MIDDLE EAST: Palestinians say they don't expect the Israeli election to spur any movement in the peace process

Record ID: 349479

  • Title: MIDDLE EAST: Palestinians say they don't expect the Israeli election to spur any movement in the peace process
  • Date: 6th February 2009
  • Summary: GAZA CITY, GAZA (FILE) (REUTERS) SMOKE RISING OVER GAZA AND WHITE SMOKE SPREADING AFTER SHELL EXPLODES WIDE OF GAZA CITY AND SMOKE RISING
  • Embargoed: 21st February 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA1LLWZAXW1BUJYWF3X6U5JAU17
  • Story Text: Just last month an Israeli military offensive in Gaza pounded Palestinian communities. Israeli officials said the military operation was aimed at stopping Palestinian militants from launching rocket attacks at southern Israel.
    Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers have since entered into a fragile ceasefire, and Palestinians in Gaza are sorting through the rubble that remains after the conflict.
    At the same time, Israeli voters are debating the merits of candidates in their country's February 10 parliamentary election, which will determine Israel's next prime minister.
    But it's clear from speaking to people on Gaza's streets that Palestinians in the coastal enclave don't care much for Israeli politicians these days.

    "All of them are dirty, and all of them are dogs. They are criminals," forty-four year-old Amin Abu Khier said, while shopping in a Gaza City market.

    "Netanyahu will win because he is more criminal than the people before him - and he will have hard position against the Palestinian case. He has ideas to destroy the Palestinian people," Abu Muhammed, a sixty year-old Palestinian man said, referring to Benjamin Netanyahu, the leading candidate from Israel's Likud party.

    "Netanyahu or Livni are the same coin - two faces of the same coin. There is no difference. All the Jews are the same - no difference. It is a Zionist policy," Abu Suliman, a 48-year-old Palestinian said, referring to Tzipi Livni, the leader of Israel's Kadima party.
    Taher Nunu is a spokesman for Gaza's ruling Hamas faction. Though Hamas leaders have been accused of stifling free speech, and committing human rights abuses, Nunu calls the leading Israeli candidates for prime minister - Livni, Netanyahu, Labour party leader Ehud Barak, and right-wing candidate Avigdor Lieberman - "killers."

    "Livni and Barak killed 1300 Palestinian people, and Lieberman wants to kill all the Palestinian people. So the consequences are that they are all killers, and all of them agreed not to give us our rights, no Jerusalem, no right of return even, no for the evacuate from lands of 1967. So we say they are different in the ways of killing us, and on the ways to let us suffer," Nunu told Reuters.
    On the West Bank, where the Fatah faction holds sway, Palestinian leaders say international pressure to force Israel out of land Israel occupied in 1967 has pushed the Israeli electorate to the right side of the political spectrum.
    Abdullah Abdullah is a Fatah member and a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

    "No doubt that the atmosphere in the Israeli public is probably moving towards the right, and probably the extreme right. It seems like the international community's consensus that the occupation should end, and that the Palestinian state should be established had filtered down to the grassroot of the Israeli public, and because of their education, because of their indoctrination, they don't want to leave - especially the settlers and the extreme right in Israel," Abdullah said.
    Ghssam Khateeb, the Vice-President of Birzeit University, and a political analyst agrees that Israeli settlements in occupied territory remain a stumbling block towards peace. He says that he doesn't expect Israel's two front-running political parties, Likud, and Kadima, to make significant changes where settlements are concerned.

    "Unfortunately, there isn't significant differences from a Palestinian perspective between Kadima and the Likud. Both of them are committed to the continuity of the Israeli illegal settlement expansion in the Palestinian occupied territories, which makes them alike from a Palestinian perspective because Palestinians believe that the Israeli Palestinian expansion policy is the main indicator to the negative attitude of any Israeli leadership vis a vis peace negotiations, which is supposed to be, for the Palestinians, about ending this Israeli occupation," Khateeb said.
    Palestinian university students at Birzeit University, located on the West Bank, also said they didn't expect a break-through in peace talks.

    "I don't think whether Livni or Barak or Netanyahu none of them is good to Palestinians. They have the same policy," Haziam Baraka said.

    "No, not really. At least not in Palestine. Maybe it will affect Israeli, but not here because they all follow the same policy. They all care about the same things, so maybe there will be slight changes but not something really important or mentionable," Dema, another university student, said.
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