Topic: Politics
As many of you know, I'm mostly on the Israeli side when it comes to discussing the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. I don't intend to elaborate for now on why this is. Instead I want to talk about a dilemma that it faces and why I think it could be about to make a mistake.
I refer to the announcement that it plans to prevent voting in East Jerusalem during January's Palestinian parliamentary elections.
http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=10414
In any normal situation, it would not be controversial to say that a country should never interfere in another country's elections. But in this instance, I can see their concern. Israel is worried that Hamas could achieve power and that does have consequences, because the Hamas charter declares that Israel should not exist. If taken to its logical conclusion, the election of Hamas should surely mean war.
Yet it's not all about war. As Hugh Miles reports in his book 'Al Jazeera' (page 72) "... most Palestinians do not support Hamas because it is violent: they support it because it is kind". And that's part of the problem. The Palestinian Authority is associated with "nepotism, flashiness and hordes of hangers-on" (same source). Hamas's leaders are considered more charitable, just and austere. It's truly tragic to see the more honest party being the more violent one. Imagine if the BNP were known for good works and charitable donations.
Faced with this dilemma, I still think that Israel's best bet is to let events take their course. If Hamas takes power, it will be faced with responsibilities for managing roads, hospitals and schools etc. If they chose to go to war then Israel, then Israel should have no difficulty in pointing out that it has the right to defend itself. But it's also possible that the burden of actual government leads to some moderation.
This point of view might surprise some readers, but it fits with my neo-con views. One of the biggest disasters of the last two decades was the decision to cancel the 1992 Algerian elections. Again the concern was that fundamentalists would take power. For me that isn't a problem, as long as the constitutional arrangements continue to exist by which the people could vote them out of office. Many expressed the view that this would not happen and that there would be 'One Man. One vote. Once'.
But that's being pessimistic and cancelling the election has proved to be the cure that was worse than the disease. Islamic extremism retains its appeal in part because it hasn't been tried (outside Iran and Afghanistan, where it proved massively unpopular after time). Fundamentalists can shout empty slogans like 'Islam in the answer' and never be disputed as long as they are kept out of power. Islamism must be given the chance to fail, democratically.
_ DY
at 10:40 PM GMT
