Well, I must say that the Palestinian elections have generated an interesting situation.
The Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, which has said it favors the destruction of Israel, won a landslide victory in Palestinian elections, securing 76 seats in the 132-member legislature, officials said Thursday.
The preliminary results showed Fatah, which has held power since the creation of the Palestinian Authority, garnered only 43 seats, dramatically shifting the political landscape in the volatile region.
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President Bush — whose Middle East policy includes support for emerging democracies — said Thursday he would not deal with Hamas unless it renounced terrorism.
“We don’t have a government yet, so you’re asking me to speculate on what the government will look like,” Bush told reporters during a White House news conference. “I have made it very clear, however, that a political party that articulates the destruction of Israel as part of its platform is a party with which we will not deal.”
“I don’t see how you can be a partner in peace if you advocate the destruction of a country as part of your platform.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has already accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei, Erakat said. The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority Cabinet also has resigned.
Bush said, “we would hope [Abbas] would stay in office and work to move the process forward.” The president acknowledged that the election appeared to “open the eyes” of the Palestinian “old guard.”
“Obviously, people were not happy with the status quo,” Bush said.
“The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find health care.”
“It’s a wake-up call to the leadership,” Bush said, many of whom are holdovers from the days of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
First, some media reactions.
Ben Lynfield at The Scotsman looks at great length at the causes and ramifications.
The Islamic militant group Hamas swept to victory over the long-dominant Fatah party yesterday in Palestinian parliamentary polls, a political earthquake that could bury any hope for peace talks with Israel soon.
Official election results released yesterday evening gave Hamas a surprise victory in Wednesday’s parliamentary elections. Hamas, an organisation best known for its suicide bombings but which also runs social services, capitalised on widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo of economic, political and security instability to gain a stunning 76 seats out of the 132-member parliament. President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah movement, which has dominated Palestinian politics for the last 45 years, gained only 43 seats. The Islamic movements winning campaign slogan was “With one hand build, with the other resist”.
Hamas leaders said they would like to see Fatah and smaller groupings join them in a broad coalition government, while stunned Fatah leaders weighed up their next steps.
Mr Abbas, who was elected last year, does not have to resign, but has said he might do so if he is unable to pursue his plans for restarting Middle East peace talks. With the Hamas victory, Israel is even more likely than before to unilaterally pursue the drawing of its final borders, withdrawing from parts of the West Bank while annexing other sections. Perhaps Mr Abbas’s greatest failure, not entirely of his own making, and another key reason for Hamas’s victory, was that he was unable to deliver on his strategy of getting Israel back to the negotiating table.
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The victory of the fundamentalist Hamas in the Palestinian elections will have far-reaching consequences for the region, some totally unexpected.
Two aspects, however, are already visible. The Hamas victory is, first and foremost, an indication of the total failure of the traditional Palestinian leadership to create a body politic. Palestine is not yet a state, but it is already a failed one.
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It is still an open question whether Hamas in government will become more pragmatic and less committed to terrorism; it certainly is a possibility, and one should not prejudge the outcome. But nor, on the other hand, is it clear that the existing organs of the PA – especially the security services at its disposal – will allow a peaceful transfer of power. Indeed, no such precedent exists: there has never been a peaceful transfer of power in any of the Arab League’s 22 member states.
Greg Myre at the New York Times expects the results to drive greater Israeli unilateralism.
The Hamas landslide in Palestinian elections has stunned Israelis, but it may also have brought them a rare moment of clarity: with peace talks off the table, Israel will most likely pursue unilateral actions, drawing its own borders and separating itself from the Palestinians.
Ehud Olmert, the acting prime minister, made it clear after an emergency cabinet meeting that talks with Hamas, a Palestinian party sworn to Israel’s destruction, were out of the question, while experts said Israel was now freer to establish its future on its own.
They said Israel — whose own elections in two months could be heavily influenced by the Palestinian results — was likely to focus on speeding up construction of the separation barrier, which runs along and through parts of the West Bank. After more than three years of building, it remains less than half finished, but Israeli officials say it has contributed enormously to the reduction of suicide bombings and other attacks. Palestinians, on the other hand, say the barrier takes land they want for a future state.
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Since on-and-off peace talks began more than a decade ago, Israelis have been deeply divided over what sorts of concessions to make, how much territory to keep and whether the talks would lead to an end to the decades-old conflict. On Thursday, it seemed there were few such doubts.
From Israeli hawks who oppose concessions to doves who constantly pressed for renewed peace talks, Israelis said there could be no negotiations with Hamas.
Ami Ayalon, the former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service and now a parliamentary candidate for the left-leaning Labor Party, said the absence of a negotiating partner should not halt Israeli actions aimed at separating from the Palestinians.
Israel, he said, should seek “to create a situation where Israel disengages from the Palestinians and preserves the character of Israel as a Jewish democracy.” Israel should continue, he said, “to move fast and independently to our goal.”
Mr. Olmert hopes to become prime minister in elections on March 28 as head of the centrist Kadima Party started by Mr. Sharon.
But Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud Party, made clear that the Palestinian results offered an opportunity for his more hawkish message to be heard. He said the Hamas victory was a result of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and proved that no more withdrawals should occur.
