Terrorists in the State House

Here's a pretty good analysis of the Hamas victory in yesterday's Palestinian elections. Juan Cole is not exactly Israel's friend, and I disagree heartily with some of his assertions in this piece. There's no evidence I'm aware of, for instance, that Israel intends to unilaterally withdraw from West Bank territory while keeping large blocks of settlments there, although I'm sure they do intend to maintain control of united Jerusalem - it's Israel's eternal capital and always has been. Nevertheless, Cole's major points about George Bush's America, and about Sharon's Israel, seem quite well-taken.

So I don't have much to add regarding the new power of Hamas. I suspect that the Palestinian people did indeed vote for that party because Fatah is a corrupt gang of thieves and the voters had had enough. I'd like to believe, as I've been told, that a great many Palestinian Arabs could not possibly care less about destroying Israel, for all the "leadership's" rhetoric. And I suspect that, once Hamas takes power, with or without Fatah, they'll be so busy cleaning up they won't have time to blow up Jews any more than they have been (which is bad enough, but not as bad as it could be).

All in all, I'm not exactly happy about Hamas, but I'm going to keep my fingers crossed real hard.

Benshlomo says, Hope is most powerful when all seems lost.