119-566: Palestinian National Initiative ( Arabic : المبادرة الوطنية الفلسطينية al-Mubādara al-Waṭaniyya al-Filasṭīniyya ) is a Palestinian political party led by Mustafa Barghouti . Its formation was formally announced on 17 June 2002 in Ramallah on the West Bank , part of the Palestinian Territories , by Haidar Abdel-Shafi , Mustafa Barghouthi and Ibrahim Dakkak . The PNI views itself as
238-589: A new government was formed by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh . After the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on 25 June 2006, Israel launched a series of raids into Gaza and the West Bank. Israel destroyed civilian infrastructure and arrested dozens of Hamas supporters, including elected cabinet ministers and members of the PLC. On 28 June overnight, the army invaded Gaza and performed airstrikes, bombing infrastructure such as bridges and an electricity station. On 29 June,
357-674: A right of resistance to occupation. The PNI is dominated by secular intellectuals, some of them former members of the left-wing Palestinian People's Party . It is strongly based in civil society organizations and NGOs operating in the Palestinian Territories and has extensive connections with foreign aid and support groups. Its lack of a role within the PLO and in the PNA has greatly reduced its visibility to ordinary Palestinians. The PNI has gained some support among Palestinian exiles, most notably
476-539: A " democratic third force" in Palestinian politics and opposes the dichotomy between Fatah (which it views as corrupt and undemocratic) and Hamas (which it views as extremist and fundamentalist). The platform of the PNI states: " Only through the establishment of a sovereign, independent, viable and democratic Palestinian state on all of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, can
595-554: A Palestinian Authority dominated by Hamas alarmed Western governments, which provided foreign aid that made up almost half of the PNA's budget . It was fear of a Hamas victory that was largely credited with driving the reconciliation between the main Fatah list and the Al-Mustaqbal breakaway faction. The Independent Palestine list was headed by Mustafa Barghouti , a distant relative of Marwan Barghouti. Mustafa Barghouti came in second in
714-562: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as
833-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By
952-418: A degree of proportional representation via a parallel voting system. The mixed voting system divided PLC seats into two groups: 66 seats (50%) elected by proportional representation of the Palestinian territories as a single district, and 66 seats (50%) by the majoritarian system in electoral districts. Each voter received two ballots. On the first, the voter chose one of the registered party lists. 66 of
1071-1077: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to
1190-722: A free ballot impossible". After Arafat's death in 2004, a new election was held. In March 2005, twelve Palestinian factions reached an agreement, the Palestinian Cairo Declaration , which called for elections to be held using a mixed voting system rather than the majority electoral system used in 1996. In June 2005, the PLC legislated to give effect to the Cairo Declaration , increasing its membership from 88 to 132, with half being elected by proportional representation and half by plurality-at-large voting in traditional constituencies. Palestinian voters in both
1309-454: A just peace be achieved. The Initiative calls for the implementation of relevant United Nations resolutions requiring the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the West Bank and Gaza and safeguarding the internationally recognized right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland. " The PNI defines this as collective Palestinian goals but sees as its own role to democratize and unite
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#17328513973891428-483: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic
1547-513: A limited number of Palestinians in East Jerusalem would be able to cast votes at post offices, as they did in 1996. Palestinian candidates will also be allowed to campaign in East Jerusalem as long as they register with Israeli police—and, a police spokesman noted, "Anyone who is a supporter of Hamas will not receive permission." The Israeli police arrested campaigners of Hamas and closed at least three Hamas election offices in East Jerusalem during
1666-503: A majority of PLC seats. A poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research estimated that Fatah had won 42% of the national vote and Hamas 35%; the margin of error was 4%. Another exit poll, conducted by Birzeit University , largely viewed as the most authoritative estimation, had Fatah with 46.4% of the vote and Hamas with 39.5%; their tentative prediction of seat allocation had Fatah with 63 seats, four short of
1785-604: A majority; Hamas 58; the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa list 3; The Third Way 2; Independent Palestine 2; The Alternative 2; and two independents. Leaders from both Hamas and Fatah, however, announced on Thursday morning that Hamas was expected to win a majority. Ismail Haniyeh , who topped the Change and Reform (Hamas) list claimed "Hamas has won more than 70 seats in Gaza and the West Bank". Another Hamas leader, Musheer al-Masri claimed
1904-677: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak
2023-450: A position in government. US President George Bush was not willing to press for Hamas' exclusion from the election process. Abu Mazen (Abbas) was confident that Fatah would win the elections, as was Bush, who urged that the elections should take place. The Guardian observed that the unforeseen election win by Hamas "was seen as an affront to the central premise of the Bush administration's policy in
