It has been more than a month since the Palestinian elections took place. The elections sent shockwaves through the international community and have now led many to expect the worst for the future of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Contrary to popular opinion, however, few things have changed.
The democratic election of Hamas has created the illusion that the Palestinians are a sovereign and independent people-a people who more or less have made a poor choice in governance. The truth of the matter is that the Palestinians have no legitimate government. They have no say in their politics. Israel’s interactions with the Palestinians have been strictly unilateral for nearly six decades and continue to remain so, irrespective of which party the Palestinians vote into “office.”
The existence of an independent government under colonial occupation is contradictory. This is to imply that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has power. It is not the PA that ethnically cleansed historic Palestine of the majority of its indigenous population in 1948 and then again in 1967. It is not the PA that has continued to build Jewish-only settlements on this land despite condemnation by the United Nations and the international community. It is not the PA that built a wall larger than that of Berlin on occupied land-a wall that separates Palestinians from their farmland, schools, water supply and employment. This has left parts of the West Bank with unemployment rates skyrocketing well over 70 percent. Seventy-three percent of the water supply in the West Bank is reserved for the Jewish minority, leaving the remaining 17 percent for the Arab majority. And we are shocked that an overwhelming majority of these people voted for Hamas? Heaven knows how we would have reacted under the same circumstances.
It is not the PA that forced these Palestinian refugees into occupied enclaves, virtual ghettos, connected to neighboring enclaves by ethnically segregated roads-a system which many have agreed bears a striking resemblance to the Homeland System implemented during South African apartheid, the only exception being that even in South Africa there were no white-only roads.
This Homeland System appropriated a meager 15 percent of the land to the native black population and similarly forced them to live in segregated enclaves. It should come as no surprise then that the South African government was able to convince the white electorate that this morally inhumane scheme was not only “just,” but also a step toward black independence. Within these enclaves, just like the Palestinians, the blacks could practice their “political rights.” Yet most blacks did not even live in the enclaves and thus could not participate in their political processes. Similarly, over half of the Palestinian population is made up of refugees who live beyond the borders of the West Bank and Gaza whom were denied the right of return as guaranteed in international law and the right to vote in the past election. Is this history that we see repeating itself? Hundreds of Jewish South Africans seem to think so, as well as champions of democracy Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who have noted the similarities between the two apartheid states.
Just last week: The Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) conducted 31 incursions into Palestinian territories in the West Bank, raiding houses, transforming them into military sites, and arresting 79 Palestinian civilians (26 of which were children). The IOF also continued to prevent Palestinians aged below 45 from entering the al-Aqsa Mosque to observe Friday Prayers and used force to disperse peaceful demonstrations by Palestinian civilians in protest to the construction of the apartheid wall in villages near Ramallah. So as we can see, “democracy” is going splendidly in the region.
Democracy does not exist in a vacuum of electoral politics. In the absence of basic human rights, it is nothing more than an abstract word. Try telling a Palestinian whose house has been bulldozed to make room for a Jewish settlement that he or she is living in a democracy.
Only when Palestinians no longer have to live under an oppressive occupation will they truly be free. Only when they and Israelis are treated with equality under the law can there be peace. Only then can we even begin to hope for a genuine and lasting democracy.

Sarah Dwidar is a senior studying political science and international
studies. She is the president of
SLU Solidarity With Palestine.