When will these Palestinians learn that gun culture is not going to help build an independent state.
It is just sad.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/international/middleeast/28cnd-mideast.html
November 28, 2005
Palestinian Gunmen Force the Postponement of Vote in Gaza
By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM, Nov. 28 - Palestinian gunmen, shooting into the air, pushed their way into polling stations in Gaza today and forced the postponement of primary elections for the main Palestinian party, Fatah, led by President Mahmoud Abbas.
The violence - and the unrelated kidnapping by gunmen of a lion cub and rare parrots from the Gaza zoo - were further examples of the chaos in Gaza, especially among rival security forces, as Mr. Abbas tries to restore stability, exercise authority and prepare the population for legislative elections on Jan. 25.
In 1996, the year of the last parliamentary elections (votes scheduled for 2000 and 2004 were postponed), Yasir Arafat picked all of Fatah’s candidates. Now, a year after Mr. Arafat’s death, Mr. Abbas is trying to bring more transparency and democracy to Palestinian political life and to Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority.
But there have been widespread complaints of fraud, with gunmen and candidates complaining of ballot-stuffing and that valid voters were missing from election rolls.
Mr. Abbas and Fatah face a significant challenge in January from the radical Islamic movement Hamas, which refuses to give up its weapons and is committed to the destruction of Israel. Hamas, which has done well in municipal elections, is running in the legislative elections for the first time, and both Israel and Washington are deeply worried about how well Hamas will do. In opinion polls, Hamas, whose leaders are picking its candidates, receives about 30 percent of the putative vote, but many Palestinians say they are upset with the performance of Mr. Abbas and Fatah.
In weekend primary voting in the more populous and secular West Bank, Fatah’s younger generation did very well, a measure of the popular dissatisfaction with the current Fatah leadership, many of whom returned from exile to the Palestinian territories in 1994 with Mr. Arafat after the 1993 Oslo accords with Israel.
In Ramallah, for example, Marwan Barghouti, who led the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades and is serving consecutive life sentences in an Israeli jail, was named on 96 percent of the ballots in a 10-person race. Mr. Barghouti’s strong showing was seen as a blow to Fatah’s old guard and will intensify the power struggle among generations and between those who were in exile or, like Mr. Barghouti, grew up in the territories under Israeli occupation.
On one hand, the struggle is salutary and clarifying; on the other, it may weaken Fatah in the face of a relatively united Hamas movement, with its reputation of holiness and honesty.
In response, some Israeli politicians, especially the dovish party leader Yossi Beilin, called on Mr. Barghouti to be released from prison as a Palestinian leader who could credibly negotiate peace with Israel.
But after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon broke with his Likud Party to establish the new Kadima party, Israeli politicians fighting for the center and the right competed in refusing to sanction the idea of an early release for Mr. Barghouti, who was convicted of ordering the killings of Israelis.
But even more than usual, with concurrent elections battles among the Palestinians and the Israelis, all comments about policy are highly seasoned with politics.
The new leader of Israel’s Labor Party, for instance, Amir Peretz, Morocco-born, has tried to move to the center by saying, like Mr. Sharon, that he would never redivide Jerusalem. Mr. Peretz, a trade-union leader who defeated long-time party leader Shimon Peres, 82, in a close race, has brought new life and spirit to Labor, but he has also refused to be interviewed by foreign journalists because his aides admit that he does not yet have a coherent platform.
Mr. Peretz, who has no great love for Mr. Peres, offered him the powerless presidency of the party and a purely symbolic last place on Labor’s parliamentary list for the elections on March 28. Mr. Peres has rejected this call for his effective retirement and is contemplating a request from Mr. Sharon to join him in the new Kadima party and, if Mr. Sharon is re-elected prime minister, to take responsibility for the peace process.
Mr. Peres says he will consider the offer; his brother, Gigi Peres, in the meantime attacked Mr. Peretz today on Israeli army radio, calling him a “foreign body” in Labor who, along with his people “from North Africa” had taken over Labor the way the fascist Francisco Franco and the Falangists took over Spain in the 1930’s.
The analogy is inexact, given the lack of a civil war in Israel, but Gigi Peres set off another fine political contretemps, with a Peretz supporter, Yuli Tamir, demanding that Mr. Peres apologize - to his own brother.
