All Changed, Changed Utterly

In the Rose Garden on June 24, 2002, President Bush called “on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders…to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty.” At the height of the Second Intifada with Palestinian Authority chief Yasser Arafat surrounded by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in what was left of his Ramallah compound, the White House had concluded that Arafat, rather than being part of the solution to the violence, was a – if not the – problem.

Bush’s remarks signaled a significant shift from just two months earlier, when on April 28, the President called the IDF’s lifting of a previous siege of Arafat’s West Bank residence “a hopeful day.” Not many Palestinian themselves questioned the premise of Bush’s epiphany that Arafat had become an obstacle to peace and prosperity; on the contrary, Palestinian public opinion seemed to have already reached a similar conclusion. But, practically speaking, how were Palestinians meant to respond to the American president’s call to “elect new leaders” with violence raging, the IDF controlling major Palestinian cities, and Palestinian leadership besieged?

Over a 10-day period in July 2002, an assessment mission of which I found myself a member, begrudgingly (will come back to this), visited the West Bank to determine the technical requirements that might permit Palestinians to fulfill President Bush’s call:

“The purpose of the mission was fourfold: 1) to evaluate the pre-electoral environment and identify the requirements of the Palestinian Authority, political parties, civil society and the international community to establish a meaningful electoral process; 2) to identify the elements of the process that are most vulnerable and the obstacles that must be overcome; 3) to assess the state of technical preparations for elections; and 4) to recommend electoral reform measures that could enhance the transparency and credibility of the process.”

I say “begrudgingly” as I was hesitant to participate, due in no small part to a concern – shared by others on the team – that the call for elections had little to do with an intent to address significant governance and human rights deficits in the PA and more to do with finding a cost-effective way to dispatch the intransigent Arafat. As several members of the team had managed Palestinian institution-building initiatives, including myself, there was a clear understanding of the nature of the system over which Arafat presided. Elections alone were no panacea.

Even if there had been an interest in going beyond replacing Arafat to tackle the range of PA governance challenges, the U.S. was still sorting out in mid-2002 its Afghanistan strategy, while laying the groundwork for the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq a year later. This left little bandwidth, political or otherwise, and few available resources to tackle the broad scope of Palestinian governance deficits, assuming that elections could have been held in 2003, per the mission’s terms of reference. Thus, without a vision or plan for the day-after, elections in 2003 would likely have done little to reverse the trajectory on which the PA found itself, as was eventually proven.

The team was well aware of the distinction between elections and good governance in the PA, the absence of which, I believed, played a much greater role than has been previously recognized in the violence that erupted in 2000; arguably more than Ariel Sharon’s visit to Temple Mount or the failure of the recent Camp David negotiations. The mission’s writ, however, was too narrowly focused on elections to go beyond stating:

“Meaningful elections should not be considered the end of a reform process, but rather a catalyst that can be employed to provoke further reform measures…”

The PA’s failing grade in governance and respect for basic rights was otherwise given a pass.

The team’s given scope was similarly too narrow when it came to the participation of candidates or parties that refused to accept the terms and obligations of the Oslo agreements; though, the team noted the risks posed by the rejectionist front:

“Elections should be a practical renunciation of violence and could represent a return to a culture of political dialogue and progress that has been subverted during the recent past. While cognizant of the difficulty of enforcing such provisions, the delegation heard no significant argument against a prohibition on parties and individuals engaged in or advocating violence. A code of ethics, based on the principles of democratic behavior, should be established and enforced for all election contestants.”

As things ultimately happened, by the time 2003 rolled around, the U.S. had shifted its focus from Palestinian elections to Iraq. Given a reprieve, Arafat, besieged and ailing, was able to cling on until November 2004, when natural selection did its part. With Arafat gone, all was seemingly well, from Washington’s perspective. That is, until January 2006, when, absent political reform under Arafat’s elected successor, Mahmoud Abbas, or prohibitions against advocates of violence participating in elections, Hamas trounced Arafat’s party at the ballot box, effectively putting an end to the Palestinian democratic experience envisioned, if not codified, in the Oslo agreements. That was 19 years ago.

The narrow sightedness of previous efforts to “reform” the Palestinian Authority are a lesson, or should be, for policy makers today, as well as donors lining up to offer post-conflict reconstruction handouts in Gaza (same can also be said for Lebanon in the wake of the current ceasefire there). If circumstances today make anything clear, it is that there are no shortcuts and there are no silver bullets, no avoiding the elephants in the room (read: Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s rejectionism and arms, however depleted), not this time around. Yes, Palestinians (and Lebanese) deserve to enjoy President Bush’s vision of a “practicing democracy” but there can be no return to any aspect of the October 6, 2023 status quo ante in the region, as far as security and foreign assistance policy is concerned; October 7 made sure of that. On that date, to quote W.B. Yeats, “all changed, changed utterly.”