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Palestine's Rocky Road Geoff Metcalf
"He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still." -Charles Caleb Colon The Palestinian election has the United States suffering a diplomatic hissy fit. Notwithstanding all the hand wringing, and sputtering, the resultant conundrum of the Hamas election victory is a direct product of Israel and the U.S. efforts to accommodate, appease and ignore the empirical realities of Hamas. A simple answer to the ubiquitous question, How could Hamas have won? is that the United States and Israel let them. No good deed shall go unpunished.
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President Bush said, "A political party that articulates the destruction of Israel as part of its platform is a party with which we will not deal." OK, so why support and endorse a process in which Hamas was a major player? The United States made nice with the later Yassar Arafat not because he ever renounced the PLO policy of eliminating Israel, but because the United States chose to ignore it and made believe Arafat modified his radicalism…despite his never having done so. The Bush "Jones" for democratic elections ignores the inevitability that if the majority of a population embraces evil intent, the election results will give you elected officials with evil intent. Hamas may be a bloody, ruthless gang of murderers, but they have done a superior job in winning hearts and minds, and the results were evidenced in the election results. The way to preempt a geopolitical disaster like what happened is to not permit the bad guys to play.
Already the Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Oureia has resigned. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbass is between the rock and the hard place. Abbas says he would not be deterred from implementing the "road map," but that requires negotiations with Israel…and frankly, also with the United States. And that dog ain't gonna hunt as long as Hamas is the political force of the Palestinians. If the United States and Israel both refuse to deal with Hamas, the Palestinian dream quest is worse off now than when Ariel Sharon had Arafat under siege. Palestinians have squandered an extraordinary opportunity and once again demonstrated a unique talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It is a real head scratcher. Given that Arab refugees in Israel didn't even start identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people until 1967…they were on the brink of an extraordinary public relations coup. And they blew it! Israel and the United States agreed to agree under the Bush brokered road map. All the Palestinians had to do was not kill Israeli civilians and promise to make nice. Hey, they could have (and should have) lied to get the big prize. Instead, like petulant adolescents, they used their frustration with the speed of progress they were enjoying (and the attendant corruption) as an excuse to rearrange the chessboard. A chessboard they will now find themselves sitting at alone…with lots of time to blame everyone except themselves for their brain flatulence. Some 58,000 security officers are linked with Fatah. They worry (and reasonably so) that their jobs are at risk with a Hamas-led government. Hamas already has about 5,000 armed gunslingers in the Gaza Strip. The ingredients for a Palestinian civil war are percolating. There is ample evidence to confirm http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/history_20020508.html the Palestinians don't have a right to any of the dirt in Israel. However, they have harassed, harangued, and (with the aid and comfort of a compliant media) beguiled the body politic into "accepting" a manufactured claim on Israeli land. The Israelis had capitulated. The United States had blessed the road map. All the Palestinians had to do was not muck things up…and they failed. Hamas now politically controls the Palestinians. Hamas is anathema to the United States and Israel. The United Nothing is as worthless as mammary glands on a bull and the Palestinian in the street is neutered. The deep systemic tensions within Palestinian society and the inability (or refusal) of Fatah to manage its own corruption and inability to maintain even the fiction of order has netted a Hamas victory (soon to become Pyrrhic). The financial implications are about to become critically apparent to posing Hamas politicians. President Bush has said we will cut aid to the Palestinian government unless Hamas abolishes their militant symbiot and stops calling for the end of Israel. That's about $400-million a year (that frankly they shouldn't be getting anyway). Israel is tap dancing but will probably stop transferring taxes and import duties it collects on behalf of the Palistinian Authority (about two-thirds of its revenue). The Palestinian Authority is about a heartbeat away from fiscal disaster that will make California's books look almost healthy.
Editor's note:
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