More on the Palestinian Vote

The Wall Street Journal has an upbeat take on yesterday's election:

Still, to an outsider the election seems generally well-orchestrated, free from the usual forms of fraud, and a hopeful portent for the future. Nuha Nussleh, a political adviser to the U.S.-sponsored National Democratic Institute, tells me of getting up at 2:30 in the morning to dispatch 12 teams of election observers to polling places throughout the West Bank. In the afternoon, she drives to East Jerusalem to cast her ballot with her 11-year-old daughter, Zaynab. For a change, there are no problems getting through Israeli checkpoints. After casting her ballot, her daughter says she wishes she could vote too. "Soon enough you will," her mother replies.

One image strikes me as I travel through Palestinian territories. During the Arafat years, the image of the rais was always mounted over the backdrop of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock. "A million martyrs to Al Aqsa," he used to say. Now the banner is of Mr. Abbas, but the backdrop is the rocky countryside of the West Bank. How significant the difference in iconography turns out to be in practice remains to be seen. But it bespeaks the distance already traveled.

Mr. Stevens also has this about a mother of a 'martyr':

My translator is a second cousin of the deceased, and he invites me to meet Abu Qamar's mother, Umm Iyad, who lives down a filthy nearby lane with a gaggle of children. Although she is dressed in mourning, she doesn't seem especially grief-stricken. Did she know her son was planning to do this? No, but she had a sense he was going to do something. Is she proud of what he did? Yes, very. Does she support Abu Mazen? Only if he succeeds in returning the refugees to their pre-1948 villages and homes in what is now Israel.
Then she turns the questions on me. "Why does Sharon torture our children and our old women? We don't kill their children and old women, and if we do, it's not on purpose."
I have neither the heart nor the nerve to suggest the truth may be closer to the opposite.

I am very concerned that no matter how many elections are held in the territories that this mindset will always prevail.