Hamas landslide

Sometimes, if you really pay attention, while sticking your fingers in your ears and humming "Loco Mosquito" while the WaPo and NY Times do their work,... things start to make sense.

Mahmoud Abbas’ whole gamble since he was elected president in January 2005 was that a moderate position would kickstart the peace process. That didn’t happen. Ariel Sharon, having said for so long that Yasser Arafat was an obstacle to peace, offered nothing to his successor. With the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza came further expansion of settlements and faster building of the separation wall, regardless of condemnation by the international court at The Hague. That was the whole point of the withdrawal. The checkpoints and restrictions have continued to make daily life impossible for Palestinians, the number of political prisoners increased to several thousand and so on.

It is therefore strange to hear US and European leaders pondering how to “continue the peace process”. But no process existed before the elections: it had stopped with Sharon’s election.

The Palestinians voted for Hamas not because they supported its founding programme pledged to destroy Israel, nor because they wanted to see a resumption of suicide attacks (on the contrary, recent opinion polls show they want peace and negotiation), but because they wanted to end disastrous PA rule. It is to be hoped that the cataclysm of 25 January will compel the Palestinian body politic to renew itself and devise a more effective strategy towards the occupation.