It’s voting day in Palestine, but who knows and who cares? In Abu Dis, a suburb of Jerusalem perched behind the Mount of Olives, in the shadow of the Israeli wall that separates the occupied territories from the Holy City, not an election poster brightens the streets. For the municipal elections, Saturday, December 11, the electoral commission did not deign to send ballot boxes to this small town of 25,000 inhabitants. What’s the point ?
The political factions and the main tribal clans of Abu Dis came to an understanding in advance. They present a unique list. Winners automatically. Hamas is not included: the Islamist movement is boycotting this election, the first since 2017, in the West Bank as well as in its stronghold of Gaza, where the elections simply do not take place. The mayor of Abu Dis, Ahmad Abou Hilal, observes this with vexation. He threw in the towel: he does not represent himself this year. “The Palestinian Authority [AP] needs an election, whatever. Getting the villages to vote is the easiest for her, but nobody here wants it. “
Mr. Abou Hilal, a placid and apolitical building contractor, is the son of a chieftain who ruled over the city’s affairs from 1967, the date of the Israeli conquest of the territories, until 2000. He believes that the AP does “All upside down. They should have first reconciled with Hamas and then elected a Parliament ”.
Major cities expected to vote in March 2022
That was the plan. He derailed. In April, President Mahmoud Abbas, 86, postponed sine die the presidential and legislative elections, the first planned in the occupied territories since 2005. The PA ran the risk of symbolically “losing” East Jerusalem, the Arab part of the city occupied by Israel, which prohibited the ballot there. Washington and the European Union did nothing to force it to do so. They showed only limited enthusiasm for the vote, which would have pulled Hamas out of its isolation in Gaza. Mr Abbas himself feared losing control of a “democratic” exercise which he had tried to control from start to finish.
Since then, the AP appears at the end of the line. In semi-financial bankruptcy, while Arab and international donors keep cutting or reducing their subsidies. Without vision, without perspective, since the new Israeli government, in power since June, refuses to engage in any political negotiation with it. “The PA gives us a bone to chew on. They want to make us happy with these elections ”, sums up a European diplomat, who wonders. State media did not cover the campaign. The big cities, Hebron, Nablus, are supposed to elect their mayors later, in March 2022. But no one knows if these second municipal ones will take place.
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