Lets call it the lean, green, mean machine, the Hamas party that has now assumed leadership of the Palestinian people. I think the victory of Hamas in the recent elections was a good thing. The Fatah party, on whom the Oslo Accords and the Road map to Peace depended, was the political version of a potato sorter in a french fry factory. Only instead of sorting large potatoes from small ones, it sorted out large and small bundles of cash floating in from Europe and the U.S. Small bundles went to buy loyalty from small fry. If you knew someone who knew someone who was high enough in Fatah to get Arafat's ear, you could get your daughters cleft palate operated on. Large bundles went to pay off bigger fry, and of course to pad nest eggs in foreign countries. Whatever the virtues of that system, it had no mechanisms or culture suitable for building a Palestinian state with which one could actually negotiate. Besides, Fatah is in fact no less committed to terror and the destruction of Israel than Hamas is.
What about Hamas? Mark Steyn, writing in the Chciago Sun-Times, has this delicious example:
Mariam Farahat, a mother of three, was elected in Gaza. She used to be a mother of six but three of her sons self-detonated on suicide missions against Israel. She's a household name to Palestinians, known as Um Nidal -- Mother of the Struggle -- and, at the rate she's getting through her kids, the Struggle's all she'll be Mother of. She's famous for a Hamas recruitment video in which she shows her 17-year-old son how to kill Israelis and then tells him not to come back. It's the Hamas version of 42nd Street: You're going out there a youngster but you've got to come back in small pieces.
Well, isn't that worse than mere corruption? No. Steyn explains why.
So what happens now? Either Hamas forms a government and decides that operating highway departments and sewer systems is what it really wants to do with itself. Or, like Arafat, it figures that it has no interest in government except as a useful front for terrorist operations. If it's the former, all well and good: Many first-rate terror organizations have managed to convert themselves to third-rate national-liberation governments. But, if it's the latter, that too is useful: Hamas is the honest expression of the will of the Palestinian electorate, and the cold hard truth of that is something Europeans and Americans will find hard to avoid.
In fact it might be both. Hamas might be really effective in building a real government in Gaza, and still regard that government primarily as a vehicle for terrorism. But at least one knows with whom one is dealing, or who one is lobbing missiles at. States are easier to get at than shadowy factions. And Hamas may suddenly discover that it has something to loose. That's a basis for negotiations.
One small sign of promise, though I wouldn't put much stock in it, is that there is suddenly a lot of talk about cutting off the flow of money to the Palestinian leadership. Up until now we have been paying the Palestinians to do exactly what we don't want them to do: make war. The more bombers then sent into Israel, the more people said: we have got to cure the underlying poverty by sending them more cash. But all we were buying was the pretense of partnership. Maybe someone will seriously contemplate cutting off the milk of kindness until Hamas reciprocates. But I wouldn't hold my breath for that. If the Palestinians are caught up in a cycle of violence and corruption, the West is caught up in a cycle of cash payments for empty words. Perhaps a twelve step program is in order.
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