2142-576: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from
2261-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",
2380-465: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for
2499-503: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means
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#17328513973892618-499: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as
2737-470: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted
2856-727: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic
2975-585: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak
3094-542: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It
3213-469: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in
3332-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon
3451-468: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and
3570-566: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference
3689-836: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not
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3808-559: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As
3927-584: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that
4046-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into
4165-516: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while
4284-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary
4403-556: The 2005 Palestinian presidential election . The main component of this list was the Palestinian National Initiative . The list promised to fight corruption and nepotism, to demand the dismantling of the Israeli West Bank barrier , which it terms the "apartheid wall", and to provide "a truly democratic and independent 'third way' for the large majority of silent and unrepresented Palestinian voters, who favour neither
4522-613: The 2006 Palestinian legislative election for the Palestinian Legislative Council , the PNI ran as part of the Independent Palestine list. The list netted about 2.7% of the votes, winning two seats on the PLC, filled by Mustafa Barghouti and Rawya Rashad Sa-eed al-Shawa . The PNI made minor gains in the first round of the 2005 Palestinian local elections , held in January 2005, after the presidential elections. In
4641-524: The 2016 Palestinian local government elections that were initially scheduled for October 2016, the PNI was one of the five left-wing Palestinian factions that formed a joint list called the Democratic Alliance List . At the elections, which took place on 13 May 2017, the Alliance won 5 of the 3,253 contested seats, gaining 0.32% of the votes. In the abortive 2021 Palestinian legislative election ,
4760-593: The Christian candidates with the most votes. For instance, in Ramallah, a five-seat district, the Christian candidate with the most votes was elected, even if the candidate was not among top five candidates overall. The six seats reserved for Christians were considered the minimum quota for their representation in the PLC. There were 16 electoral districts, with the number of seats in each determined by its population: Before
4879-548: The Gaza Strip and in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem ) were eligible to participate in the elections. Earlier, the 2005 municipal elections and the 9 January 2005 presidential election had taken place. The PLC elections were originally scheduled for 17 July 2005, but on 9 August Abbas announced that they would take place in January 2006. On 20 August Abbas set election day as 25 January. On 15 January 2006, Abbas declared that, despite unrest in Gaza, he would not change
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4998-561: The National Coalition for Justice and Democracy , the Wa'ad list was headed by Gazan Eyad El-Sarraj , who was a consultant to the Palestinian delegation to the Camp David 2000 Summit and heads a group of Palestinian and Israeli academics working towards a peace agreement. The list's main platform is security reforms, establishing the rule of law and respect for human rights. In the lead-up to
5117-604: The Palestinian National Authority and the Palestinian territories . The Quartet set three conditions for the Hamas-led government—recognition of the agreements signed between Israel and the PLO, recognition of Israel, and renunciation of support for terrorism—all three of which Hamas refused. On 28 January 2006, Israel said it would prevent Hamas leaders, including newly elected PLC deputies, from travelling between
5236-440: The Palestinian territories on 25 January 2006 in order to elect the second Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the legislature of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). The result was a victory for Hamas , contesting under the list name of Change and Reform, which received 44.45% of the vote and won 74 of the 132 seats, whilst the ruling Fatah received 41.43% of the vote and won 45 seats. The newly elected PLC met for
5355-561: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to
5474-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic
5593-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In
5712-767: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c. 8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. 2006 Palestinian legislative election Legislative elections were held in
5831-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to
