Palestinians chose a new president - on reality TV

The Palestinians haven't elected a president since 2005, but now they are finally getting a chance to do so virtually thanks to a hit reality TV show.
"The President" is broadcast weekly on Maan TV, a popular independent Palestinian TV station. It offers contestants a chance to address the Palestinian people on what they would do on a variety of subjects if elected president.
They are grilled by a panel of politicians, professors and businesspeople who, with input from the audience, vote them off something they can't do in the real world, where their president is still in office several years after his term was supposed to expire.

Thousands of young Palestinians who applied to take part in the show have been whittled down to 15. A winner will be crowned in the finale scheduled for late June and get to travel the world as a mock Palestinian ambassador - and perhaps win a car as well.
"We are building a new generation of politicians. They are gaining skills from practice," said Kholoud Idabis, a former Cabinet minister and member of the panel. Other judges include Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi and Arab-Israeli lawmaker Ahmad Tibi.
In their 20 years of limited self-rule, the Palestinians have had just two presidential elections. In 1996, longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was elected for a five-year term. He ruled without another election until he died in 2004.

The following year, Mahmoud Abbas was elected for a four-year term. He's been in power ever since with no elections in sight. Critics accuse Abbas of planning on following Arafat's example, planning to rule until he dies.

Abbas has no deputy, and his popular prime minister, Salam Fayyad, recently resigned in a power struggle with the president.
Abbas says he is willing to conduct elections, but first he needs to end the internal split between his government, based in the West Bank, and the Islamic militant Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip. Talks have been going on for years without any significant progress. Abbas hopes to establish an independent state that includes both territories.

The original 1,200 participants selected to compete were all between the ages of 20-35, held a university degree and were born in the Palestinian territories. For each episode, they are given questions from the panel on issues such as Israeli settlements, the death penalty and how to revive the struggling economy.
Hussein al-Deik, 31, for example, said he would oppose the type of violence espoused by Palestinians last decade when they carried out hundreds of suicide bombings and other attacks against Israeli civilians.
He said he would promote peaceful demonstrations against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and even oppose stone throwing at Israeli soldiers and settlers a common Palestinian practice. "Stones can prompt violence and can cause us to be victims," he said, though he said he supported international legal action against Israeli "war crimes."

Other candidates echoed his support for nonviolence, a contrast to wider Palestinian society where support for "armed struggle" remains a common sentiment.