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Hamas’s electoral triumph comes at a time when Israel is going through its own political upheavals, and the government is unlikely to make any major moves until after the Israeli election.
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The campaign may also mean that Mr. Olmert and his party will have to take a tougher tone to ensure that they are not outflanked on the security issue by Likud.
The Telegraph’s Tim Butcher points out a possible path for future diplomatic discourse with the Palestinians in a piece headlined “Terrorists voted into power.”
Hamas, the Islamic group behind suicide bombings against Israel, was swept to power yesterday in a stunning victory in the Palestinian general election.
It vaulted from being a shadowy fringe movement advocating the destruction of Israel to a party of government, sending shock waves through the region and beyond.
Western countries united to call on Hamas to change its charter after it achieved what amounted to a peaceful Islamic revolution through the ballot box. As Hamas has close links to Teheran, the victory extended considerably the influence of the Iranian Islamic republic across the Middle East.
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Tony Blair said that Britain recognised the Hamas victory. “But I think it is also important for Hamas to understand that there comes a point – and that point is now, after a strong showing – where they have to decide between a path of democracy or a path of violence.”
While the European Union and America regard Hamas as terrorists, British diplomats represented the EU during talks with Hamas councillors who won local elections in the West Bank last year. Britain argued that it was possible to have links with Hamas about official municipal business as long as security and militancy were not discussed. A similar formula may be used by EU officials as they work out how to deal with a Hamas-run government.
Second, a selection of reactions from my blogroll.
Ed Morrisey at Captain’s Quarters takes a hardline approach to the results.
Unless someone can show widespread voter fraud on behalf of Hamas, the Palestinians should be judged by the choices they have made this week. They have chosen war and the annihilation of Israel over the two-state solution favored publicly (if not fervently) by Fatah. Europe and the United States need to wake up from their delusional dreamland of a situation where both sides in this conflict want a peaceful conclusion and a world without hatred for their children and grandchildren. Clearly, the Palestinians want war, and they have made no secret of using their children and grandchildren as bomb fuses in order to perpetuate it.
The first item on our list should be an absolute end to all aid to the Palestinian territories and government. The US should not subsidize Hamas, nor should it give money to a people whose only aim appears to be genocide. Second, the US should allow Israel to respond militarily to any and all provocations — no more pressure from Washington on Tel Aviv to moderate their responses to suicide bombings and missile attacks.
Ace at Ace of Spades stands in agreement with the captain.
The infantilization of the Palestinians, by which they are immunized by the world for the vicious, murderous decisions they as a people make, has got to end. This is a depressing moment, but a clarifying one. Let no one say again that the Palestinians “want peace” and would choose it if only they could get past their extremist and corrupt leadership. They chose war — as they have been choosing war for 30 years.
However, PoliBlog‘s Dr. Steven Taylor warns against such reactions as oversimplifications.
For one thing, it isn’t as if Fatah was utterly opposed to political violence, or that their members were all lily-white in terms of their innocence vis-à -vis terrorism. Remember: Fatah came out of the PLO, which was Hamas before Hamas was Hamas.
I point this out to note that the notion that there was a stark choice for the Palestinian voters between a “peace†party and a “war” party is incorrect. For one thing, that was not, as best as I can tell, what the campaign was about. The key issues in this election were corruption and the fact that Fatah has had a difficult time delivering on basic governance in the PA.
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That the Hamas victory creates problems is undeniable. That I would have preferred Fatah to remain in control is certainly the case. However, I take some solace that Hamas comes to power through legitimate elections, not a military take-over and that they will have to govern. Governing has a way of changing organizations, especially when they are beholden to voters.
Meanwhile, Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom looks at what he thinks the election results confirm about Palestinian society.
And they clearly are not ready for democracy—which, as has been noted a million times—goes beyond the easy mechanical process of elections. “Palestine”—for all the recent (canny) good will shown it by Ariel Sharon’s Israeli government and the deference of the Bush administration—was not prepared for any such shift in ruling philosophy. They are a culture raised primarily on hate (via schools and TV) and a sense of deferred entitlement, all of which has been consistently reinforced by an international press hostile to Israel, and by a leftist academic ethos that for years has excused the barbarism, corruption, and obvious (and directed) scapegoating of the Jewish state under the guise that victim politics and the absense of whatever pet utopian theory of workable social and geopolitical organization they’ve in their minds knitted together from the various fraying strands of hardcore fundamentalist religion, soft marxism, grievance marketing, and a particularly pernicious brand of identity politics has yet to swaddle the region in a magic blanket of peace and rapprochement.
And what do I think? I think the oncall pager should have left me alone this evening and allowed me a chance to throw together something meaningful.
Beyond that, I think that the Palestinians have shunned blood and corruption for blood and … well … more recent blood, with possible corruption to follow. Please realize that a large impediment to any success in Fatah’s actually ruling over the Palestinians was Hamas. Now, after the election, Hamas is reaching out to Fatah in hopes of eliminating the same kind of hurdle that they themselves were.
Hamas has long claimed that they were ready to lead the Palestinians politically, so it’s time to shut up and put up for the terrorists. Here’s hoping for a strong Israel and a little bit of spine from Europe. Hold on tight — we could be in for a bumpy ride.