Jonathan Schanzer on the Palestinians' Political Mess

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2021

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

To understand the Palestinian people and the region, one must understand the enduring cleavages and party affiliations that make up Palestinian politics.

In 2007, shortly after legislative elections that led to a surprising victory for the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas, Palestinians fought a brief civil war. By the end of the conflict, Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party retained power in the West Bank, while Hamas controlled Gaza. Today, the Palestinians remain divided along those same factional and territorial lines—lines that are now front and center, since Palestinian elections are once again being called for next month. If the elections go forward—and it’s now looking unlikely that they will—they will feature the first presidential election since 2005, when Abbas was elected for a single four-year term that’s now entered its sixteenth year.

To help us make sense of what's happened and what's likely to happen, we asked Jonathan Schanzer, a senior vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the author of Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine (2008), to join our podcast this week. In conversation with Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver, Schanzer outlines the history of Palestinian politics and brings listeners inside the vigorous competition for power taking place at this moment.

Musical selections are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	In 2007, the Palestinians fought a civil war, with the Fatah Party and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas,
0:15.0	retaining power in the West Bank, and the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas controlling Gaza.
0:21.7	From that day, to this day, Palestinians have been divided, and that division is now front
0:26.8	and center in the prospective Palestinian elections called for next month.
0:31.7	If the elections go forward, and it's looking unlikely as of this recording that they
0:36.4	will, they would feature the first presidential election since 2005,
0:41.4	when Mahmoud Abbas was then elected for a single four-year term
0:45.2	that's now entered its 16th year.
0:48.1	Thinking through the Palestinian elections is a way for us to see
0:52.8	the enduring cleavages and party affiliations that make up
0:57.5	Palestinian politics.
0:59.2	Welcome to the Tikva podcast.
1:01.0	I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.
1:02.8	My guest today is Jonathan Shanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation
1:07.6	for Defensive Democracies, and the author back in 2008 of Hamas versus
1:12.9	Fatah, the struggle for Palestine. The central contention of that book is that you won't be
1:18.4	able to understand the Palestinians if you only see them refracted through their conflict with
1:23.7	Israel. But instead, to understand the Palestinians, you need to understand their own domestic
1:28.8	politics and how they coalesce in these two movements, Fatah and Hamas. Shanzer's work is an
1:35.5	application of the truth that all politics is local. And the announcement of Palestinian elections
1:41.5	this spring gives us the chance to test again his analysis
1:45.3	and step inside the competition for power taking place right now at an inflection point in
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tikvah, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Tikvah and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.