Political Participation Crisis and its Impact on the Democratization Process in Palestine (2013-1993)

This study has set the scenes on the political participation crisis in Palestine, and its impact on democratization process in Palestine. especially since Oslo agreement in 1993. The study assumes that the lack of agreements between political powers on Palestinian cause significant sector that caused crisis on political participation. Moreover, it had a negative impact on the democratization process. The study aims at defining the main challenges and difficulties that faced the democratization process. Descriptive analytical approach has been used do address the aforementioned problem. Therefore, the study discuses the problem by deviding it into four chapters; the First Chapter illustrates study’s background review, its problem, its significance, questions and assumptions, and research scale as well as illustrate literate review, on related research work and decline keywords. The Second Chapter discusses the theoretical framework and basic concepts related to the study. Then, the Third Chapter will discuss political participation crisis in Palestine since Oslo agreement in 1993 and until end of years 2013. The Fourth Chapter will be done in two parts. The first part is discussing the democratization process in Palestine, in this part, Palestinian Political System and the evolution of democratization process will be discussed, starting from the era of domination of Palestinian liberation organization on Palestine’s political system, and until the era of domination of Palestinian authorities on the system. Lack of political structure elements and appearance of internal conflicts between authorities and appositive in both mentioned eras will be discussed in this part. The second part discusses the impact of political participation crisis on the democratization process in Palestine. This part will show that the crisis has caused challenges that disallow effective political participation that support democracy in Palestine. The study concluded that Oslo agreement did not allow many political powers and parties to be involved in the Palestinian political system. The effect 1of the agreement and its outcomes on Palestine’s politics in general, and the role it played in damaging the political harmony in Palestine will be illustrated. This part will explain the errors in Palestinian political system and decision makers’ means to rule the county. The study has reached few conclusions and recommendations that are illustrated at the end of the thesis. Study has provided a number of recommendations that are believed to participate in solving political participation problem and reduce its effects democratization process in Palestine. One of the conclusions is that the main reasons of the political participations crisis are: First, the nature of transformation process. Second, Palestinian people did not acceptance Oslo agreement and failed to overcome the shock caused by the resolution’s reality, which caused failure to accept the limitations and boundaries on Palestine’s political and economic life. Therefore, Palestine seemed to have political confusion and lack of unified political speech, which is essential at this stage. This is the main reason of political participation crisis in modern Palestinian politics. Thirdly, political conflict between Fateh and Hamas has caused avoidance to participate in political life. This is due to Fateh’s and Hamas’s failure to reunify West Bank and Gaza strip. Such political separation, internal conflict, and national crisis have harmed the democratic transformation process in Palestine. The most important recommendations that this Study has concluded are: First, democratization of the political system must be based on enlarging political participation and peaceful resolution between political powers. Second, political powers shall not attempt or base its agenda on destroying other political powers, instead, peaceful common ground based on mutual respect and tolerance is to be found. Third, isolation of any decision maker shall be forbidden and culture of democracy and tolerance must be adopted. Finally, forbidding the concept of violence and conflict, and resorting to democracy while supporting concept of peaceful exchange of authority.