5950-456: The 2006 elections the PLC was dominated by the Fatah movement, which held 68 of the 88 seats. However, Fatah had been beset by internal strife, with younger and more popular figures like Mohammed Dahlan (who took part in the negotiations of the 1993 Oslo Accords ) and Marwan Barghouti (serving five life sentences in an Israeli jail on terrorism charges) levelling allegations of corruption against
6069-532: The 30 January decision, writing in his memoirs he was "uncertain it was right", while Tony Blair later wished the Quartet had instead tried to enter a dialogue with Hamas, rather than isolate them. Similarly, in 2017, Jonathan Powell called the Quartet approach a "terrible mistake" and missed opportunity to "unite Palestinians in a way that's been impossible since". Prior to the 2006 elections, Israel had concerns that Hamas might win enough seats that it could demand
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#17328513973896188-562: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of
6307-812: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized
6426-485: The Arab Thought Forum recorded reports of 242 violations in total throughout the election. The Canadian International Development Agency reported that international observers were concerned "about the threat that widespread possession of arms poses to the future of the democratic electoral process." The threat of violence affected the conduct of the election, culminating in a few violent confrontations and undermining
6545-672: The European parliament were included. Edward McMillan-Scott , the British Conservative head of the European Parliament's monitoring team described the polls as "extremely professional, in line with international standards, free, transparent and without violence". His colleague, Italian Communist MEP Luisa Morgantini said there was "a very professional attitude, competence and respect for the rules." All polling stations closed on time (7 p.m.) except for East Jerusalem, where voting
6664-503: The Fatah leadership. Fatah organised primary elections to determine its candidate list, but the results were disputed and central lists were imposed in some areas. The younger faction submitted a list dubbed Al-Mustaqbal ("the Future"), headed by Barghouti. However, on 28 December 2005, the leaders of the two factions agreed to submit a single list to voters, headed by Barghouti, who actively campaigned for Fatah from his jail cell. Despite this,
6783-483: The Gaza Strip and the West Bank. On 29 January, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated that he would not allow the transfer of any funds that would be used for terrorism and the matter was under review. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared that: "[T]he United States is not prepared to fund an organization that advocates the destruction of Israel, that advocates violence and that refuses its obligations under
6902-512: The IDF detained from the West Bank 8 ministers and 26 PLC members in addition to many other political leaders. By August 2006, Israel had arrested 49 senior Hamas officials, all from the West Bank, including 33 parliamentarians, "because technically they were members of a terrorist organisation although they may not be involved in terrorist acts themselves". Most of the Hamas detainees were moderate members from
7021-744: The Liberation of Palestine , the Palestinian People's Party , the Palestine Democratic Union (Fida), and various independents. The list was headed by Qais Abd al-Karim (Abu Leila) from the DFLP. The PPP candidate received 2.67% in the 2005 Palestinian presidential election . In the list vote, its best vote was 6.6% in Bethlehem, followed by 4.5% in Ramallah and al-Bireh and 4.0% in Nablus. Also known as
7140-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around
7259-531: The Middle East: that democratic elections would inexorably lead to pro-western governments". PA Prime Minister Qureia and his Cabinet resigned even before the final results were officially announced. Fatah refused to join a new Hamas-led coalition. President Abbas would ask Hamas to form the next Government. On 26 January 2006, Fatah leader Saeb Erakat said his party did not want to join a Hamas Government. The Fatah Central Committee decided that Fatah will not join
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#17328513973897378-923: The PNI submitted a list under the name "List of the National Initiative for Change and to End the Division". The elections were ultimately postponed indefinitely and did not take place. Initially, the PNI was in talks with other leftist parties, including the PFLP , the DFLP , the PPP and FIDA , to run on a united left list. However, talks broke down and the proposed list failed to materialize. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )
7497-402: The Palestinian movement, with the focus on the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). It has campaigned extensively for democratic reform within the PNA and advocates a national emergency government encompassing all factions (including the islamist Hamas) as a means of stopping autocracy and lawlessness in Palestinian politics. This is in part motivated by the desire for democracy and in part by
7616-474: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from
7735-413: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With
7854-408: The West Bank who had been calling on the Gaza leadership to recognise Israel and make the party more acceptable to the international community. Hamas has accused Israel of trying to destroy the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. Economic sanctions against the Palestinian National Authority and individual PLC members elected for Hamas were imposed by Israel and the Quartet on the Middle East against
