It's Hamas not Hummus!
Here's a joke- why do the Palestinians like on the West Bank?
Answer- Because it's only a stone's throw for Israel.
Ok, it's an old joke. But apparently Hamas is not a joke but a serious political contender (as if we didn't know that).
Yes, democratic elections are funny things which can mandate popularly elected democratic states or put former terrorists in office.
Hey, the Israeli's knew that already, but now there terrorists are their neighbors.
This kind of reminds me of Louisanna when David Duke, a former member of the KKK almost won a high office. The choice there was evil- either a Crook or an honest Klansman.
Lesson- Even terrorist groups can get legitimate if they provide public goods to a public in desperate need of them.
Fatah... Fucked up!!! It doesn't matter how much the world loves ya, if you are crooks for your own people who decide whether to send you packing.
Hamas prepares for office
Jan 27th 2006
From The Economist Global Agenda
The Islamist group Hamas won a victory beyond its dreams in the Palestinian parliamentary elections, taking 76 out of the 132 seats and sweeping aside the former ruling party, Fatah. Minds now turn to the question of who forms the new government, and how the rest of the world deals with it
A CURIOUS little scene is being repeated on street corners and in cafés all over the West Bank and Gaza. Two friends come together, exchange the traditional greetings—“issalaam aleikum”, “w’aleikum issalaam”—and crack up with laughter. For secular Palestinians, who normally hail one another with a casual “marhaba”, the Islamic salutation is piece of wry black humour in the face of an election result that has left the nation in shock.
Barring a couple of fistfights, Wednesday, January 25th was a model of enthusiastic and civilised voting. Turnout was 75%, a sign of how eager Palestinians were to make changes to the corrupt, hidebound, Fatah-run parliament that they had endured since the last election ten years ago. Five polling firms predicted a Fatah victory by anything from 2% to 11% in the days leading up to the election. Two exit polls gave similar results. But all fell flat on their faces. The Islamist Hamas movement not only won most of the local-constituency seats in the Palestinian dual voting system—as expected, since it was more careful than Fatah in selecting candidates. It also, in defiance of all the polls, won six more of the national seats than Fatah. The final result: Hamas 76 seats, Fatah 43, out of the 132-seat total.
Democracy in action!
That, though, was a vote as much against Fatah as for Hamas. Polls suggest (though who trusts polls any more?) that Hamas’s core support hovers somewhere around a quarter to a third of the population. A majority of Palestinians disagree with two of Hamas’s ideological tenets: the non-recognition of Israel and the imposition of Islamic sharia law. Even though a high percentage believe that “armed resistance” by militants from Hamas and other factions drove Israel to dismantle its settlements in the Gaza strip last summer, almost as many still believe in a two-state solution to the conflict. Hamas adjusted its campaign platform to fit. It made no mention of destroying Israel, as outlined in the movement’s charter, but concentrated on domestic issues: the disunity and corruption within Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the poor state of the economy and public services.
It's the economy stupid!
But the size of its victory is greater than even Hamas dreamed—and probably greater than it wanted. Ideally, it would have won a healthy share of the legislature and demanded a few domestic ministerial portfolios. That would have allowed it to showcase its reputation for honesty and efficiency, while leaving the difficult and controversial jobs that entail dealing with Israel and the rest of the world to Fatah to mess up further. Now Hamas is calling for a national-unity government. The snag is that Fatah officials have refused to take part.
That puts Hamas in a tricky spot. Bad enough that it would have to deal all alone with the mess that Fatah has left: the PA’s acute fiscal crisis; the unwieldy bureaucracy; ill-disciplined security services; severe unemployment; corruption. Worse, the PA risks being excluded from contact with Israel, the United States and the European Union, all of which define Hamas as a terrorist group. And for the same reason, the Palestinians would stand to lose a lot of foreign aid money—though not all, as a lot of it does not go directly to the PA itself.
Thing is that
(1) Hamas has been providing a host of public goods for year- health care, insurance, schools, etc.
(2) Now Hamas can't just take the extreme role of being a violent crusader, but also has to take some responsibility for the nasty boring business of daily politics in Palestine.
Will that lead to changes? I hope so.
Yet Hamas’s dilemma is shared by the rest of the world. So precarious are the PA’s finances that it expects to fall short on salary payments within days. Deprived of its traditional donors the PA will either collapse, taking with it any chance of peace talks with Israel, or have to look elsewhere for money. Donors might deliberate whether to grit their teeth and give money to a PA run by a “terrorist organisation”, rather than see it become dependent on funds from the likes of Iran.
