After years of hibernation due to internal conflict, Palestinians were expecting to head to the polls on May 22 to choose local representatives to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) until those elections were (again) postponed indefinitely by President Mahmoud Abbas last week.
Those who preach to Palestinians about democracy, including Americans and others in the international community, must take an active role in an effort to ensure these necessary elections take place.
The PLC, a 132-member council aimed at regulating life for Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was created through the Declaration of Principles, often referred to as the Oslo Accords, signed at the White House in 1993. That agreement was supposed to serve as a five-year interim solution until an independent Palestinian state was established. It has, unfortunately, become near permanent.
Israeli soldiers arrested Palestinian journalist Alaa al-Rimawi overnight on April 21, 2021 from his home in Al-Bireh. (Photo from Alaa al-Rimawi s Facebook profile)
A Palestinian journalist is on hunger strike to protest his administrative detention by Israel. Alaa al-Rimawi, a reporter for Al-Jazeera Mubasher and director of the local J-Media Network news agency, marked his 17th day on a hunger strike on Friday after being placed under detention for three months.
Al-Rimawi, 43, was arrested overnight on April 21 in his home in Al-Bireh, near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. Immediately upon his arrest, al-Rimawi announced his intention to go on a hunger strike. According to a family member, he was transferred to a hospital last week after his condition deteriorated, after which he was returned to Ofer Military Prison, where he was reportedly placed in solitary confinement.
The Israeli and American flags screened on the walls of Jerusalem s Old City to mark one year since the transfer of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, May 14, 2019. (Aharon Krohn/Flash90)
When the Oslo peace process appeared to be reaching its final days in 2016, the idea of centering Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking on achieving equal rights for two peoples, rather than on territorial separation into two unequal states, was almost entirely absent from the mainstream political discourse. Even as the two-state solution died under the Barack Obama administration and was buried under the reign of Donald Trump, it seemed the policy world, especially in Washington, could not even consider anything outside of the state-centric paradigm.
May 6, 2021
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas April 29 postponement of the legislative elections scheduled for May 22 came as a shock to Palestinians. Several Palestinian factions condemned Abbas for making his unilateral decision without consulting with them.
Al-Monitor s sources say that the Palestinian factions are considering their options to respond to Abbas’ decision. A number of them including the Hamas movement, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the two Fatah lists led by imprisoned leader Marwan Barghouti and dismissed Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan, as well as the independents had boycotted the Palestinian presidential meeting in Ramallah on April 29 at which Abbas made the announcement.
Speaking to Alghad TV on April 29, Hamas’ parliamentary bloc spokesman Mushir al-Masry said Abbas will face serious consequences for postponing the elections. He called for Abbas dismissal and revoking all political agreements made with him.