U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's statement on the Hamas election victory in Palestine: "I've asked why nobody saw it coming. It does say something about us not having a good enough pulse."
This is not about having, or not having, a good enough pulse. It's about the consequences of the last decade of Israeli and American policies toward the Palestinians in general, and Islamist resistance movements in particular. This is not a time to play dumb, feign surprise, or persist in simplistic and counterproductive policies that will only further strengthen the forces of military resistance against the Israeli occupation, as well as wider Arab-Islamic political resistance against America's blatantly pro-Israeli policies in the region.
To add a new dose of American perplexity and wonderment now to several existing layers of mistaken and grossly imbalanced policies on Arab-Israeli peace-making will be of no help to anyone. If Washington's initial reaction is bewilderment at why it did not see this coming, and a reaffirmation of its policy of placing Israeli security above Palestinian security, then we are all in far more serious trouble than we can imagine. What is required now is a combination of honesty, independent analysis and composure that have long been missing in Washington's policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Though the Hamas victory was surprising for its magnitude, it was no surprise otherwise - because it was the sixth consecutive strong showing by Islamist groups running in political elections in the Middle East in the past year. One after the other since last spring, we have witnessed Hamas victories in municipal elections, Hizbullah's strong showing in the Lebanese parliamentary election, the presidential victory of populist hard-line neo-Khomeinist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood's big wins in the Egyptian parliamentary elections, the victory of Shiite Islamists in Iraqi parliamentary elections, and now Hamas' triumph in Palestine.
If the U.S. government, with all its capacity to collect and interpret information, did not see Hamas doing very well in the Palestinian election in the wake of these other Islamist victories, then it is either willfully blind or totally incompetent - and neither is a very comforting thought.
The domestic and war- and-peace-making implications of the Hamas victory would appear to be rather clear. The movement was elected to throw out the incompetent, increasingly corrupt and aloof Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, and to try and restore a sense of order and decency in Palestinian governance and life. Its victory patently was not a popular Palestinian mandate to establish an Islamic state, revive the Caliphate, apply Islamic law, or wipe out Israel. The hysterical spin-doctoring and obfuscation coming out of some circles in Washington and Israel to this effect are just that - hysterical scare-mongering.
The fact is, we do not know how Hamas will use its newfound political power. It is, however, the most legitimate political leadership in the Arab world, because it is the only one to be voted in through a free and fair election monitored by the international community. Whether it will be an effective leadership, or a humane, fair and tolerant one, remains to be seen. It will have to make some important decisions in the coming weeks about how to apply its power, bearing in mind the desires of its constituency - the Palestinian people living in the West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem - to live a normal life, not a life of perpetual war, occupation or resistance.
The most interesting thing about the Hamas victory, in my mind, is its legitimacy, as the consequence of a free, fair and pluralistic democratic election. This raises a massive new challenge to the American leadership, which is where Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues in government should be overcoming their perplexity and replacing it with some strong doses of realism and rationality.
The choice facing the Bush administration is now very stark and simple: will its tradition of tilting toward the Israeli position triumph over its professed policy of promoting freedom and democracy in the Arab world? Put in more blunt terms: Does the U.S. favor Israeli rights over Arab rights? Or does it in fact see peace in the Middle East as a consequence of a fair approach that judges Israeli and Palestinian rights as enjoying the same weight and priority?
The right thing to do now is to explore how to take advantage of the fact that we have a legitimate, democratically elected Palestinian leadership. The last two times this happened in recent years - the presidential elections of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas - Israel and the U.S. responded by giving primary attention to Israeli demands, and making Palestinian concerns secondary. That policy has been a colossal failure, and has resulted in part in spurring Islamist victories throughout the region.
If the Hamas victory is taken into account and if the equivalent can be clichéd in other parts of the world like Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, India and other countries which is ridden with the Terrorist Infestation then it will eradicate the problems of the growing terror attacks and bringing them into the mainstream will let them face the real problems faced by the government and the society. This kind of transformation will be helpful in bringing a tide of change and this will solve the problem of Terrorism for once and all and the political situations will improve drastically. And this will be the victory of humanity and the UN.
Hope that the Hamas victory is for the good will of the whole world and the police states like US and Britain are caught off guard with their devilish plans to inherit the earth and their divide and rule policy never works!!!
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