Former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky has for years been stating that Palestinian democracy is a necessary precondition for peace to take hold in the region, and yesterday’s elections were supposed to be the harbinger of a situation in which Israel could resume negotiations with a Palestinian government intent on achieving peace rather than murdering more Israelis.
Sadly, this is not to be. While the election did take place, and while the voting was orderly and peaceful, the apparent victors in the election were Hamas – an organization recognized around the world as terrorist, and one whose stated aim, reaffirmed before, during and after the voting, is the complete destruction of Israel and Arab control over the entire Holy Land.
World leaders from former US president Jimmy Carter to incoming Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to some European leaders, and even US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have stated that they won’t deal with the Palestinians under the leadership of Hamas, and that these elections present more problems than solutions.
Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has not publicly reacted to the election results yet, but most Israeli observers believe that the results will cause significant problems for him as well, since they will make the possibility of fruitful negotiations that much less likely. But most Israeli leaders agree that Israel will not be able to achieve any more with Hamas in charge than they could in the past decade.
Indeed these elections do cause a conundrum for western political leaders. It is commonly understood that democracies do not fight wars against each other. Democratic traditions preclude the use of force in settling conflicts, and democratic norms ensure that citizens are free to pursue their own livelihoods and express their own opinions without fear of repressive consequences. But the underpinning of democracy is that the citizens are free to elect representatives who will govern their society. That election took place in the Palestinian-controlled areas yesterday, yet the hopes of western leaders that the other benefits of democracy will take root are not being expressed by those leaders.
The Palestinian elections pose a serious question for all champions of democracy around the world. How can democracies deal with a terrorist organization – the diametric opposite of democratic leadership – which has been democratically elected to lead Palestinian society?
Stephen Harper expressed this conundrum very succinctly in a meeting he held during the Canadian election campaign with the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy: “On a fundamental level, the advocacy of terrorism and the establishment of stable democratic institutions are... incompatible,” he said. “If institutions committed to terrorism are playing a role in the Palestinian state, whether elected or not, that’s an indication to me that the road to democracy has not been traveled very far.”
This conundrum is a question no democratic leader – in Israel or otherwise – has been able to answer, because every one of them is operating with a serious case of cognitive dissonance. Western leaders, including those in Israel, want so badly for there to be peace in the Middle East, that they are prepared to create peace-seeking Palestinians where there are none. Even Harper, who perhaps has greater moral clarity than most other leaders on this issue, had to use the word “if” in his second sentence.
The basic fallacy at the root of the conundrum posed by the Palestinian elections is that these elections represent a choice between clear alternatives. But if the past 12 years has taught the world anything, it is that there is no difference between the Fatah group founded by Yasser Arafat, which controlled the Palestinian Authority until now, and Hamas. Each organization has carried out hundreds of terrorist attacks just in the past 5 years, and they have often cooperated in the logistics and planning of such attacks.
What the Palestinian elections represented was an opportunity for voters to choose which group of terrorists they would rather have as their leadership – one that had proven itself corrupt and unwilling to allow society to progress, or one that carries out even more bloody terrorist attacks while also creating a social service network for those most oppressed by their opponents’ corruption.
From this perspective, it is not at all surprising how the election turned out. What is surprising – or rather utterly depressing – is that it caught everyone by surprise.
Perhaps this surprise could have been avoided if the rampant terrorism that is the product of the Oslo process had been fought with all means and defeated. But, alas, no one has been prepared to do that, not Israel and not anyone else. Palestinian society, such as it is, has not been convinced that terrorism is wrong, or that it will prove to be their downfall. If anything, the concessions and withdrawals made by Israel, and the pressure brought upon Israel by other western countries to make yet more withdrawals, proves the opposite – that terrorism is succeeding.
The result is that the Palestinian elections, as democratic as they were, did not feature any peace-driven candidates prepared to recognize Israel as a legitimate state with legitimate rights and needs. If terrorism succeeds with as much ease as it has recently done, then why not continue? Why not elect the most brazen terrorist organization to lead their society. Why not elect someone who pledges to continue the war until it is won? Why not elect Hamas?
The answer to these questions must be supplied by democratic states, first and foremost by Israel. Until now, the only answer they have provided is one that has led to more terrorism, and now to the Hamas victory. The conundrum posed by this election has a solution which seems pretty obvious: in the War on Terrorism, terrorism is winning.
Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.
