Ali Abunimah and his father Hassan, address the issue of Marwan Barghouti’s candidacy.
“The first is a free and fair election that provides a geniune choice and in which the people, and no one else, decide the outcome. Palestinians are fortunate that with Marwan Barghouti, Mustafa Barghouti (a highly-respected leader and Marwan’s distant cousin, who represents the opposition Palestinian National Initiative), as well as several others, all candidates, there could be a real contest. A fair election requires the PA not to misuse its apparatus to unfairly skew the election, and that Israel not interfere.”
“The second option is to put empty slogans about ‘Palestinian unity,’ or even ‘Fatah unity’ before the interests of the Palestinian people at a time when those interests are under unprecedented threat.”
The exact same words, by the way, can be applied to the political situation in Israel. Instead of presenting a true alternative to Sharon’s disastrous policies, in the name of “unity” the Labor party is once again joining a Sharon government. The long road to irrelevance of the Labor party began when Shimon Peres joined Shamir in the first “National Unity” government in 1984. The fact that twenty years later, Peres is in charge of a party which is more a joke than a political force, is a testament to the foolhardy worship of “unity.”
Unity means conformity. It is a stick used to beat down those who think differently, who want to take risks on new ideas, who challenge the status quo. Given the disastrous state of the status quo in the Palestine/Israel conflict, a healthy dose of dis-unity is what is needed on both sides.