The presidential term of Mahmoud Abbas will soon expire, but a new election seems unlikely, states Jamal Juma in an OpEd in The Guardian. Juma argues that a breakdown may provide an important opening for new popular forces to rise within Palestinian national politics.
Read: Guardian, “Jamal Juma: What next for the Palestinians?” 24 October 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/24/israelandthepalestinians-middleeast
The Palestinian Basic Law is to function as a temporary constitution for the Palestinian Authority until the establishment of an independent state and a permanent constitution for Palestine can be achieved.
The Basic Law was passed by the Palestinian Legislative Council in 1997 and ratified by President Yasser Arafat in 2002. It has subsequently been amended twice; in 2003 the political system was changed to introduce a prime minister. In 2005 it was amended to conform to the new Election Law. The 2003 reform was comprehensive and affected the whole nature of the Palestinian political system, whereas the 2005 amendment was only minor and affected only a few paragraphs.
A parallel effort has been made to draft a permanent Palestinian constitution for an independent state, but this was shelved in favor of amending the existing Basic Law.
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