| Wednesday, January 25, 2006 |
| The ballot or the bullet |
 I've been very open about the fact that I take a very European -- or I suppose African -- attitude toward the Palestinian people: I sympathise with them and have for a long time. I think they, having been on that land since long before the Jewish emigres arrived after World World II (some of the refugees still cling to the deeds to their houses and olive orchards on the other side of the Green Line, probably in vain,) and having been promised to have their rights protected by the British since the Balfour declaration, they deserve to have their state. (What's that old saying about if it's cowboys and Indians, I'm an Indian? ... especially now that cowboys are kinda icky for me ...)
[Anytime you write or say anything about the Palestinians it's obligatory to say it so I will: those Palestinians who are blowing themselves up in discos and on city buses to advance their "Intifada" or uprising, against the Israeli military occupation and settler land grab, do not deserve the support for any civilized person. What they're doing is sick, and it's counter-productive to their actual political goal. Of course it can also be said that the Palestinians learned some of what they know from the Israelis, who via the Likudesque Irgun, the Stern Gang and other outfits (which included such luminaries as Menachem Begin and Yitzak Shamir) used terrorism to drive the British out of Palestine... but anyway, there it is...]
Anyway, it will be interesting to see if the right crows about the latest round of ink-stained fingers, this time in the Palestinian territories, where the first elections in ten years just wrapped up. (okay, they're not gonna crow much if Hamas does well...) On the face of it, they seem to be a net plus for the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. It may, however, not be seen as such a plus for Israel, which may be staring down the barrel of a politically powerful Hamas once the votes are counted -- akin to the rise of Hezbollah as a political force in Lebanon, where they are a major party in parliament. the hope would be that having gained both the power and the responsibility of governing, the leaders of Hamas will have better things to do than plan terrorist operations in Israel and will shut down their militants on their own, as Jimmy Carter has called on them to do, even by force. That's the hope -- but then this "democracy on the march" thing hasn't exactly worked out the way the neocons in Washington said it would, has it. And Hamas is as much driven by religion as are the settlers in the West Bank and formerly in Gaza. Still, beyond Islam, their rise to power was also fueled by many of the same things that helped the conservatives in Canada and that could yet help the Dems in the States: the demonstrated corruption of the party in power. Since they are promising to clean things up, they obviously have credibility with many of the Plaestinian people. It won't be easy to ignore them after this vote, or for that matter, to go around blowing up their cars... From Ian Black in today's Guardian:
In practice, the outcome of tomorrow's election, in which the Islamic Resistance Movement (to use its full name) is thought likely to win 30-40% of the vote, is going to require a subtle diplomatic response - especially as the US has been energetically, if selectively, promoting democracy in the Middle East since the Iraq war. Washington supported Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in his decision to let Hamas run in this contest in the hope that it would be drawn away from violence into politics. The US also ensured that Israel did not sabotage the ballot.
Assuming that the election does produce a good result for Hamas - and barring surprises that now seems certain - governments will have to think again - hard.
There are signs the Israelis are edging closer to saying "f-it. We have to make a deal." Ehud Olmert (interim Israeli P.M.) is signaling that Israel needs to start pulling out of the West Bank, finishing the surprising task Ariel Sharon started. His arguments for a smaller but Jewish Israel vs. a larger, mostly Arab (and necessarily apartheidesque) one, sound a lot like those reportedly made by Golda Meir at the start of the Jewish state, as reported in the book How Israel Lost by Richard Ben Cramer (a book given to me by my pal at my former station, who was a bureau chief in Israel -- he disagrees with most of what's in the book, though...)
And if the Palestinians can lure anything close to the $5 billion in new investment they are seeking from investors at an upcoming financial conference, they will be on their way to making the critical choice to focus on nation-building, rather than eternal war. What's key about the investment push is that it focuses on fellow Arabs, and on the Palestinian Diaspora outside the territories. That way, the new nation, once it happens, will feel more independent.
Who knows, maybe this democracy thing could work out after all, ironically, in the one place in the Middle East the U.S. has mostly ignored for the last five years. You don't have to be a Mideast expert to realize that if you want to reduce terrorism in that part of the world, solving the "Palestinian problem" will get you a lot closer to Nirvana than invading and occupying an Arab, Asiatic (or a Persian...) country. ...
Interesting reading:
A detailed history of the Balfour declaration, from Mideast Web
Tags: Palestinians, Elections, Politics, Democracy, Mideast, Israel |
posted by JReid @ 11:26 AM   |
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