Monday, January 25, 2010

Palestine Election 2010

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This is the election that will never be, or so it seems. Palestine has been due for an election for quite some time now but has been unable to hold one due to the fact that the country is split in two.

Beyond the geographic split between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, there is a political split, with Fatah (and pals) controlling the West Bank, and Hamas (and pals) controlling the Gaza Strip. Neither, of course, really want's to lose their grasp on power in their half to risk gaining power in the other half (less it be ripped away though a civil war like it was the first time) The situation may then just remain as-is.

But what is the situation as-is? I've decided to take a look at another Wikipedia page found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_members_of_Palestinian_Legislative_Council and come up with a few numbers.

First of all, I tried to find out where this broken assembly currently stands. If I have my count right, Hamas and friends have 65 seats, while Fatah and friends have 47. I decided to make it interesting, and try to split the vote between the two. This is difficult as the Proportional Representation seats are assigned nationwide. What I decided to do was place all Fatah reps in the West Bank and all Hamas in Gaza. This seemed logical. This is what I came up with.

West Bank (2.6 mil)
Fatah - 42 (34 list)
Hamas - 19

Gaza Strip (1.6 mil)
Hamas - 46 (26 list)
Fatah - 5

So what do these numbers mean? Not much, sadly, they are pretty useless. This is, however, the closest we can get to the "situation as-is", and my simple calculation here and now, sadly, looks about as close as we will get to a Palestinian election this year.


Sorry, no extra data today!

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