Few people now remember that Fatah was elected in Gaza in 2006 -- nearly eighteen years ago -- in an election approved even by Israel and monitored by none other than Jimmy Carter, the president whose diplomatic acumen had yielded the Camp David Accords.
Soon after that Carter issued plain advice on how positive results of that election could be lost if Israel and her allies failed to respond carefully.
During this time of fluidity in the formation of the new government, it is important that Israel and the United States play positive roles. Any tacit or formal collusion between the two powers to disrupt the process by punishing the Palestinian people could be counterproductive and have devastating consequences.
Unfortunately, these steps are already underway and are well known throughout the Palestinian territories and the world. Israel moved yesterday to withhold funds (about $50 million per month) that the Palestinians earn from customs and tax revenue. Perhaps a greater aggravation by the Israelis is their decision to hinder movement of elected Hamas Palestinian Legislative Council members through any of more than a hundred Israeli checkpoints around and throughout the Palestinian territories. This will present significant obstacles to a government's functioning effectively. Abbas informed me after the election that the Palestinian Authority was $900 million in debt and that he would be unable to meet payrolls during February. Knowing that Hamas would inherit a bankrupt government, U.S. officials have announced that all funding for the new government will be withheld, including what is needed to pay salaries for schoolteachers, nurses, social workers, police and maintenance personnel. So far they have not agreed to bypass the Hamas-led government and let humanitarian funds be channeled to Palestinians through United Nations agencies responsible for refugees, health and other human services.
This common commitment to eviscerate the government of elected Hamas officials by punishing private citizens may accomplish this narrow purpose, but the likely results will be to alienate the already oppressed and innocent Palestinians, to incite violence, and to increase the domestic influence and international esteem of Hamas. It will certainly not be an inducement to Hamas or other militants to moderate their policies.
President Carter's good intentions notwithstanding, even at the time he spoke Hamas was already a clearly malevolent group. This is from another source I came across at the time.
Calling the Hamas "militant" is more than an understatement. It is like saying Stalin was an "outspoken activist." Hamas began about 1985 as a seemingly innocuous charity and religious group that even got the support of the Israeli government. However, when the first Intifada started, Hamas turned militant. They drew up their charter, which explains their views on negotiations and what might be called "the Jewish question." It is hard to imagine a more racist and terrifying document. Some quotes:
Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "
There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."
After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying."
The Hamas victory was also noted by 3Quarks Daily at the time.
Journalist and blogger, Laila el-Haddad, on the Palestinian elections and Hamas' victory in The Guardian's news blog.
The latest events can only be described as a political earthquake, both locally and regionally. Not only are these the first truly democratic and hotly contested elections in the Arab Middle East, but also the first time an Islamic party has come to power through the system and the popular will of the people.
To say we are entering a new stage is an understatement. Everyone knew Hamas would do well in these elections and that they would constitute a significant challenge to the ruling party. But this well?
Voters in Gaza were shocked.
"I cast a sympathy vote for Hamas but truthfully I did not expect them to win at all. It was a surprise to everyone; no one expected this to happen," a young college student said.
Even Hamas members and supporters were surprised.
"We thought we'd get at most 50% of the votes," one Hamas insider told me.
"We didn't expect the security forces and the upper classes to vote for us, but it seems they might have tipped the balance. I guess we're more popular than we realised."
How the new government will take shape and whether western positions towards it will evolve have all yet to answered. It's likely that Hamas will form a kind of national unity government, or a coalition of some sort, with a mixture of other parties. The burden of the sudden and overwhelming responsibility for running a state and answering to their constituents' long and varied list of demands may be more than they can deal with alone at the moment.
That "burden of the sudden and overwhelming responsibility for running a state and answering to their constituents' long and varied list of demands" did, in fact turn out to be "more than they can deal with alone at the moment."
Moreover, from that day to this Israel's response to that election has been to seize the moment and make it a divide-and-conquer strategy (Hamas vs. Fatah) controlling and overcoming the entire Palestinian population inside the official borders of the country, in Gaza and the Occupied Territories (aka the West Bank).
Gaza was already tightly controlled, but since then Hamas has, in fact become more militant than before, and Israel's controls have become progressively more severe, making it one of the world's biggest open-air prisons, housing a civilian population half or more of whom may not have even born when when Hamas was elected.
I don't know if these links will be active as I publish this post. I gleaned them from my old blog which has somehow survived for searches but with no one in charge. When I go there I see many now-inactive urls but the old ship without a captain somehow survives somewhere in the cloud...
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