[Jerusalem Post] Shlomo Avineri - One aspect of Tony Blair's mission statement which is new is to help the Palestinians build up coherent institutions. The failure at Palestinian nation-building through the lack of effective institutions is one of the worst enemies of the Palestinian quest for statehood. If they continue to fail in this, their dream of a state is doomed to be swallowed up - as in Gaza - in internecine bloodshed. The Arab region has been the only area of the world which has not witnessed the emergence of a democratic movement in the last two decades, during which Eastern Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia have been swept by democratic transformations. That this is not rooted in Islam, but is a specific Arab predicament, is testified by such disparate examples as Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh - even Iran, whose theocracy is accompanied by contested elections and a vibrant civil society. Both in Iraq and among the Palestinians, elections spawned militia-based parties, and ultimately power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Anyone who believes that in either Iraq or Palestine there will soon be an orderly transfer of power from militias and armed gangs to a legitimate government sorely misunderstands the subtext of Arab politics. In both Iraq and among the Palestinians, neither winners nor losers behave according to the rules of the game: Winners don't respect the rights of the losers, and losers just bristle against the winning majority and don't respect election results. The writer, professor of political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has been involved in democracy-enhancement projects in post-communist Eastern Europe.
2007-07-02 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive