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Mouin Rabbani
إشكاليّات الدّيمقراطيّة الانتخابيّة في فلسطين
![[رجل فلسطيني يصوت في انتخابات 2012. مصدر الصورة مؤسسة هاينريش بول]](/content_images/3/sm_mouien.jpg "[رجل فلسطيني يصوت في انتخابات 2012. مصدر الصورة مؤسسة هاينريش بول]")
في مرحلة ما بعد الاستعمار، اعتبر الكفاح من أجل الديمقراطية أمراً مهماً لتحقيق الوعد بالتحرر الوطني. ومع نهاية الحرب الباردة تحديداً أصبحت الديمقراطية الانتخابية تعتبر الآلية الأكثر فاعلية لمواجهة الاستيلاء على الدول ومواردها، وحتى استقلالها على يد النخب الاستبدادية ذات الأفق الضيق التي نصّبت نفسها على هذه الدول. في عالم تقوم فيه الدكتاتوريات، سواء الفردية أو الحزبية، بالتعامل مع الحكم باعتباره تحدياً تقوم من خلاله بإخضاع المؤسسات لإرادتها، واستثناء المواطن من أي دور ...
Keep Reading »The Pitfalls of Democratic Elections in Palestine
![[Image of man voting in 2012 local Palestinian elections. Image by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.]](/content_images/3/sm_8124802829_46e60820f1_o.jpg "[Image of man voting in 2012 local Palestinian elections. Image by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.]")
In the post-colonial era, struggles for democracy have increasingly been seen and presented as necessary to fulfill the aborted promises of national liberation. Particularly since the end of the Cold War, electoral democracy has come to be viewed as the most effective mechanism to confront the usurpation of states, resources, and indeed independence by autocrats and narrow, self-selected elites. In a world where dictatorships of both the individual and party variety have ...
Keep Reading »قطر والفلسطينيون
![[أمير قطر الشيخ حامد بن خليفة ال ثاني ورئيس حكومة حماس إسماعيل هنية. غزة، اكتوبر 2012. تصوير علي علي المصدر ا.ب]](/content_images/3/sm_qatarrrrrrr.jpg "[أمير قطر الشيخ حامد بن خليفة ال ثاني ورئيس حكومة حماس إسماعيل هنية. غزة، اكتوبر 2012. تصوير علي علي المصدر ا.ب]")
سواء من حيث التوقيت أو من حيث الجوهر، فإنه من الصعب تفسير زيارة أمير قطر الشيخ حمد بن خليفة آل ثاني إلى غزة في تشرين أول/أكتوبر 2012 بشكل مبسط. وكما هو الحال عادة عندما يتعلق الأمر بالسياسة في فلسطين، فقد تبلورت بشكل سريع العديد من التفسيرات والتأويلات. وبالتالي، فإما أن قطر كانت تسعى لضمان دعم قادة حماس لإعادة انتخاب خالد مشعل لقيادة المكتب السياسي للحركة الإسلامية، وذلك عن طريق استخدام نفوذها الكبير على الإخوان المسلمين للمساعدة في تحويل رفح إلى معبر حدودي اعتيادي ومنتظم ...
Keep Reading »Year Three
Two years after Muhammad Bouazzizi’s self-immolation sparked a wave of uprisings in the Arab world, the region remains in turmoil. In what has become a lengthy process of fundamental transformation, there is little indication of when, how or on what basis stability will again be achieved. Given the transitional nature of developments to date, the temptation to proclaim winners and losers needs to be resisted. If 2012 put paid to the initial notion that youth movements ...
Keep Reading »In Honor of Titans
![[Student with his face covered parades a Palestinian flag as he goes past pictures of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, during a demonstration of some 300 Palestinian students of the Bir-Zeit University in the occupied West Bank, Jan. 5, 1988. (AP Photo/Anat Givon)]](/content_images/3/sm_AP880105054.jpg "[Student with his face covered parades a Palestinian flag as he goes past pictures of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, during a demonstration of some 300 Palestinian students of the Bir-Zeit University in the occupied West Bank, Jan. 5, 1988. (AP Photo/Anat Givon)]")
In hindsight, the popular uprising that erupted in the occupied Palestinian territories on 9 December 1987 and continued for six grueling yet heroic years makes perfect sense. Scholars, analysts, and activists have demonstrated how a variety of factors came together to ripen conditions for the eruption of mass protest and its development into a sustained and organized rebellion. These conditions included accelerated colonial expansion throughout the West Bank ...
Keep Reading »On the Insignificance of Stevie Wonder
![[Stevie Wonder. image from Flickr/Burns]](/content_images/3/sm_2665688198_aa27da1ac4_z.jpg "[Stevie Wonder. image from Flickr/Burns]")
The recent decision by American musician Stevie Wonder to withdraw from a 6 December 2012 concert to raise funds for the Israeli military has drawn widespread acclaim. One activist, Ali Abunimah, even characterized it as a “significant milestone”, contrasting it favorably with “empty gestures” at the United Nations and specifically the General Assembly’s recent 138-9 decision to grant Palestine non-member observer state status. The facts suggest otherwise. Stevie ...
Keep Reading »Palestine at the United Nations?
![[The UN General Assembly. Image by Ragnhild H. Simenstad via Flickr]](/content_images/3/sm_8229657249_3ae01ea7b7.jpg "[The UN General Assembly. Image by Ragnhild H. Simenstad via Flickr]")
The significance of the United Nations General Assembly vote to recognize Palestine as a non-member observer state has been exaggerated by opponents and proponents alike. It has no consequences for the status of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, nor does it undermine the rights of Palestinian refugees living in exile, the occupied territories, or indeed Israel as codified in international law and ...
Keep Reading »Qatar and the Palestinians
Whether in terms of timing or substance, the October 2012 visit of Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani to the Gaza Strip defies simple explanation. As so often where Palestinian politics is concerned, a cottage industry of explanations and interpretations rapidly materialized. Thus Qatar was either seeking to ensure the support of Hamas’s Gaza leaders for the re-election of Khalid Mashaal to the leadership of the Islamist movement’s Politbureau; using its ...
Keep Reading »More Quick Thoughts on Palestine at the United Nations
![[President Barack Obama listens as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas responds to a question during a joint meeting with the press in the Oval Office Thursday, May 28, 2009. Image by Pete Souza. From Wikimedia Commons.]](/content_images/3/sm_Barack_Obama_meets_with_Mahmoud_Abbas_in_the_Oval_Office_2009-05-28_3.jpg "[President Barack Obama listens as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas responds to a question during a joint meeting with the press in the Oval Office Thursday, May 28, 2009. Image by Pete Souza. From Wikimedia Commons.]")
The outcome of a United Nations General Assembly vote on enhanced membership status for Palestine has never been in question. The Palestinians will win, probably handily, because the international community overwhelmingly supports the Palestinian right to self-determination and opposes Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. Those openly opposing this vote can easily be counted on the fingers of an amputated hand: Israel; the United States, which is more pro-Israel ...
Keep Reading »Netanyahu's First War
![[A Palestinian man picks up a binder from the debris after an Israeli air strike on the building of Hamas' Ministry of Interior in Gaza City, 16 November 2012. Image by Hatem Moussa/AP Photo.]](/content_images/3/sm_schmelzdebrisap.JPG "[A Palestinian man picks up a binder from the debris after an Israeli air strike on the building of Hamas' Ministry of Interior in Gaza City, 16 November 2012. Image by Hatem Moussa/AP Photo.]")
Despite his deserved reputation as an extremist and rejectionist of the first order, Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu has unlike most of his predecessors never initiated a war. He appears not to have planned one this time either. The 1996 Tunnel Intifada, named after several days of clashes that followed Israel’s festive opening of a tunnel in the heart of occupied East Jerusalem, may well have been Bibi’s template for the current assault on the Gaza Strip. It after all ...
Keep Reading »Bio
Mouin Rabbani is a Contributing Editor of Middle East Report and has published and commented widely on Palestinian affairs and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was a Senior Analyst of the Middle East with the International Crisis Group. Previously he worked as Palestine Director of the Palestinian American Research Centre. He is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine.
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