The long awaited civil war between Fatah and Hamas began and
ended last week and the result was a clear victory for the latter
and its secession from the union. After a meager two days of
fighting the Ezz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades had taken control of
the entire Strip with its 1.5 million residents. Yet Palestinian
Authority President Mahmud Abbas and Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert both claimed to be optimistic about the outcome of the coup
d’etat. “We have a new opportunity in the last few days that we
haven’t had in a long time,” Olmert told incredulous reporters.
In truth Fatah hasn’t had a reason to be optimistic in years. It
is still smarting from the drubbing it took in the 2006
parliamentary elections. In January 2006 the Washington
Post reported that “the election results stunned U.S. and
Israeli officials, who have repeatedly stated that they would not
work with a Palestinian Authority that included Hamas, which both
countries and the European Union have designated as a terrorist
organization.”
Why Washington and Tel Aviv should have been “stunned” I cannot
say. Hamas had dominated the previous year’s municipal elections,
and Hamas demagogues had evident mass appeal, which in Gaza can
best be gained by detonating oneself on a bus crowded with
Israelis. (The “official” explanation for the Hamas victory was its
network of social welfare programs, contrasted with Fatah’s
reputation for corruption.) In fact Hamas succeeded in framing the
election in such a way that a vote for Hamas was a vote for the
destruction of Israel. While a vote for the secular Fatah party was
a ballot for the peace process, i.e., peace with the Zionists.
Despite Israeli demands to stop the elections, the U.S. shrugged
off its ally’s concerns, deciding that free and democratic
elections were paramount. Even after the disastrous results
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice couldn’t bring herself to admit
that rushing toward elections had been a half-baked idea. “The
Palestinian people clearly voted for a change,” she observed,
adding, “The United States trusts the process and trusts
democracy,” while ignoring the obvious lesson — that Palestinian
voters had overwhelmingly rejected peace.
Abbas had had no such illusions. He knew his party was in for a
licking, yet he chose to delude himself that it would be easier to
temper Hamas if it were part of the government. Many in the Bush
administration agreed. Instead the Islamists’ victory began a
year-and-a-half feud that culminated with last week’s decisive
military victory for Hamas.
OF COURSE, THE U.S. HAD no choice but to back elections. Democracy
promotion and immediate free elections has been its guiding
principle since 9/11, despite several dubious outcomes. It seems
218 years of U.S. election history have been lost on the Bush
administration. After all it wasn’t until 175 years after the first
presidential election that all U.S. citizens were able to vote.
(America didn’t have completely free and democratic elections until
the mid-1960s, as many Southern states used legal devices such as
literacy tests and poll taxes to exclude blacks from voting.) EU
member Liechtenstein did not give women the vote until 1984.
Portugal didn’t lift higher education restrictions on women voters
until 1976. And that bastion of liberty Switzerland didn’t allow
women to vote until 1971. Yet the U.S. expects beleaguered
territories like the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, crawling with
fanatics, jihadists, fundamentalists, and suicide bombers, and with
no history of democracy to speak of, to hold free and democratic
elections overnight.
The rush toward free elections has almost never worked — with
perhaps the exception of South Africa. Though it is only a matter
of time before a racist, corrupt demagogue (and accused rapist)
like the ANC’s Jacob Zuma — whose theme song includes the line,
“Bring me my machine gun” — gains power there too.
As the conflict escalated this week Abbas again reached for Dr.
Cure-all’s Magic Elixir, saying Hamas will not be allowed to rejoin
the “Palestinian family” until it agrees to “new elections,” while
Mustafa Barghouti, former information minister in the Palestinian
unity government, told the Washington Post that we are now
seeing “the gradual dissolution of the Palestinian Authority. The
only way to avoid this is to hold new national elections.”
This week the Bush Administration promised to support the Abbas
government with food, cash, guns, silk stockings, and what all, but
especially with new elections. Perhaps for the next round the CIA
can lock Jimmy Carter away in a closet somewhere and rig the
elections, but that’s unlikely. A more likely outcome is another
sweeping victory for Hamas.