7973-427: The absence of a Hamas candidate (due to the Hamas' policy of boycotting all PNA institutions) quickly became the leading opponent to PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas . Barghouti was also endorsed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine , after that group failed in its attempts to organize a single candidacy for all secular Palestinian factions outside Fatah. During the campaign, Barghouti's fame snowballed after
8092-427: The autocracy and corruption of the governing Fatah party, nor the fundamentalism of Hamas." This list was formed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and is named after Abu Ali Mustafa , the General Secretary of the PFLP who was assassinated by Israeli forces in 2001. The PFLP is the second largest member of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), after Fatah. The Third Way list
8211-471: The campaign. On the day of the election, the ballot boxes were held in Israeli Post Offices inside Jerusalem. Israeli police officers were present to monitor the proceedings of the election. At the end of the day the Israeli authorities transferred the ballot boxes to the Palestinian Authority. An 84-delegate international observer delegation monitored the elections. It judged the elections to have been peaceful and well-administered. Twenty-seven members of
8330-445: The constituencies in Qalqilya, Rafah, and Jericho. Jenin was split evenly, and Fatah won the seats reserved for Christians in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Ramallah. The Central Elections Commission said turnout was 74.6%–76.0% in the Gaza Strip and 73.1% in the West Bank. Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei resigned, but at the request of President Mahmoud Abbas , remained as interim Prime Minister until 19 February 2006. On 29 March 2006
8449-509: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after
8568-550: The election date unless Israel prevented Palestinians in East Jerusalem from voting. Israel had already stated that it would not allow campaigning in East Jerusalem by Hamas, which had carried out the majority of terror attacks against Israel in the previous five years and refused to recognise Israel or the Oslo Accords . The United States spent $ 2.3 million in USAID on support for the Palestinian elections, allegedly designed to bolster
8687-660: The election indicated that two-thirds of Palestinians believed Hamas should change its policy of rejecting Israel's right to exist. Most also supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Post-election polls indicated that Hamas' victory was due largely to Palestinians' desire to end corruption in government rather than support for the organization's political platform. The National Democratic Institute (NDI) in partnership with The Carter Center reported "a professional and impartial performance of election officials". The European Union delegation reported "there
8806-400: The election was widely considered to be free and fair." The Central Elections Commission released the final results on Sunday, 29 January 2006, and announced that Change and Reform (Hamas) had won 74 of the 132 seats, while Fatah trailed with 45. According to the results, Hamas won the large majority of the constituency seats but was more narrowly ahead on the lists. Fatah did beat Hamas in
8925-491: The election would not be held if East Jerusalem voters could not participate. After privately agreeing to use the issue as a pretext for delaying the elections again so as to avoid Hamas electoral gains, Israeli and Palestinian officials raised the issue with the United States. However, President George W. Bush made clear that the elections should go forward as scheduled. On 10 January 2006 Israeli officials announced that
9044-494: The elections, criticised the detentions of persons who "are guilty of nothing more than winning a parliamentary seat in an open and honest election". Israeli obstruction during the election resulted in estimated 123,000 voters in East Jerusalem being prevented from registering until ten days before the elections, creating a number of logistical problems shortly before the election day. The checkpoints of Israel also continued to pose serious obstacles to all Palestiniain parties during
9163-662: The elections, on 26 September 2005 Israel launched a campaign of arrests against PLC members. 450 members of Hamas were detained, mostly those involved in the 2006 PLC elections. The majority of them were kept in administrative detention for different periods. In the election period, 15 PLC members were captured and held as prisoners. During the elections, the Israeli authorities banned the candidates from holding election campaigns inside Jerusalem. Rallies and public meetings were prohibited. The Jerusalem identity cards of some PLC members were also revoked. The Carter Center , which monitored
9282-566: The electoral campaign as well as on voting day itself. It was also noted that Palestinian refugees in exile and 9,000 prisoners remained ineligible to vote. On 21 December 2005 Israeli officials stated their intention to prevent voting in East Jerusalem , which, unlike most of the Palestinian-inhabited areas that were planned to participate in the election, was under Israeli civil and military control. (Israel annexed East Jerusalem in
9401-635: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of
9520-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around
9639-593: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From
