ASA'D al-Asa'd is the editor of the Palestinian daily, Al-Bilad. He's of that generation which fought for a Palestinian homeland and an end to the Israeli occupation.
He has been imprisoned, and the cultural journal he edited was banned. He has published novels, was president of the Palestinian Writers' Union and is a friend of Yasser Arafat.
Today, as the people of the West Bank and Gaza go to the polls for the first time, Asa'd wants nothing more, he says, than to edit a local newspaper. Al Bilad does not even have international news on its front page. He would prefer to have the news from Ramallah than from Washington.
Last week, one of those local events that Al Bilad would cover took place in Ramallah when thousands of Hamas supporters protested at the death of Yihya Ayash, the Hamas bomb maker known as "The Engineer".
The protest was typical of a Hamas gathering thousands of supporters chanted the name of Ayash, now known as "a circle in the chain of the Holy Jihad"; young men with green headbands indicated their willingness to follow Ayash into martrydom; the women, separated from the men by a green ribbon, were dressed in white and carried portraits of Ayash; the children wore Ayash Tshirts; and there were bands playing loud music underneath giant portraits of the "martyr".
On the football pitch in the middle of this town the atmosphere was more like a picnic than a significant political rally. Children posed with their parents for photographs; stewards talked to the foreign press looking for colour in the run up to today's election; and men sat around eating.
Meanwhile, in the Hamas stronghold of Gaza election fever was evident in the thousands upon thousands of election posters plastering the walls and traffic signs. Only a few weeks ago the walls had been plastered with the portraits of Islamic martyrs.
Like the rest of the occupied territories, Gaza, with its 65 per cent unemployment and extreme poverty, is looking to this election as a way to affirm Palestinian nationhood. While hundreds of international monitors are here to ensure a free and fair election, Palestinians seem willing to put up with irregularities on the basis that today's election is only a step on the road to democracy.
The editor of the biggest selling and oldest Arabic newspaper, Al Quds, Marwan Abu Zalaf, freely admits that his publication and the other three daily papers in Palestine have not covered the elections adequately. There simply had not been enough time.
The press has no power in Palestine and the authorities threaten to detain journalists or close newspapers if Arafat is displeased. Two weeks ago the Al Quds night editor was detained for six days when he published a story concerning Arafat inside the paper rather than on page one. The newspaper did not even report the detention.
Like other editors, Abu Zalaf said that maybe in five years' time Palestine would have democracy.