
Its religious goals scare secular Palestinians but Hamas has a very good record of helping poor people and remaining clean, in contrast with Fatah's alleged corruption. That corruption has deeply bothered Palestinians.
In recent weeks, public opinion polls suggested Hamas was closing the gap with Fatah. One poll showed that Fatah's lead was down to 2 percent.
Fatah then seemed to get its act together and fight. The United States reportedly helped with $2 million and Israel allowed two Arab TV stations, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, into its Hadarim Prison to interview Barghouti. The Palestinian Authority security forces hired 16,000 youngsters to alleviate unemployment, Haaretz newspaper noted.
The latest polls are now predicting a modest Fatah victory.
The Palestine Center for Public Opinion asked interviewees to note their preference on a sheet of paper and drop it into a box.
It found that in the nationwide race among the parties, Fatah would win 39.6 percent of the votes, and Hamas 28.8 percent. Smaller parties shared the rest.
Shikaki's Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research last week found that on the nationwide race among the parties Fatah would have won 42 percent of the votes compared with 35 to Hamas. The margin of error is 2 percent, it said.
The race for the 66 seats elected on a regional basis was more difficult to predict. It was too close for 30 of those seats, but the PCPS seemed more confident about the 36 other seats.
Eighteen seats (or 50 percent) would go to Hamas candidates, 17 (or 47 percent) to Fatah, and one to an independent. The margin or error there varies from 4 to 7 percent.
Much depends on whether the elections end quietly. Tuesday gunmen shot and killed a Fatah man, Yousef Ahmed Hassona, in Nablus. The Interior and National Security Ministry said he was killed "after a fierce argument with a group of gunmen."
Palestinian and international observers feared militants might try to destroy or snatch ballot boxes. During the Fatah primaries militants have shown their ability to do so but Abbas promised to provide ample security.