9758-466: The first time on 18 February 2006. Incumbent Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei tendered his resignation on 26 January 2006, but remained interim Prime Minister at the request of President Mahmoud Abbas . On 20 February, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was nominated to form a new government. The new government with Haniyeh as Prime Minister was sworn in on 29 March. As of November 2024, no new elections have been held since this one. The 2006 elections were
9877-501: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and
9996-456: The hands of the new government. The money had been intended for infrastructure projects in Gaza. On 30 January, the Quartet called for reviewing support for the future government against its commitment to the principles of nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Roadmap. Then-British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw later regretted
10115-508: The image of President Abbas and his Fatah party. USAID's Offices used discretionary spending accounts for various projects, including tree planting, schoolroom additions, a soccer tournament, street cleaning, and computers at community centers. USAID removed its usual branding requirement on its sponsored activities. As a result, the US was accused of trying to influence the outcome of the elections. The European Union supplied election observers to "assess
10234-579: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward
10353-546: The independence of the Central Election Commission. The election also coincided with the period of intensified conflict with Israel - Palestinian armed groups fired hundreds of Qassam rockets into Israel between late 2005 and mid-2006, while Israel attacked Palestinian territory with 8000 artillery shells. In summer of 2006, Hamas captured an Israeli soldier, further escalating the conflict. Exit polls indicated that Fatah emerged with more seats than Hamas, but not
10472-527: The inefficiency and self-destructive tendencies of the Palestinian factional system. The PNI demands the proclamation of a single political direction, to be determined democratically, and a single policy for achieving these goals. The PNI itself believes that the methods used should be based on a reversion of what it refers to as the "militarization" of the intifada and a continued struggle by peaceful means. It has no armed wing and does not use nor advocate violence, although it states that it supports in principle
10591-543: The international press picked up his name as the main opposition candidate. He was twice arrested by the Israel Defense Forces , suffering a broken knee in custody, and complained of discrimination by both the Abbas-run PNA and Israel, which he accused of covertly backing Abbas's candidacy. In the final results, he polled 19.48%, with Abbas gaining 62.52% and the remaining five candidates all coming in below 3.5%. At
10710-608: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about
10829-457: The late Edward Said , but is extremely weak or non-existent in the main refugee communities in Jordan , Lebanon and Syria . The Initiative is led by a General Secretary, with Mustafa Barghouti occupying that post since its founding. At the 2005 Palestinian presidential election held on 9 January 2005, Mustafa Barghouti campaigned on a platform of democratization as the PNI's candidate, and in
10948-599: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c. 603 –689)
11067-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA
11186-400: The major single concerns governing voting, 37% considered it to be Safety and Security, while 25% favoured Decreased Corruption. An exit poll conducted by Near East Consulting on 15 February 2006 on voters participating in the 2006 PA elections revealed the following responses to major concerns: World Public Opinion summarised the election voting drivers as follows: The decisive victory of
11305-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya
11424-512: The militant Islamic group Hamas in last month's Palestinian legislative elections (winning 74 of 132 parliamentary seats) has raised the question of whether the Palestinian public has become aligned with Hamas' rejection of Israel's right to exist and its stated goal of creating an Islamic state covering all of historic Palestine, including what is now Israel. Hamas has come under increasing pressure to renounce its goal of eliminating Israel, but Hamas leaders have refused. However, new polling following
11543-768: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve
11662-433: The next Government, but said it would depend on President Abbas. On 28 January 2006, Hamas declared it would try to form a Government of technocrats, if a government with Fatah and all the political groups was not possible. On 29 January 2006, PLC deputies from Fatah confirmed after talks with Abbas that their faction would not join Hamas in a coalition Government and would prefer to sit in opposition, despite calls by Hamas for
11781-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on
11900-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on
12019-423: The party expected to win 77 seats. Aljazeera reported Fatah officials conceding defeat. Prime minister Ahmed Qurei resigned on Thursday morning, along with his cabinet, saying it now fell to Hamas to form a government. Hamas leader al-Masri called for a "political partnership" with Fatah, but prominent Fatah leader, Jibril Rajoub , rejected a coalition and called on Fatah to form a "responsible opposition". On
