Democracy behind bars

Yesterday, the Israeli army seized 10 Hamas leaders all across the West Bank, storming their private houses in Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron and Bethlehem, two days after the indirect talks between Israel and the group on a prisoner swap broke down.

The swap would have witnessed the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and Gilad Shalit, but Israel refused the deal proposed, blaming Hamas for not compromising enough during the talks, while Hamas stated that Israel made unacceptable demands to deport some prisoners, rather than release them to their homes.

Yesterday’s raids are part of a wide scheme aiming to pressure the release of Gilad Shalit before a new Palestinian government is formed, possibly within days.

Amongst those detained last night, were a Deputy Prime Minister, 4 deputies from the Palestinian Legislative Council, elected in the 2006 polls, their head of office at the PLC and a University teacher from Nablus.

The wife of one of the arrested man details the raid “They entered and stormed our house in Nablus around 2am where they stayed for more than an hour. They arrested my husband, passed several phone calls, and left, detaining him.”

A Parliament on hold

According to the IOF, the detention of the ten Hamas senior officials was carried in a joint operation between the militaries and the intelligences services, as “those arrested were involved in restoring the Hamas administrative branch.”

Since 2006, after that the group captured Gilad Shalit, Israeli has seized dozens of Palestinians parliamentarians, legally elected under the Hamas’ list. Both in Gaza and the West Bank, the movement was been the target of severe crackdowns for over 2 years, ever since the party seized Gaza by force, after the rejected results of the 2006 elections where Hamas won the majority of the seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council.

In January 2006, Hamas won, democratically, the legislative polls supported by the West (Both the EU and the US), and that the international community qualified as “fair, free and democratic”, by 74 seats of the 132 seats of the Palestinian parliament.

The Parliamentary institution –run by democratically elected members- is the basic requirement of the establishment of a parliamentarian democracy. No one would disagree. But in Palestine, democratic institutions such as the Legislative Council or the Government are a little different. Parliaments are the premises that could lead to the establishment of a State. And it means a lot for the citizens of a country that has lived under occupation for the last century, and under Israeli occupation for the past 6 decades. It means sovereignty.

The Israeli occupation power, and the West with complicity, decided it wouldn’t mean that.

In the Palestinian Parliament, 47 democratically elected parliamentarians out of 132 are in jail. Five additional lawmakers were arrested yesterday, increasing the number to 52 deputies.

With more than a third of the parliamentarian assembly behind bars, one would logically wonder how democracy can function in Palestine?

Obviously, the answer is clear: for two years, democracy has stopped here.

Since 2006, after the first large-scale operation of arrest of the political leaders and Parliamentarians, and after the hermetic closure on Gaza - that makes movement between the West Bank and Gaza physically impossible -the Palestinian Parliament has not held a plenary session. No laws are voted or endorsed, no debates are taking places. The core of democracy is in jail.

It didn’t take that much time to the Palestinian to lose faith in what was called “an unprecedented democratic jump for the Palestinian society” after a round of democratic elections in 2005 and 2006.

The results of 2006 elections were universally recognized as fair, but with a Hamas majority, the outcome of the polls was inconvenient for both Israel and the West. Months later Hamas parliamentarians were arrested, the Government boycotted and any financial funds cut. The democracy was dead in the egg.

Not only political leaders and representatives are in jail. It is more than 11,000 Palestinians political prisoners are detained in Israeli jails, for no reasons else that their opinion or affiliation to groups.

Democracy and sovereignty are no longer in Palestinian hands.