Prospects for Palestinian Democratization
by Meir Litvack
(July 2002)
The Arab world has generally been the exception to the wave of democratization that
has swept the rest of the world since the demise of the Soviet Union.
Although governments in Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar and Yemen did initiate limited reforms and held elections to municipalities and
national assemblies, effective power in all Arab countries remains the
monopoly of the rulers, who rely on their security apparatuses and the
military.
One reason for this “Arab exception” is the weakness of the
middle class, the backbone of any democracy, due to the failure of industrialization
in the first part of the 20th Century and the nationalization of the
economy by military regimes since the 1950s. Ever since then, civil
society that could impose limits on the arbitrary power of the state
has remained weak.
But this is not the sole explanation. The traumatic
encounter between traditional Arab society and the West since the early
19th Century produced a distorted modernization that failed to adopt
the liberal aspects of western culture. Instead, it preserved authoritarian
socio-cultural structures, sustained by traditional Islamic political
culture that cherished obedience to authority. Modern technologies of
political control and authoritarian ideologies simply enhanced these
structures. One outcome was that Arab intellectuals gave higher priority
to national goals -- the restoration of Arab power, the attainment of
Arab unity, and the struggle against Israel – than to democratization.
The ongoing conflict with Israel also served as a pretext for rulers to avoid democratization.
The spread of Islamist ideology led to the growing identification of liberal democratic values
with the hostile West, hence, as destructive to authentic Islamic culture.
At the same time, Islamist terrorism, particularly in Algeria and Egypt, pushed large segments
of the “silent majority” to prefer authoritarian rulers as
the lesser evil.
President Bush’s
call for new Palestinian political and economic institutions based
on democracy appears to assume that there is a greater potential for
democracy among Palestinians than in other Arab societies. Indeed, while
the Palestinians share many societal traits with other Arabs, they have
been regarded as the exception to the “Arab exception,” due
to their higher level of education and greater exposure to western cultural
influences. These things were thought to produce a more politically
sophisticated society. Perhaps paradoxically, the conflict with Israel
was also thought to strengthen this potential, because under Israeli
rule, Palestinian civil society, as a major engine of national mobilization,
experienced significant growth. For some Palestinians, the proximity
of Israeli democracy also generated demands for democracy in their own
future state.
The establishment of the Palestinian
Authority (PA) reversed these processes. The PA’s institutional
structure ostensibly contained all the accepted components of democracy,
including an elected executive and legislative council and an independent
judiciary. In practice, however, PA Chairman Yasser
Arafat maintained the system of personal control he had developed
in Beirut during the 1970s. This system was based on the principle of
divide-and-rule: overlapping responsibilities were assigned to competing
institutions, whose heads he personally appointed and who remained dependent
on him and vied for his favor. It was reinforced by PA’s rentier
character. Since foreign aid constituted the bulk of its revenues, the
PA did not depend on tax revenues from its citizens and was therefore
unaccountable to them. The allocation of more than 30% of the PA budget
to Arafat’s presidential office provided him with another instrument
for dispensing favors and maintaining control. Consequently, Arafat
could ignore the legislative council and turned it into an ineffective
debating society. He also neutralized the judiciary by dismissing independent
judges, by ignoring verdicts not to his liking, and by establishing
national security courts subject to military procedures. The print and
electronic media were brought under the PA’s control and used to
promote Arafat’s personality cult.
Palestinian society itself has undergone a process
of militarization with the establishment of nine different security
forces that functioned as a major employers as well as instruments to
repress domestic opponents and prosecute the conflict with Israel. The
strategic decision by Fatah,
the dominant Palestinian movement and Arafat’s personal power base,
not to transform itself into a political party signified the priority
given to national-revolutionary ideology over democratization. The educational
curriculum, too, emphasized the importance of Palestinian national struggle
over democratization.
The Palestinian middle class suffered a severe setback due to official
corruption and the Mafia-like system set up by the security organs to
extort “commissions” from businessmen. The closures imposed
by Israel as a measure of combating Palestinian terrorist activities
also diminished employment opportunities in Israel and inflicted an
additional blow on the Palestinian economy.
Most civil society institutions, except the Islamist
ones, were brought under the PA’s control. In addition, the PA
encouraged the revival of traditional clan loyalties that it could manipulate
at the expense of more modern frameworks of political organization.
The growing impoverishment of Palestinians during the current 21-month confrontation drove many
of them to rely on their families and clans for survival, thereby further
enhancing primordial loyalties.
The cause of democratization is also undermined by
the fact that the major opposition to the PA, Hamas,
is also an anti-democratic movement and advocates an Islamist agenda
that denies the political rights of secular forces and non-Muslims and
relegates women to a marginal role in society. The PA’s excessive
corruption and failure to provide basic social services, particularly
during the past 21 months of violence, has increased the popularity
of Hamas, perhaps enabling it eventually to challenge the PA’s
very existence. In any case, Palestinians are left with a choice between
two non-democratic options.
Any real shift towards democracy will therefore require
a comprehensive overhaul of the PA system of government; a profound
economic change that would enable the Palestinian middle class to function
without the shackles of the security organs and would allow the growth
of a free civil society; elimination of corruption as a political system;
a comprehensive educational reform that would promote democratic values;
and progress in the peace process with Israel. PA authoritarianism never
reached the level of Iraq and Syria and more closely resembles the model
of Egypt and Jordan, but it is highly unlikely that a genuine shift
to democracy will take place as long as Arafat and his cohorts continue
to dominate Palestinian politics.
Sources: Tel Aviv University
- The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies |