I Hope This 4-Year Presidential Term Lasts At Least 12

By Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas

A strong, robust democracy is what Palestine needs, and genuine rule of law. That’s why I am spearheading an effort to get my four-year term as president to extend at least twelve years; one can only accomplish a limited amount of law-upholding and democracy-robustifying in four years.

As I look back on the first ten years of my four-year term, I gain a gratifying sense of achievement: I am still in power. That represents no mean feat when compared with Israel, where governments come and go every few years. At this point I have held the office of president even longer than national icon Yasser Arafat himself, an achievement that makes an unequivocal statement about the state of Palestinian democracy. Let no one, not even my arch-rivals in Hamas, get the wrong idea about what it takes to hold democratic office.

Certainly our neighbors in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon are watching us closely to see how I negotiate the challenges of democracy: free speech, a monopoly on force, you know the drill. If I were to violate those nations’ customary treatment of those issues they’d be sure to set me straight. The fact that none of them have spoken out against my administration on democratic grounds speaks volumes.

Palestinians and others in the region often look to Israel as a model of democratic functioning, but they overlook the achievements of my administration on those very same issues. In Israel one encounters nonstop complaining and legislative instability, whereas under my aegis, Palestinians do not voice any complaints, and no one has to worry about collapsing coalition governments or political horse-trading that means compromising on important issues. In Palestine, no one has to compromise.

So-called human rights organizations make some noise about our treatment of dissenters, but that’s just a smoke screen. They have to pretend to be even-handed and neutral when they criticize Israel, so they also include so-called violations by my security apparatus. Everyone knows they make things up or rely on dishonest sources, so nobody pays any attention to what those groups say. There are no dissenters. At least not for very long.

So as I look ahead to the eleventh year of my four-year presidential term, I see stability born of determination. I see continued security in the backing of the right citizens of this great nation-in-development. I see vigilance against the forces that would disrupt that security. And I see the beginnings of what may prove to be another great decade of Palestinian achievement in democratic governance.