Isabelle Humphries writes for IslamOnline from the streets of East Jerusalem, where pessimism and realism rule, irrespective of the outcome of the Israeli election.

What sort of democracy is this, if exactly half the state’s residents don’t benefit from it? Indeed, can the term “democratic” be applied to a state in which many of the residents live under a military regime or are deprived of civil rights? Can there be democracy without equality, with a lengthy occupation and with foreign workers who have no rights? And what about the racism?...

…when tanks guard the voters in Yitzhar and other West Bank settlements, when curfew protects the election process in the Jewish settlement in Hebron, when thousands of soldiers will defend the roads on which the polling stations will be transported and when foreign workers with no rights will sweep our streets, we should remember that this is half a democracy, no more.¹

- Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz

It is a bitterly cold January day in Salah Eddin Street in downtown East Jerusalem, the day before the Israeli election. I may be a foreigner, but the Palestinians I walk past have no more say in the future of their own land than I do. Amongst the cybercafes and empty hotels in East Jerusalem, it is hard to drum up any interest in even discussing the subject. “Why change one dog for another?” said the hotel receptionist with a shrug.

Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist whose reports from the West Bank and Gaza are some of the few Israeli accounts to do justice to Palestinian suffering, addresses yet another angry appeal to his compatriots. Writing of the façade of Israeli democracy which deprives non-Jews on both sides of the Green Line of fundamental rights, Levy tries to expose the hypocrisy of his own nation. Sadly he is one of only a small minority of Israelis who understand the extent of the failings of the so-called “only democracy in the Middle East.”

“Come on,” some people I meet abroad say, “at least the Labor Party want peace. Surely the likes of Rabin, Peres and Barak tried?” Again, Levy best describes the hypocrisy of the internationally revered Israeli “peace” men. Years ago he worked as an aide to Peres, but today is a firm critic. Last year, as Peres was serving as foreign minister in Sharon’s coalition government, Levy published a stinging open letter to his former boss. “It is no longer possible to absolve you, to give you credit for Oslo, to understand that your heart aches over what is happening, and to know that you may even be bursting with rage over what is happening and refraining from speaking out… No, your silence and inaction can no longer be justified by any excuse: Shimon, you are a partner in crime” (Ha’aretz, January 25, 2002).

The idea that Peres et al are men of peace, or that Oslo or Camp David II were genuine Israeli offers of peace are myths and propaganda that have been widely accepted on the international level. While it is now clear that Sharon will be re-elected, even if Mitzna and Labor had taken control, few Palestinians were holding any hopes for fundamental change. What would a return to negotiations under Labor actually mean in real terms? “Sharon hits us, and Labor hits us with a smile,” said Waleed, a 60 year old East Jerusalem resident, “Which is better?” Some Palestinians even express the desire that Sharon will be reelected, in order to show the “ugly face of Zionism to the world.”

Barak did not offer the Palestinians a genuinely just deal at Camp David in 2000, so there is little reason to expect one from any new Labor leader. Camp David did not offer Palestinians a viable state, but a divided piece of land. Without international borders, a Palestinian state under Camp David would have had no autonomy and an economy completely controlled by Israel. The West Bank would remain dotted with settlements, and unequal distribution of water resources would continue.

And then of course there are the refugees, who definitely weren’t getting a look in at Oslo. As I travelled from Cairo to Jerusalem this week, in order to avoid the horrendous interrogation at the Israeli airport, I flew to Amman to cross the land border. In the 20 hours I was there, everyone I met was Palestinian. “Have you visited my village, Kfar Zbad near Tulkarem?” asked the hotel manager? “Four of my cousins living close to Jenin have been killed in this intifada,” the taxi driver informed me. Neither Camp David II nor Mitzna, Sharon’s challenger, offered any justice to the millions of Palestinians dotted across the world, whether as close as Jordan or further afield.

At the border I met Daoud who left Jerusalem in the 1950s. Returning to visit his elderly parents in East Jerusalem, this was the first time he had returned during the Intifada. How did he feel when crossing the border to his homeland, as 19 year-old European Israelis checked his passport and waved guns in our faces? “I can taste the fear when I cross the border.” How long was he staying? “Just a few days to see my parents, then back to the US.”

A British friend has just married her Palestinian fiance, from a West Bank refugee camp. Despite qualifications, neither could find employment in Palestine, and have left to start a new life in the UK. Yet another case of “peaceful transfer.” Sure they didn’t have to leave, but who can blame people for leaving such a place? And now who knows when her husband will be able to get a visa to come back to visit his family left behind in the camp? Even if Labor had got in, be under no illusion that a new government would be seeking to right the injustice against the Palestinian hotel manager in Amman, Daoud in the US or my friend’s husband in the UK.

So pardon me if I don’t get excited about the prospect of change in the elections in the “only democracy in the Middle East.”