With only weeks until the scheduled May 22 Palestinian legislative elections, senior officials in Ramallah are hinting that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will cancel the vote. It would not be the first time. Palestinians in 2006 last had the opportunity to make their voices heard at the ballot box, a vote that resulted in a victory by Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and other countries.
Since then, Palestinian elections have been announced and subsequently canceled at least four times: in 2009, 2011, 2018 and 2019.
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Time and time again, the PA has prevented Palestinians from exercising their ostensible democratic right to choose political representatives. Consequently, the West Bank has essentially been governed via Abbas’ decrees for over a decade, while the Gaza Strip continues to be ruled by Hamas. Although numerous media outelets have extensively covered Abbas’ repeated vows to hold elections, the media have for the most part failed to thereafter accurately report on why the PA leader called off the votes: that is, due to a combination of internal Palestinian strife and the possibility that Hamas would again come out on top.
Instead, in many instances the media have blamed Israel for the Palestinians’ self-inflicted predicament.
While it is still unclear if the May elections will take place, numerous reports in Israeli and Palestinian media suggest that the prospect is becoming increasingly unlikely.
Enter the Associated Press (AP), which on Monday published an article titled, “Jerusalem dispute could derail Palestinian vote.” The piece preemptively blames Israel for the possible postponement or cancelation of the Palestinian vote, while only in passing mentions the intra-Palestinian divide.
The wire service’s inaccurate and decontextualized article was republished by major news sites such as The Washington Post, ABC News and The Independent.
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The Jerusalem Vote: Largely Symbolic
The first sentence of the AP article argues that, “A dispute over voting in east Jerusalem is threatening to cancel or delay the first Palestinian elections in more than 15 years.” Unwittingly or not, the news agency is parroting a PA-promoted anti-Israel canard, evidence of which was made stark a day later when Abbas adviser Nabil Shaath declared that it is “very likely” that the elections would be delayed, as Israel had not yet replied to Ramallah’s request to place ballot boxes in Jerusalem.
In fact, the official is trying to divert attention from the political instability in the Palestinian territories and his own Fatah party.
The Oslo Accords oblige Israel to allow a small number of Palestinians living in the eastern section of what Israel considers its undivided capital to participate in Palestinian elections. The 1995 Oslo II agreement states, in Annex II, Article VI, Section 2: “A number of Palestinians of Jerusalem will vote in the elections through services rendered in post offices in Jerusalem, in accordance with the capacity of such post offices.”
However, the same agreement also says that the PA should prevent candidates from running if they promote racism or pursue their aims by unlawful or non-democratic means. Considering that both Hamas and convicted arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti have both put forth a list of candidates for the election, it is clear that the onus is on the Palestinians to fulfill their obligations.
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Moreover, provisions of the Oslo Accords stipulate that only a limited number of Palestinians can cast ballots in Jerusalem. In the last election, 5,000 were eligible to vote for the PA parliament using Israeli post offices, amounting to just 0.2 percent of all 2.5 million registered voters. As even The Guardian – winner of our 2011 Dishonest Reporting Award – conceded, having Jerusalem-based Palestinians take part in elections is symbolic.
“Most voters travel to areas outside East Jerusalem to vote,” the paper wrote in 2006. Indeed, the Palestinian Central Elections Commission recently confirmed that this would also be possible for the prospective election. The Associated Press article noted that the controversy only concerns “some 6,000 residents.” So why does the headline, as well as the first paragraphs, make it seem like Israel is the prime obstacle to the Palestinian democratic process?
In fact, perhaps the foremost reason that Abbas is mulling postponing the election is only mentioned midway through the AP story:
Polls point to a split Fatah vote that could leave the unified Hamas as the largest party in parliament. If Barghouti decides to run for president in a vote planned for July 31, he is expected to easily defeat Abbas….”
Unquestionably, the chances of Fatah winning the election have not improved since Abbas issued the decree for holding them on January 15. Talks about a joint Fatah-Hamas run have formally ended, and a recent survey found that Gaza’s terrorist leaders would garner 27 percent of the votes in the general election, while 24 percent would choose Abbas’ candidates.
And Hamas is not the only threat to Fatah’s rule over the Palestinian Authority. According to the March 31 opinion poll, the party of Barghouti, who was previously loyal to Fatah, would win 20 percent of the votes. Moreover, if Barghouti — who is currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for organizing numerous terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada — decides to run in the presidential election scheduled for July 31, he is predicted to defeat Abbas in a landslide.
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Additionally, two other former Fatah officials announced that they would challenge Abbas on May 22. Nasser al-Qidwa, former PA ambassador to the United Nations, joined forces with Barghouti while Mohammed Dahlan, Fatah’s former Gaza security chief who was exiled by Abbas, submitted an electoral slate called, “The Future.”
Indeed, mounting tensions between Fatah and its breakaway rivals have already resulted in several shootings targeting the houses of candidates in the West Bank.
Parroting the PA’s Anti-Israel Spin
Due to this confluence of factors, dropping the election plan is seemingly in Abbas’ interest, especially when considering that he recently entered the 17th year of what was intended to be a four-year mandate. Nevertheless, when the 85-year-old PA boss on four previous occasions canceled the proposed elections, he repeatedly used as a pretext the inability of all Palestinians living in Jerusalem to vote.
So why is AP enabling Abbas’ manipulation, while insufficiently explaining it in its “explainer” the most important reasons informing his decision-making process?
The article also contains a claims that is flat-out false. According to Associated Press, “Few Palestinians would argue for proceeding with elections that exclude east Jerusalem.” However, opinion polling indicates that 65 percent of Palestinians favor holding elections even if Israel does not allow any voting to take place in the holy city.
In 2021 alone, HonestReporting has already pointed out anti-Israel bias in AP‘s reporting four times, which prompted a significant correction. Just three weeks ago, the news agency ran a piece that described Barghouti as a “popular and charismatic leader,” who is “viewed by many Palestinians as a revolutionary leader in the mold of Nelson Mandela or Fidel Castro.” In February, AP published a piece that blamed Israel for Hamas’ crackdown on women’s rights.
Related Reading: AP, WaPo, LA Times Blame Israel For Hamas Decision to Restrict Women’s Rights
AP supplies news stories to major media organizations worldwide. Its 2019 annual report boasted that more than half of the world’s population reads articles produced by AP every day. As such, it has a great amount of influence, with which comes a great amount of responsibility.
HonestReporting calls on Associated Press to amend its story by including all elements and facts — while weighing the issues according to their importance — that could result in the cancelation of the Palestinian legislative elections.
We encourage our readers to contact AP to request that the article be amended to reflect the true reality on the ground.
