Hamas Elected In Palestinian Elections

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Truth be told, I know little enough about Palestinian politics. My experience with Hamas is limited to them claiming responsibility for attacking Israelis. Obviously, there is more to the story than that, because that wouldn't be the sole reason to elect a party to power.

It will be interesting to see how this progresses - one would imagine that with the reins of legitimate authority handed to them, Hamas will be more forceful and aggressive in pursuing Hamas/Palestinian interests than their predecessors. Perhaps the comparison to Sinn Fein and the IRA will be accurate, and Hamas will become less murderous, but remain as willing as ever to take extreme measures.

On the other hand, maybe it will rein them in, as their newfound power is coupled with a responsibility to the electorate to achieve something. Maybe a disruption is what was needed in the wake of Ariel Sharon's stroke (although I doubt many Israelis will be happy with this result). The consequences will be interesting to see - although I hope that it means a reduction in the violence and bloodshed in Gaza.

 

I don't know if the confrontional position of Hamas against Israel was an issue. I doubt it.

The main issues why the Hamas arm was elected are the strong social efforts of the organization and the obvious corruption in Fatah.

I think Hamas will be more civil from now on, officially. They cannot hope to hold on to power if they don't stop promoting violence towards Israel. With the danger of israeli retributional strikes, the people will not forget who started provoking them.

That is not to say that Hamas splinter groups will continue to bomb. That was also the case with Fatah.

My only fear is that the Likud will now win the israeli elections.

 

The same thing happened in Ireland, with terrorist organisations turning to politics, however there will always be splinter groups that favour good old fashioned violence.

Edit

I read more into this, and:

Well the US seems to make an exception when they want to interfer with N.Ireland politics. On one hand they sent Michael Reiss to help with the peace process, and on the other hand they allow people that think they are Irish to fund terrorist organisations!

[ January 27, 2006, 11:19: Message edited by: Cúchulainn ]

 

I don't think that's an entirely accurate comparison. Maybe if we were comparing things 15 or 20 years ago it would be, but I can't recall any major terrorist initiative in Northern Ireland in the last decade. Comparitively, it seems like we hear about some suicide bomber blowing himself in Israel about once a month (although I will admit that I haven't read anything so far this year on suicide bombers in Israel).

 

Well yes there is no comparison between the N.I situation and that of Palastine/Israel situation, even at the peak of 'The Troubles' in the 70's and 80's.

The only reason that the US even bothers with us is what I assume to be the 'influential' Irish-American voters or else Michael Reiss would be happily spending his time somewhere more enjoyable

[ January 27, 2006, 15:17: Message edited by: Cúchulainn ]

 

I wish it too, but hearing that they plan to legitimize their army by making him the Palestinian Army, i fear that tensions will get worse.
Of course as the General secretary of the Arabian Connection said it takes two to tango and in the not too distant future Israelis do vote for their goverment too.
And so far the party of Ariel Sharon (which very conservative and Palestinian dismissive) was their primary choice, as the statistics from the polls said.
Untill this puzzle is solved too, any theory of what may happen is valid.

 

I wonder why people are surprised at the tension between Palestine and Israel. All we did was take the most fertile (and most holy) land that the Palestinians had been living in for 2,000 years and give it over to a group of people whose claim to said land was so old most governments would ignore it. Then the fledgling Israeli government kicked hundreds of thousands of the Palestinians who were living there all their lives out, causing them to live as refugees in other countries or just live in abject poverty, barely able to eat, unable to educate themselves and lift themseleves out of their hopeless situation. I have no idea what would have caused them to resort to terrorism.

 

Sharon created a new party prior to his stroke. It is moderate conservative, supportive of his strategy of one-sided withdrawal out of Gaza and Westbank and, most important, it is secular. Sharon took a lot of highly qualified personnel wiht him.
His old party, the Likud Block, is not secular and therefore far more conservative and aggressive towards the arabs. But after the schism, it is a minor power.
Until now, the new party (the name eludes me) was favoured in the polls. But as I said, I fear that after Hamas winning the elections a lot of israelis will feel threatenend an choose the Likud for the more aggressive politics.

 

I am talking about the new party too, not the Liqud.
Liqud has outlived it's role and it's burden(the withdrawal from the Gaza strip) is a major defeat for the Israelis (or so they think now), which may never allow the party to gain a big portion of the voters again. Sharon with his stroke (allthough this is a bit cruel) managed to purify himself and his new party from this.
I've read an article today about Sharons move to withdraw the colonists from Gaza and West bank.
Political analisis said that it is in fact a move that just helped the Israelis get out from a growing number of Muslim neighbours.
Furthermore this withdrawal was made in parallel with the continuous building of the Wall plus the strengthening of the colonists in the rest of the areas and the Israelian army in these areas too.
Always give and take when ones deals with a Jew merchant he will never lose, he may not win but will never lose.
As for the new party, Ehoud Olmert (the one who replaces Sharon as a PM) is going to lead the party to elections as i have read.
And he allready declared that Hamas goverment is not a valid participant in talks. His foreign affairs minister has already started an effort to isolate them from the rest of the world.
Pretty hard and firm stand don't you think?

