Thursday, January 26, 2006
FATAH BLOWN AWAY
Elections in the US are sometimes won in the Bible belt. This may the first election on earth to be won by the suicide belt:
The Islamic militant group Hamas swept to victory over the long-dominant Fatah faction on Thursday in the Palestinian parliamentary election, a political earthquake that could bury chances for peacemaking with Israel.
Could? Could? This is a Reuters piece, so you expect the following:
Hamas’s charter commits it to Israel’s eventual destruction, but its armed wing has largely respected a truce negotiated by Abbas and Egypt nearly a year ago ... The Islamic group’s charity network in the impoverished Gaza Strip and in the West Bank has also boosted its popularity.
Be alert for reports of Palestinian deaths during celebrations—and also for victory-starved leftoids to claim the result as some sort of political triumph. The right may have won Canada and Australia and the US and Germany, but we’ve won ... er ... some place that isn’t a state! Anticipate widespread Bush-blaming, too, although that goes without saying.
UPDATE. Early blogger reaction ...
* Edward Copeland: “Uh-oh.”
* Konami Senchou: “This is incredibly interesting ... and by interesting, I mean scary.”
* Laurence Simon: “This makes two entities sworn to Israel’s destruction midwifed by Carter’s oblivious guardianship: the Islamic Republic of Iran and a Hamas-run Palestinian Authority.”
* Damian Penny: “If Israel wants to build that wall a little bit higher, and make the dreaded ‘checkpoints’ a little more strict, I can’t blame them.”
* Mike Jericho: “Does this mean - officially - that leftists have to stop saying that in Islam, terrorists and their supporters are a ‘small minority of extremists’? Because this outcome would kinda prove that I’ve been right all along.”
* Patrick Belton reports from Hamasville: “It’s not clear anyone wanted this, least of all Hamas, who in assuming the administration of the Palestinian national authority’s creaking and often corrupt bureaucracy single-handed in a moment when its sole lifeline of European and other international support appears threatened, may just have stumbled into the biggest molasses patch the Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah has ever faced.” (Via PJ Media)
* Mazzie: “The people of Palestine just voted into power a political party that does not mince words when it comes to Israel: they want them all dead, obliterated, destroyed. I’m just stunned. And scared.”
* Ed Morrissey: “Unless someone can show widespread voter fraud on behalf of Hamas, the Palestinians should be judged by the choices they have made this week. They have chosen war and the annihilation of Israel over the two-state solution favored publicly (if not fervently) by Fatah.”
UPDATE II. The The Bush blaming begins:
Chalk another one up on your list of miserable failures. You and your neocon pals in Israel have failed to marginalize Hamas and now you’re faced with only two options. All your demands on the Palestinian Authority, the almost insurmountable obstacles you placed in their way to a sovereign state, have come back to bite you in the ass.
No celebration deaths yet, but it can’t be long:
After the exit poll results were announced, supporters of both Fatah and Hamas claimed victory, firing guns in the air to celebrate in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In Gaza City, banner-waving Fatah supporters fired rifles out of car windows and honked car horns as they drove through the streets. There were similar scenes in Ramallah.
Guess what isn’t on the agenda?
“Negotiation with Israel is not on our agenda,” said Mushir al-Masri, who won election in his home district in the northern Gaza Strip. “Recognising Israel is not on the agenda either.”
UPDATE III. A helpful guide to Hamas, from Al Jazeera:
The Hamas Covenant cites the long-discredited anti-Semitic fraud, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, describing it as “the embodiment of the Zionist plan to usurp Palestine”. Hamas dismisses the Freemasons, Lions Club, and the Rotarians as organizations promoting “the interest of Zionism.” It accuses those organizations, and the “Zionist invasion” in general, of being “behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds.”
UPDATE IV. Global response is chilly:
President Bush has said the US won’t deal with Hamas unless it renounces violence. That thought is being seconded by European leaders. Britain says that while it recognizes “electoral mandates,” the British government can only do business with people who renounce terrorism. Denmark’s foreign minister says Hamas “must stop the terror.”
But Jimmy is hopeful:
Former US President Jimmy Carter said today that he hoped that the Hamas Islamic group would act “responsibly” now that it appears to have been elected to power in Palestinian elections.
Pollsters got it wrong:
Palestinian pollsters were at a loss Thursday to explain their failure to predict the Islamic Hamas’ resounding victory in legislative elections.
UPDATE V. “Freedom fighters or terrorists?” asks Britain’s Channel 4. “Call them what you will ...” Very well. I choose “terrorists”.
UPDATE VI. The New York Times reports:
Israel calls Hamas a terrorist group and has always refused to deal with the organization.
Not true. Israel has on occasion dealt very effectively with Hamas.
UPDATE VII. Indonesia’s Mujahedin Council is delighted:
A Indonesian Muslim group on Thursday hailed the victory of the Islamist movement Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary election.
“This is phenomenal,” said Fauzan Al Anshori, the spokesman for the Indonesian Mujahedin Council (MMI), an umbrella organisation for groups seeking to impose Islamic law in Indonesia.