Please Show Your Work
UPI reports that a Saudi national security bureau predicted the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections back in December. Interesting reading, but is there really such a mystery here? Electorates that feel besieged turn right-nationalist. We’ve seen this recently in Israel (since the second Intifada began), the United States (the elections since the September 11, 2001 atrocities), Iraq (on all sides of the ethnic divide), and now Palestine. If you think the enemy’s at the gate you vote for the guy you think will kick some ass.
Meanwhile, Leon Hadar paints your bleak Palestinian future:
So what will happen? The media misses the point again by focusing on Israeli and Western reactions. I’m more interested in following how the ousted Fatah guys are going to react. Remember these are very corrupt individuals who make our own Abramoff look like Mother Theresa. They basically steal money the Palestinians receive from the U.S. and EU and put it in their bank accounts. And they have a lot of guns. So do you really think that they are going to become the “loyal opposition” in the Palestinian “parliament.” Like the ex-Baathists in Iraq they are pissed off and I won’t be surprised that they’ll start shooting very soon. Civil war? Perhaps.
(Disclaimer: Your bleak Palestinian future not to be confused with your bleak Palestinian past.)
Comment by the talking dog —
January 29, 2006 @ 7:49 pm
Hamas is going to moderate; or its leaders are going to find themselves… what’s that word… ah yes. Dead. Killed, by one side, or the other, but deciding to be the new tough guy in the toughest neighborhood in town is not exactly the career move for those planning on being around a while, unless they are incredibly nimble. And in the case of Hamas, that means (1) playing ball with the Israelis in actuality, if not rhetorically… which takes us to (2) they’d better keep up the tough talk rhetorically, lest they lose their own street creds and (3) they’d better cut Fatah in on the continuation of the graft (which they had better reduce but not eliminate) or… see above.
So, you see? There is an 800 lb. gorilla called Israel there to make sure that ultimately everyone behaves on its own terms. Exactly the sort of thing that is lacking in Iraq, where the gorilla weighs a lot less (and the guerrilla weighs more). Which is why there is every reason for optimism in Palestine. And no reason for optimism in Iraq.
Comment by Barry —
January 29, 2006 @ 8:15 pm
Except that the Israeli plan for the Palestinian people is slo-mo ethnic cleansing. ’Playing ball’ means that Israel slices up Palestine into tiny ghettos with no-go zones (as in shoot-to kill roads), takes any land and water that they want, and grinds Paelstinians into the mud.
Comment by Peter H —
January 29, 2006 @ 10:39 pm
The Talking Dog has it exactly right. It’s Israel that has the power to destroy Palestinian Authority, not the other way around. I’m less worried about the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations (which were going nowhere anyway) than I am about secular Palestinians.
Comment by Barry —
January 30, 2006 @ 9:45 am
Peter, Israel already killed the PA; Arafat was brought in when Israel needed somebody to help run the place, after the (home-grown) Intifada’s had caused too much trouble. Then Israel made sure that Arafat couldn’t do jack.
And as I said above, the problem for Israel (and the Palestinians) is that Israel doesn’t want to really even conquer them; it wants to expel/kill them. When surrender merely means a slower death, surrender gets a bad name.
Comment by Jaybird —
January 30, 2006 @ 12:21 pm
If Israel wanted all of the Palestinians in Gaza to be ethnically cleansed, they’d only have to say the magic words: ”Egypt, want it back?”
It’d be empty of Palestinians within two years.
This would also have the benefit of the rest of the world not giving a shit because, hey, it’s not like the Je…, er, Israelis were doing it.
Comment by Barry —
January 30, 2006 @ 1:49 pm
Jaybird: ”This would also have the benefit of the rest of the world not giving a shit because, hey, it’s not like the Je…, er, Israelis were doing it. ”
Ah, yes, the accusations of anti-semitism.
Comment by Jaybird —
January 30, 2006 @ 6:19 pm
Not an accusation of anti-Semitism!
I should have used the word ”Zionist”.
That would allow for people to not automatically reach for their stock ”Some of my best friends are Jews! My stockbroker! My accountant! The guy I buy diamonds from! My tailor!” phrases.
Anyway, I prefer countries that have something like a free press and something like free speech and something like ”the right for homosexuals to walk around in broad daylight” to countries that don’t allow such things. Call it a personal preference.
