Hamas wins a clear majority in the Palestinian elections...

While the national voting appeared to be close, election officials said Hamas had won a large majority in the district races. Hamas apparently took advantage of divisions in Fatah, which had fielded multiple candidates in many districts, splitting the Fatah vote while Hamas' remained united.

Is Fatah stupid? (wait, don't answer that)
If they intentionally split their own vote then they deserved to lose. I hadn't heard about this.

At what point did this become the 'most basic obligation'?

The result is shock to my Palestinian friends and their families, and they are a little disconcerted by it - though more than a few have seconded the idea above that government may tame them a touch. Certainly the current authority is riddled with corruption which the vote seems to be reacting against. But there also seems to be a fair effect from "Western Peace Charities" actively campaigning against Hamas, which Palestinians were getting ticked off by. It does present a very interesting challenge to Hamas, who if they want to be taken seriously need to use this opportunity.

If they are allowed.

-- tissp! (impossibleshortestspecialpat...) (webmail), Today 2:18 PM. (the impossible shortest specia) (later)

The most basic duty of any government is to ensure the safety of its citizens.

No doubt I have phrased that badly, but still...

I am gobsmacked.

I bet it was the green baseball caps.

I read this as "people who whack them".

but never the other way around, eh?

If Hamas does "moderate" and come to recognize Israel's existence, won't they basically just be a more religious Fatah?

Also, if Hamas does continue to openly support terror, won't they be forfeiting a lot of international aid?

xpost

It's worth noting that they promised to do this but never actually did it (perhaps this is what you meant by "theoretically"). This is why I'm not particularly optimistic that Hamas will soften its stance, at least not as far as their official charter is concerned.

It's not entirely clear that treating Hamas as a bunch of murderers rather than a political party ensures the safety of anyone. This might be what you were saying, I couldn't tell.

And there's no need to "treat" Hamas like a bunch of murderers, they *are* a bunch of murderers. The fact that they build the occasional community centre isn't a mitigating factor against their violent and Anti-Semitic principles.

xpost

Take it away, Jonah Goldberg:

I think this is profoundly complicated and momentous event, defying easy or quick analysis. Some initial, perhaps contradictory, thoughts which may -- and probably will -- change as the story develops:

1. These were free elections and Fatah appears to be honoring their result. That is a huge victory for democracy and shouldn't be downplayed.

2. The bad news is that Hamas did very well. This doesn't speak well of the Palestinian electorate -- but it speaks even worse of Arafat's dying regime. The silver lining (see point 1) is that there is now democratic accountability or, more accurately, a precedent for accountability.

3. It could be good news that Hamas won outright. If Hamas did well, but didn't win outright, they would probably serve to push the government in the same direction while not being accountable for the government's failures. Moreover the United States would have been in an even more complex situation of ignoring some terrorist ministers while recgonizing the government they belonged to. This at least makes the choices -- for everyone -- much more clear. Cut off from foreign aid -- hopefully -- Hamas may prove themselves incapable of governing. Meanwhile, Fatah can use some time in the wilderness, away from the purse strings, in order to separate out the purely corrupt from the incidentally corrupt, the kleptocrats from the democrats.

4. The fact that Abbas is still president -- he was elected separately last year -- complicates the issue. Will the US work with Abbas even though he will undoubtedly ask the winner of the election -- Hamas -- to form a government? Will he become the good cop? Or the respectable voice of the bad cops? I dunno.

Such insight.

In which sense, you're right! But only if Hamas have the infrastructure in place to allow this. They don't. Of course they don't. And so it becomes a question of tactics, minor concessions, pragmatism..

http://www.haaretz.com/ (the best Israeli newspaper, for those who don't know, which is also fairly left-leaning)

Also an interesting piece in The Nation about the internal political situation in the territories:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060130/rabbani

Henceforth, Israeli leaders should respond to every terrorist attack not as though it were a crime committed by a few isolated fanatics that the Palestinian Authority somehow did not manage to stop in time. Henceforth, Israeli leaders should respond to terrorist attacks as acts of war. In other words, their response should be forceful. It should make it clear that those who inflict death and destruction will pay a very steep price.

Well, wacky or not, that's probably what Israely WILL do (barring some kind of miracle Labor victory). If terror attacks were obviously coming directly from the government, they'd be treated as acts of war, and Israel would feel it had carte blanche to respond. Hamas must realize this.

xpost to hurting's earlier post

My guess is that Hamas will have its hands full trying to govern for the next little while. The violence might subside, but the propoganda war (= state-sponsored Anti-Semitism) will not and in the long run that could be just as bad.

yes, those hardcore militant islamists, total drunkards, yes.

you drunken-church-bomber apologist

Get it?!

I think the answer to that one, sadly, is plenty.

One story I keep hearing is that Hamas was able to garner support by claiming that it, and not Israel, was in fact responsible for the Gaza pullout, and that it proved that their violent strategy had worked. I don't know to what extent this was actually a factor in Hamas's victory and to what extent that line is just being used by Israeli right-wingers who opposed the pullout.

