An elderly Palestinian Is carried by the crowd as PLO chairman Yasser Arafat arrives to address his followers prior to the elections.
candidates. But his orders to the independents to withdraw have been blithely ignored. And in certain districts, areas where large and often wealthy "clans" have long been prominent in Palestinian politics, their candidates have a good chance of winning seats.
These representatives of the moneyed classes — to the degree than one can speak of "big business" Palestinians — want to guarantee that the new council is not dominated by young, less conservative forces.
A similar fault line runs between the underclass of refugees still living in camps (especially in the Gaza Strip and around Nablus) and the established "native" population of nearby cities.
"All in all," forecasts Israeli journalist Danny Rubinstein, "Arafat's opponents on the cotm-cil will probably be scattered and few."
Other than that, however, it's difficult — considering the mix of interests among the independents — to forecast which candidates are likely to win.
In an interesting approach to representative democracy, six coimcil seats have been reserved for Christian Palestinians and one for the tiny (300-member) community of Samaritans in Nablus. Only 28 women are in the running, but they've been vocal in airing feminist issues (such as their complaint against the PNA ruling that married women cannot receive passports without their husbands' permission).
There's even a sprinkling of independents identified with Hamas, and the pundits say that their victory would probably be welcomed by Mr. Arafat, lest the council look more like the Fatah
Yasser Arafat
Central Committee than the parliament of the Palestinian people.
Nevertheless, the real match will not between the backers and opponents of the Oslo agreements. Sensing broad public support for the accords, even Hamas dropped its anti-Oslo argument and is basing boycott calls on the grounds that only a third of the Palestinian people can vote (the rest being in exile).
But with 90 percent of the electorate registered, the Palestinians of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem are obviously eagre to participate in their first experiment in democracy.
And with good reason. For in this contest between generations, between "insiders" and "outsiders," between leather jackets and business suits — in which 67 percent of the electorate is under age 40 and 43 percent is under age 30—the deeper political implications of the intifada may finally be realized. □
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