The people who remember (or better yet do want to), are not suprised.
But the people who want to forget (or better do not want to remember or learn), are suprised.
No matter which is the case, the truth is simple.
Hamas was and still is, the militant part of a fighting Palestine. Which makes the winning of the elections more interesting. Israel never expected that, and US did not too. But they did fund the Fatahs campaign.
It seems though that the Palestinians have a different point of view than Israel and USA.
Finally i want to say one thing.
If one is claiming that the Hamas are terrorists because they explode bombs near civilian targets, then the Isralian Army and Goverment, are a bunch of terrorists too for firing missiles in civilian areas. Simple as that i don't agree with the actions of both. But i can't deny the fact that the latter are being treated more softly and unfair towards the former, by the rest of the world.

[ February 05, 2006, 00:58: Message edited by: Mithrantir ]

 

Israel's response to Palestanian terrorism has always been far from proportionate. The last figures I saw indicated that Israel killed 3-4 Palestinians for every Israeli killed.

EDIT: found better statistics.

[ February 06, 2006, 20:32: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

Well, if you imply willful killing of civilians I would disagree - it's probably just attacking last known coordinates and - well, whoever is there is there. Killing in retaliation smacks a bit of the Wehrmacht in WWII.

 

Actually, Israeli policy for a long time was to bulldoze their house to the ground. The family was typically not warned. This might be a bit too long for most people to remember, but at one point Reagan actually called Israel and told them to stop bombing civilian targets because some photos of women, children, and babies injured and killed by Israeli retaliation were released to the US. Fortunately, this kind of thing is less likely to happen now, since the eyes of the world are now on that region.

 

The eyes of the world may be on that region, but Israel still acts as they see fit. Can you blame them ?

 

Yes. This is their own pot to piss in. They kicked out many of the palestinians living in Israel, treat the Palestinians who do live in Israel as second class citizens, and they keep breaking their own treaties because of the actions of a few Palestinians. Damn right, I blame them.

 

A "few" Palestinians ? Are you for real ? Didn't the outcome of the elections learn you anything ? They want violence and they want to bomb Israel off the map, the people have spoken, what clearer message could they have given ? Israel's only crime here is that they answer violence with even more violence, but one can hardly blame them for that. They are trying to survive in an extremely hostile environment, there isn't an Arab in the surrounding nations that wouldn't want to see Israel destroyed.

 

Actually if Hamas promote more violence towards Israel it will no longer be terrorist attacks... and Israel will have every excuse to kick the excrement out of Palestine since it will be open war between two nations.

 

Hamas was not elected simply in an attempt to give it more power with which to attack Israel. For the last few years Hammas has been the only organization in Palestine that has provided any sort of social services. It has provided education and other services which would otherwise be unavailable to the public. Because of this it has earned a reputation of competence and honesty.

Fatah on the other hand has been in government for the last several decades. It is generally viewed as being weak, corrupt, and ineffectual. Many Palestinians blame it for their current situation. Some of the anger directed at it is simple scapegoating, but some of it is based on the corruption and incompetence that make up its officials.

Because Hamas is the only other party many Palestinians turned to it hoping that it would do a better job in government than Fatah.

Hopefully this new responsibility will lead them to moderate their actions and pursue a sensible peace plan.

More likely though the confrontation between Hamas and Fatah will become violent and Israel will utilize the ensuing instability to further push through its agenda.

*Disclaimer*
I know that Hamas has been responsible to the majority of the suicide bombings and other attacks on Israel. These actions (those directed at civilians) cannot be justified or condoned in any way, manner, or form.

 

The presence of suicide bombers and terrorists does not even come remotely close to implying that this is a consensus. Take a look at This.

22% of the Palestinians killed in Israeli retaliation were children. They weren't killed accidentally. You don't accidentally shoot people in the head....at least not 759 times. Who's terrorising who?

EDIT: 759 is the total number of Palestinian children Israel has killed since the inception of hostilities between Israel and Palestine. However, this is dated information so the number should actually be higher unless Israel suddenly had a change of heart and stopped targeting children in the last 4 years, which I doubt. They obviously were not all shot in the head, I plead fatigue on that count. (I'm currently home with a fever) Exact figures of how often Israeli troops are intentionally shooting kids in the head aren't available due to lack of reporting but it has been reported on more than 10 separate occasions.

[ February 06, 2006, 22:00: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

Deliberately misleading and inflammatory. Unless you think that all 759 children were shot in the head?

Actually, scratch that. According to the link, roughly 200 Palestinian kids were killed. The number 759 doesn't appear in the link at all.

 

I'm talking about total since the very beginning of trouble between Israel and Palestine. What I linked to only talks about a very brief period of that history. Unfortunately, the best data I found stops at 2000, so I'm waiting until I have current (2006) data to post it. I'm still looking. About 759.....your right. That was an oversight. 759 is the total number of Palestinian children killed by Israel since the inception of their problems. Many weren't shot in the head but were instead died in their homes when Israel crushed them into the ground. I have edited my above post with the best statistics I could find on short notice that I trusted to be accurate.

[ February 06, 2006, 23:02: Message edited by: Drew ]