What would be great is if the Hamas leaders had to turn to Israel for financial aid. Unlikely but....
Everything depends on what the next few days will bring. Hamas has asked Salam Fayyad, the respected former finance minister who ran on his own ticket for parliament, to take over as prime minister. He reportedly said that he would do so only if Hamas disarms and recognises Israel—which it, for the moment, refuses to do. Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president and a Fatah man, who was elected separately last year and appoints the cabinet, will meet Hamas leaders in Gaza at the end of January. He has asked Hamas to form a government, but they might yet reach a bargain whereby some Fatah people take on key ministries, like foreign affairs, interior (responsible for the security services), and civil affairs (relations with Israel).
Naked, self-serving
Fatah’s desire to dump all the PA’s problems on Hamas is so nakedly self-serving that it could backfire with the public. And not everyone in Fatah may share it. Marwan Barghouti, the most popular of Fatah’s younger generation of leaders, spoke out before the election in favour of a coalition. Indeed, in some ways the situation is a gift to Mr Abbas, who had previously failed to squeeze unpopular older Fatah leaders out of the government.
The more important questoin for Palestine is whether Palestine's new leaders will makeover the constitutional government. IF they do, the democracy is probably fucked.
If they play by the rules and there is an election again in a few years- that means that all players are abiding by the constitutional order and you've got a pretty stable state in the making.
Key to a democracy surviving- all potential adversaries and rivals figure out that democracy is the best and only game in town.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is watching and waiting. In a statement the “Quartet”—the UN, the EU, the United States and Russia—said there is a “fundamental contradiction between armed group and militia activities and the building of a democratic state”. Individual European leaders uttered similar phrases. George Bush reiterated that the United States will not deal with Hamas unless it dismantles its militias and recognises Israel. But he would not be drawn on precisely how Hamas’s participation in the cabinet would affect things, noting that Mr Abbas remains president. And more interestingly, he took pains to note that he welcomed the democratic process, the “competition of ideas”, and the message that the Palestinians were sending to their leaders.
Stupid. You get a democratically elected government, they become the people's representative. That's democracy. If you are pro-democracy, than you have got to deal.
After all this was a pretty fair and clean election. Unlike others that have recently occurred in Florida and Ohio.
After the cabinet is formed, foreign donors will start to figure out how much support they can give the PA. At the very least, Hamas will be expected to continue the ceasefire it has more or less kept for the past year. Given the Palestinian desire for calm, that will be in Hamas’s interests too, as long as Israel does not turn more belligerent. Some diplomats hope that Hamas will eventually change, as Irish republicans laid down their weapons in favour of political means after years of armed struggle.
Next move is on Israel. If they start shooting, the place goes up in flames.
Let's see what the Israelis really want- war and land or peace and stability.
Among Israeli officials, though, that notion gets short shrift. A commoner model is Hizbullah, the Lebanese group which has roles in parliament and government but retains its armed wing—something that, in Hamas’s case, would rule out Israel agreeing to talks with the PA. An even more apocalyptic view is Hamas as the Nazi party in the 1930s, democratically brought to power but gradually adopting ever-more repressive, undemocratic policies.
Facing their own election in two months’ time, Israeli leaders have been striving to outdo one another in hawkishness. Ehud Olmert, the acting prime minister and successor to Ariel Sharon, who remains in a vegetative state in hospital, said: “If a government led by Hamas or in which Hamas is a coalition partner is established…Israel and the world will ignore it and make it irrelevant.” He has hinted that if peace talks fail, he will continue Mr Sharon’s policy of unilateral withdrawal from occupied territory, so that Israel may rid itself of responsibility for the Palestinians while setting whatever borders it sees fit for its own security. Even Amir Peretz, his contender from the left-wing Labour Party, this week hinted at the unilateral option.
If Sharon were dead he'd be rolling in his grave.
As for the Israeli policy- Good walls make good neighbors.
But a newspaper poll before the Palestinian election also showed that 48% of Israelis would support peace talks even with a Hamas-led PA. And views among the Israeli security establishment vary too. Earlier in the week, Mr Olmert had asked for two separate sets of proposals on Hamas: one from his more hardline intelligence and defence chiefs, another from the national-security adviser, Giora Eiland, who is said to favour seeking out Hamas’s moderate elements. Everything will turn on how moderate they seem to be over the next few months.
Hey, this might actually work out for the best. If it takes a Nixon to go to China, maybe you need a Hamas to make peace between the Arabs and Israelis.
But realistically- no. Imagine more nuttiness in the years to come.
