The Palestinians' First Excursion into Democracy (original) (raw)

Journal of Palestine Studies, 1996

Abstract

It is difficult to escape the notion that Middle Eastern democracy is something of an oxymoron. The democratic credentials of any of the regimes or states in that great arc from the Atlantic to the Gulf (min alMuhit illa al-Khalij in the Arab nationalist parlance of yesteryear) are far from impeccable. Even the democratic nature of the much-vaunted "only democracy" in the region is circumscribed by the inherent tension between its Jewishness on the one hand and its self-proclaimed democratic ethos on the other. When we look, then, at the Palestinians' first serious excursion into democracy with the recent elections, what are we really talking about, and what can we expect?

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