Dr Mustafa Barghouti's 20% share of the vote represented a clear Those Israelis welcoming the death of Yassir Arafat, and hoping to use this to impose their terms on the Palestinian people, are likely to come to regret their hastiness, and to recognise that Arafat was one of the few people able to cut a deal with Israel, and then to sell it to the Palestinians.
Although their favoured candidate, Mahmoud Abbas, has won the election for president of the Palestine Authority, he will not be able to impose the terms Israel demands, and any attempt to do so is likely to provoke major internal Palestinian violence, even a civil war.
This, of course, may be Israel's intention - though it would be a very short-sighted approach.
To nobody's great surprise, Abbas won the election with 62% of the votes cast.
This result, and indeed the whole campaign, indicates that the Palestinians are not yet willing or able to draw up a balance sheet of Arafat's achievements and failures, and to draw the necessary strategic conclusions.
The election was marked by serious harassment by the Israeli military authorities. There were also many irregularities on the part of the Palestine Authority, which led to the resignation of 46 members of the election commission.
They protested at the lastminute extension of voting hours and the bussing-in of Fatah members, many of whom are believed to have voted repeatedly.
Although these officials accepted that the irregularities did not significantly affect the outcome, there were concerns that similar practices in the forthcoming election for the Palestinian Legislative Council could materially alter the results.
The official turnout figure of 70% was misleading, and arrived at by sleight of hand. Although only two-thirds of eligible voters had registered, all were allowed to vote.
The turnout percentage, however, was calculated as a proportion of registered voters. In fact, the turnout was under 50%, and Abbas thus received under 30% of the eligible votes - hardly a ringing endorsement.
It's important to recognise that the eligible voters were only Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, who form some 25% of the Palestinian people.
The was for President of the Palestine Authority, the body established under the Oslo Agreement to govern the Palestinians in these areas, and not for leader of the Palestinians as a whole.
This led to serious concern that the election could be used
pose the interests of Palestinians living under direct Israeli military rule against those of the wider Palestinian diaspora.
In a letter to the Guardian during the run-up to the election, Palestinian left-wing academics Musa Budeirri and Nur Masalha called for the elections to be opened to all Palestinians.
Others, though, warned that this risked legitimising an election held under military occupation, and allowing Israel to impose its will on the Palestinian diaspora as well as on those currently living under Israeli rule.
The other candidates, however, did not present a significant alternative platform to Abbas.
All of them accepted a twostate solution and called for negotiations with Israel, and all pledged democratisation of the Palestinian Auth-ority and greater financial and decision-making transVAL GILLY.
Even the candidate who did not stand, political prisoner Marwan Barghouti, offered a similar platform.
Abbas main opponent was Dr Mustafa Barghouti, head of the respected Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, and founder -alongside Edward Said and others - of the Palestinian National Initiative, Palestinian democratic opposition movement.
His 20% share of the vote represented a clear demand for a move away from the cronyism, arbitrary rule and corruption associated with the latter years of Arafat's rule.
But it is not clear that he would have a very different policy than Abbas. At the 2004 European Social Forum
Mahmoud Abbas: a new face, but the same old problems Despite all the hopes of the Israelis, their US sponsors, and reactionaries across the world, there is no prospect that a deal which sacrifices the interests of the majority of the Palestinian people could be imposed, or could survive. demand for a move away from the cronyism, arbitrary rule and corruption associated with the latter years of Arafat's rule. in London, many participants were dismayed to hear him denounce an Israeli activist who called for a democratic, secular Palestine.
Barghouti claimed that this call WaN against the Palestinians recognition of Israel and acceptance of a twostate solution, and was "doing the Israelis dirty work for them".
The big imponderable in this election was the on-off candidacy of Marwan Barghouti, currently serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison.
Some polls indicated that, had he run, even as a breakaway Fatah candidate, he could have defeated Abbas. He has certainly established a strong claim on the succession to the 70-year-old Abbas.
Unlike other candidates, Marwan Barghouti has credibility both among residents of the Occupied Territories (he was one of the leaders of the first Intifada) and among the exiles (among who he worked following his deportation by Israel in 1987).
The charismatic Barghouti could potentially win Palestinian acceptance for a deal with Israel, though certainly not on the terms Israel is currently offering.
However, the real distinc tion between Barghouti and Abbas is not so much on the settlement they would seek, but rather on the way in which they would attempt to achieve this.
Unlike Arafat and Abbas, Barghouti has always been committed to the development of a mass movement as a means of struggle, rather than focussing on the secret activities of an elite, whether military or political.
For this reason, his possible victory in a future Palestinian election, could offer some hope for a genuine move towards a comprehensive resolution of the conflict, almost irrespective of his own political views.
For, despite all the hopes of the Israelis, their US sponsors, and reactionaries across the world, there is no prospect that a deal which sacrifices the interests of the majority of the Palestinian people could be imposed, or could survive.
Only the development of a genuine, democratic, movement of the Palestinian people can lead to an acceptable and sustainable settleUNCIN
The original growth of the PLO in the 1960s, and the first Intifada of the late 1980s, created just such a movement. The election for a new head of the PA was an irrelevant and diversionary stage but the conditions are ready for a similar revolutionary development among the Palestinian