12138-513: The progress, however, the voting process was plagued by a series of manipulations. Violations were committed by both major political parties, namely Fatah and Hamas. Although, the observers reported, Hamas had an advantage in mobilizing Palestinian facilities for its own political purposes." Violating the code of conduct, Hamas was able to use its militias and networks for propaganda and intimidation purposes, as well as heavily utilizing mosques for that purpose. A national monitoring committee set up by
12257-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within
12376-415: The roadmap to which everyone is committed." US senators echoed this sentiment saying that aid should be cut to a Hamas-led Palestinian Government unless Hamas abolished the militant arm of its party and stopped calling for the destruction of Israel. On 17 February, one day before the new parliament was sworn in, the then Fatah-led government returned $ 50 million US aid that Washington did not want to come in
12495-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there
12614-487: The seats were distributed proportionally (in accordance with the Sainte-Laguë method ) to those lists that received more than 2% of the total list votes cast. The candidates from each list would be elected in the order they appear on the list. Each list had to include at least one woman in the first three names, at least one woman in the next four names, and at least one woman in the five names that followed. The second ballot
12733-422: The second elections to the PLC. The first elections took place in 1996, but the subsequent elections had been postponed for many years due to disagreements between Fatah and Hamas. Hamas was considered a terrorist organization by countries like the United States. Along with this, Yasser Arafat 's cabinet called off the 2003 election because it claimed that the "Israeli military occupation of West Bank cities made
12852-461: The second round, conducted in May 2005, the PNI by itself or in coalitions won a majority in at least six localities, with a total 10% of the vote for candidates outside Fatah and Hamas. In the third round, held on the West Bank on 29 September, the PNI ran by itself or in coalitions in 18 out of 104 municipalities and won control of 16 councils. The fourth and last round was postponed until December. For
12971-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of
13090-556: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of
13209-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to
13328-466: The two groups were by no means fully reconciled. The Islamist Hamas movement campaigned as the Change and Reform list, and was Fatah's main political rival. It had refused to participate in the 1996 elections and viewed the Palestinian Authority as illegitimate due to its negotiations with Israel ; while it did not change that position , it fielded candidates in 2006. The prospect of
13447-669: The wake of the Six-Day War ; this move was not recognized by most other governments, or by the PNA, which claims Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital.) Israel's stated motivation was not the argument about sovereignty over the area (Palestinian voters in East Jerusalem had been allowed to vote in previous PNA elections despite the dispute) but concern over Hamas' participation in—and potential victory in—the election. Muhammad Abu Tir , Mustafa Barghouti , and Hanan Ashrawi were all briefly detained by Israeli police when they attempted to campaign in East Jerusalem. In response, PNA officials stated that
13566-414: The whole election process, including the legal framework, the political environment and campaign, electoral preparations, voting and counting as well as the post-election period". In the 1996 elections 88 PLC members were chosen from several multi-member constituencies via block voting . In advance of the 2006 elections, the electoral law was changed to enlarge the PLC from 88 to 132 seats and to introduce
13685-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study
13804-516: Was extended by the permitted two extra hours. Hamas protested this extension, claiming it only served Fatah; the Central Elections Committee stated that voting hours were "extended upon the approval of the Israeli authorities due to lengthy queues as a result of obstructions by post office workers." The militant Islamist group Islamic Jihad called on Palestinians to boycott the election . R. Michael Alvarez argued that "despite all
13923-475: Was for a voter's local electoral district, which may have more than one members to be elected. The voter could cast up to as many votes for individual candidates as there were seats in his or her district. Votes were unweighted, and the candidates with the most votes were elected. For example, a voter in the Nablus district could cast up to six votes; the six candidates with the highest number of votes were elected. In some districts, one or two seats were set aside for
14042-567: Was headed by Finance Minister Salam Fayyad and former PA Minister of Higher Education and Research Hanan Ashrawi . Their platform focused on reform of the security forces, democratic improvements and socioeconomic progress. In the run up to the election a Fatah leader in Nablus accused the Third Way of receiving funds from the CIA. The Alternative list was a coalition of the Democratic Front for
14161-481: Was nothing which would indicate that the final result was not the outcome chosen by the voters". A CRS Report for Congress on the 2006 elections concluded: "The election was overseen by 17,268 domestic observers, complemented by 900 credentialed international monitors. ... The Bush Administration accepted the outcome of the Palestinian legislative elections and praised the PA for holding free and fair elections. ... The conduct of
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