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Hamas is going to be a major player, barring a miracle As the WSJ article ends:
"Palestinians wonder why decision-makers elsewhere want them to vote for the same old regime that robs people of a decent, secure life. Why, they ask, must they vote for the very men they long to punish?"
Unconsciously or not, the writer ends on a revealing note, employing the word "punish" rather than "vote out" or "evict" or "fire."
Having lived in the region for half a decade, I have always felt that there does exist an undercurrent of vengeance and violence that manifests itself in such varied ways as so-called "honor-killings" and suicide bombers. There seems to be an anarchist streak, or a tradition "a rebours" at loose in the region which single-mindedly pursues goals contrary to all acceptable canons of human behavior.
On January 25th, the "Reality Field Distortion" which is the Middle East prevailed and the Palestinian voters were able to "punish" the PLO kleptocrats who kept them impoverished while banking billions in Oslo Agreement monies in European banks.
Now the PLO nouveaux-riches bandits can move in next to Arafat’s widow in the Georges Cinq Hotel on the Champs Elysee in Paris while their erstwhile countrymen languish in the new political paradigm they have just erected.
What are the results of yesterday’s polling?
First, the PLO are duly punished and are now resigning their posts in government, except for Mahmoud Abbas aka Abu Mazen who is the elected President of the PA. The Fatah will predictably remain as a much-diminished minority party, but are no longer even a major player on the new political scene.
Second, the “moderate-middle” of the Palestinian people have demonstrated their lack of moderation. They have elected a government which is the sworn enemy of Israel’s right to exist. As a result, the foreign assistance from the Oslo Accords that had been coming into the West Bank and Gaza, although partly siphoned off by PLO corruption, will now cease.
Third, the Israeli “moderate-middle” will now have nowhere to go and Ehud Olmert will be forced to the right. This means that the Israeli government will continue erecting their Berlin Wall and forego any real attempt at a negotiated settlement for the foreseeable future.
Fourth, the irreconciliables in Lebanon, such as Hezbollah, and Iran and in the Iraqi insurgency will all be heartened by this display of religiosity and rejection of moderation.
Also, the Quartet in Europe and other players in the international arena must resist the temptation to resume payments to the PA unless Hamas renounces the use of force and the destruction of Israel. Russia has its own insurgency with the Chechens and will be disinclined to meddle, but wobblies in certain quarters will begin to mince and dither about cutting off the Hamas stipends.
Of course, the Saudis and Gulfies are going to have to decide once more whether to allow their citizens to give financial support to Hamas. Ditto for the Egyptians, whose own Muslim Brotherhood will want to support Hamas and the efforts of the Mubarak government to restrain their assistance will not promote democracy in that country.
The most recent Economist has a long article on democracy and what it produces. The Economist quotes Richard Haass in his recent book, The Opportunity, where Haass warns against confusing "democracy" with "electocracy," where an Islamist government is chosen that is unlikely to allow a free follow-on election. Or certifiable disasters such as Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales ride a populist wave that could result in a permanent "revolution" ala the disasters in North Korea and Cuba, to name two unelected autocracies.
And dictatorships like Belarus and Myanmar and Zimbabwe might take solace from the disaster of the Hamas election, even while wet-eyed ninnies like Jimmy Carter will find some sort of silver lining in what is at least a level-2 hurricane.
Getting elected can lead to happy conclusions or, as Europe learned in 1933, Enabling Acts which perpetuate an electoral disaster.
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