Between bullets and ballots: The palestinians and Israeli Democracy

This essay tries to analyze whether Palestinians perceived Israel's democratic regime as an important characteristic in its own right, how they tried to take advantage of this fact in order to help achieve their objectives, and how effective they were in playing the democratic card. Despite initial disinterest, the Palestinians placed increasing importance on the dynamics of Israeli democracy in achieving their goal. However, capitalizing on these presumed advantages presented by Israeli democracy as a means of reducing Israeli consensus and legitimacy resulted in similar strains in Palestinian society. The strains manifested themselves in the conflict between two paradigms: the paradigm of the bullets, reflecting the PLO's deep roots and commitment to terrorist and catharsis ideologies; and the paradigm of the ballots, that reached its peak in the present Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. Arafat's adoption of the paradigm of the bullets grievously hurt the Palestinians, who learned the hard way that Israeli democracy was a two-edged sword-at times wielded to their advantage, lately to their disadvantage.