This gets called ”bigotry” and ”Zionism” when we dance too close to the Middle East, though.
Comment by William Burns —
January 30, 2006 @ 8:13 pm
Yeah, it’s not like the fact that Palestinian society in the territories is deeply screwed up could be any responsibility of the people who have been ruling over them for the last forty years.
Comment by Jim Henley —
January 30, 2006 @ 8:21 pm
My rule of thumb: If Person A says ”Israel” and Person B says, ”You mean, the Jooooz! Neener Neener Neener!” *at most* Person A should spare the breath to say ”Fuck off, Person B” and get back to whatever he or she was saying in the first place.
But that’s more effort than the matter strictly *deserves*.
Comment by godoggo —
January 30, 2006 @ 10:05 pm
Nothing’s ever simple in Palestine, I think. It’s pretty clear that a major part of the reason for Hamas’s popularity is that they’re way less corrupt than Fatah and way better, even while out of power, at providing crucial services - the L.A. Times had an op-ed about this way back in July . I’d love to see a poll asking people’s reasons for voting the way they did.
Comment by godoggo —
January 30, 2006 @ 10:21 pm
BTW, I just googled the author of that old Times article (which is really interesting!!!). His name’s Clayton Swisher, and he wrote a book called ”The Truth About Camp David”. I found one (not nearly as interesting..) quote from him in reaction to the elections: ”We in the West are going to have to stop looking at Hamas as if they’re al Qaeda or the Taliban: They’re not…We’ll have to deal with a group that is authentic of the Palestinian street…We have to come to terms with this.”
Comment by Jim Henley —
January 30, 2006 @ 10:24 pm
Eh. Just because Hamas is ”authentic” don’t mean I have to like ’em.
Comment by godoggo —
January 30, 2006 @ 10:31 pm
Like I said, the old article was more interesting. The further googling was for my own benefit, really.
Comment by godoggo —
January 30, 2006 @ 10:41 pm
…and it occurs to me that he had a ”really interesting!) online debate with Benny Morris in NYbooks a while back. Sorry for using your comments to think aloud. It won’t be a habit, promise.
Comment by godoggo —
January 30, 2006 @ 10:50 pm
…um…different dude…sigh…
Comment by Barry —
January 31, 2006 @ 7:52 am
Jim:
”My rule of thumb: If Person A says ”Israel” and Person B says, ”You mean, the Jooooz! Neener Neener Neener!” *at most* Person A should spare the breath to say ”Fuck off, Person B” and get back to whatever he or she was saying in the first place.”
Thanks, Jim.
That was my first thought, but I wanted to be polite in your site.
Comment by Jaybird —
January 31, 2006 @ 9:54 am
To be perfectly honest, I thought that my original post was far more anti-Egyptian than anti-Israel-Basher.
I think that if Israel ”gave” Gaza back to Egypt, the Palestinians would be cleansed in a fairly straightforward, all-business way.
I also suspect that those who shriek about Israel cleansing in the West Bank will keep shrieking about Israel cleansing in the West Bank.
You can’t hold arabs to Israeli levels of behavior, you know. Israelis don’t even meet them!
Comment by M. Tupharsin —
January 31, 2006 @ 12:07 pm
Had a dream last night. Went like this:
1) America announces to Israel that the game is up…that any further American ”aid” to Israel is contingent on Israel reverting to its 1967 borders.
2) America announces that it will henceforth guarantee Israel’s security and its borders (the 1967 ones, that is).
3) America announces that it will henceforth guarantee Syria’s and Jordan’s and Egypt’s borders (1967, that is) and security. Ditto Palestinian territory.
4) America announces that it will henceforth play an absolutely straight bat in the Middle East. Which, amongst other things, means ”matching funds” - dollar for dollar - in terms of ”aid” to the two semitic peoples in the area.
5) America announces a ”Marshall Plan” compensation/reparation scheme for all peoples - Palestinians, Iraqi Jews, etc. - dispossessed and displaced by 1948 and its immediate aftermath
6) Bush is lionized the length and breadth of the Islamic world (and almost everywhere else)…prior to accepting his Nobel Prize (the which ceremony is the curtain raiser on his apotheosis).
7) The two most talented peoples in the Middle East - the Israelis and their Palestinian brethren - get on with building a shared if ”semi-detached” civilisation that is the envy of the world.
8) Unable to recruit, Al-qaida goes belly up.