I've heard this too

So what exactly is the difference between the way people think and act, and what they are? Personally I'm happy to define what am as roughly how I think and act.

I think I agree with Momus in that I think it's absurd to say you can never generalise about nationalities, cultures, ethnic groups etc. What exactly makes a distinctive culture a distinctive culture if it can't be characterised in any way?

Look, the problem with talking about this is that culture is such an imprecise term (and real presence) in people's lives. But it so easily becomes shorthand for racism. African Americans have a culture of poverty. Palestinians have a culture of violence.

I maintain that the poster who alluded to the "Palestinian character" at the end of his post was attributing a really depressing geopolitical situation to a group of people's innate "nature" because otherwise it's a really complicated thing to try to account for. But that's lazy and ultimately harmful, and it seems like a lot of people who are generally committed to anti-racism let themselves off the hook when it comes to the middle east and it pisses me off.

Here's a pretty deece analysis of Israel's likely reaction.

of course being American has shaped me, but that's precisely not a racial influence, America being a pluralist society. If you're talking about statements like "American culture is individualistic," sure, that's fine, but I would hope even that is understood as shorthand for a whole bunch of historical developments, and that it could not be taken as a deterministic account of any individual American. (Such a statement lacks the nasty essentialist underpinnings of the "Palestinian character," of course, because American is not a racial or ethnic group.) I guess all I'm saying is when discussing Israel-Palestine, of course the history of Israelis and Palestinians and each group's coming-to-be-defined-as-a-group is at issue, but turning historical and situational realities into ontological differences is not useful (and also has all sorts of negative implications which, given a knowledge of human history, no one gets to be naive about, for fuck's sake.)

sorry for dragging the thread so far away from its topic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1697111,00.html

So why didnt they?

I would go so far as to predict that some of these reasons would surprise you, as being ones you would never have thought of - not being a Palestinian, or a resident of Gaza or West bank.

Anyways.

A desire for peaceful coexistance with Israel, or not, might not have been a decisive factor for the a mjority of the voters - in either direction. So, yes, I think it would be "unreasonable to infer that if the majority of Palestinians" placed this issue at the top of their concerns when choosing how to vote. Such a conclusion could conceivably be true, but you'd need data to decide that, not inference.

Is it unreasonable to infer that if the majority of Israelis desired peace and coexistence with Palestine, they wouldn't have elected the man who masscred refugee Palestinians in Lebanon to drive out the (secular) PLO, who were cannily disguising their masterminds in the form of women and children?

Despite Hamas Win, Palestinians Want Peace with Israel

Agence France Presse

30 January 2006

RAMALLAH, West Bank

Hamas's election victory may have raised fears of a

hardening in Palestinian attitudes towards Israel, but a

poll Monday shows a vast majority want a negotiated peace

with their Jewish neighbours.

A survey conducted within days of the Islamist group's

landslide win in the parliamentary election showed 84

percent of Palestinians want a negotiated peace agreement

with Israel.

And 86 percent said they want the moderate Palestinian

Authority president Mahmud Abbas to remain in his post

when the radical movement forms a new government.

Perhaps more importantly in the wake of growing

international pressure, nearly three-quarters want Hamas

to drop its call for the destruction of Israel, said the

survey by the Ramallah-based Near East Consulting

institute.

Hamas has gained international notoriety with its campaign

of suicide attacks against Israel, yet it is hugely

popular in Palestinian territories where it provides a

much-needed social safety net for many of the poorest

residents.

However, rather than backing Hamas's tactics towards

Israel, nearly three out of four (73 percent) respondents

said they believed the radical party should "change its

position on the elimination of the state of Israel".

And even among Hamas supporters, over three quarters of

those polled (77 percent) admitted they would like to see

a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

The findings were published as Human Rights Watch urged

Hamas to immediately announce a complete halt to attacks

on civilians.

"Hamass new role in Palestinian politics makes it

essential as well as opportune for it to make a commitment

that it will not attack civilians under any circumstance,"

the group said in an open letter to the Hamas leadership.

"The intentional killings of civilians, including reprisal

attacks, constitute war crimes and are crimes against

humanity when conducted massively or systematically,"

Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch's regional

executive director, said in the letter.

Israel has ruled out any prospect of negotiating with a

Hamas government which refuses to accept its right to

exist and continues to advocate violence, even though

Hamas has not carried out any attacks for over a year.

And both the White House and the European Union have

expressed a similar position, saying their recognition of

a Hamas-led authority would be conditional on the radical

movment renouncing violence, recognising Israel's right to

exist and pressing towards peace.

In constrast, a poll in an Israeli daily reflected a

hardening of attitudes with only one in six (17.6 percent)

people believing their government should conduct

negotiations toward a final settlement with a Hamas-led

Palestinian Authority.

The figures in the Maariv daily showed a sharp drop from

those published in a Yediot Aharonot poll conducted before

last Wednesday's parliamentary election when 48 percent of

respondents said Israel should talk to a Hamas-led

government.

In Monday's survey, however, 52.7 percent said Israel

should not engage in talks with such an authority.