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About Those Palestinian Elections

(Ha'aretz) Natan Sharansky - We must not delude ourselves into thinking that these Palestinian elections will be democratic. Free elections can only occur in a society where people are free to express their opinions without fear of being punished for them. When there is no protection of the right to dissent, when a regime controls the press, when voters and potential opponents are intimidated, what happens in the voting booth matters little. That monitors will probably declare these elections free of fraud should also not earn them a democratic imprimatur. Soviet elections were also free of fraud. There was simply only one party on the ballot. Fortunately, President Bush is viewing these elections with the proper perspective, asserting that they are "not the sign that democracy has arrived." Rather, he said, they are "the beginning of a process." What goes on "over there" is very much our business. Regimes based on fear rather than popular consent need external enemies to sustain their illegitimate rule and therefore turn the societies they control into breeding grounds for terror and hatred. If we return to the Oslo mindset of not caring about what happens within Palestinian society, no peace process will succeed. Governing on behalf of the Palestinians means protecting dissent rather than crushing it, providing a good education for Palestinian youth rather than using schools and the media for incitement, building decent housing for those living in refugee camps rather than using them as pawns in a political struggle against Israel, and enabling an independent middle class to emerge rather than seeking to control all aspects of Palestinian economic life.
2005-01-07 00:00:00
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