Friday, January 27, 2006

Good old democracy at work

As you probably are aware, the radical Islamic party, Hamas, has just won 76 of 132 parliamentary seats in the Palestinian government, giving them a majority rule. The opposition party's Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and his cabinet have resigned as a result.

What does this mean for the 'peace process' in the Middle East? Perhaps some clues can be found in these quotes from the Hamas Charter:
Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.

There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.
What does it mean that the majority of Palestinian voters approve of the annihilation of Israel as a state?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I believe the situation is more complicated than that. From what I've heard, the Hamas charter is sort of mistranslated and misinterpreted so I'm not sure that it literally means what most people say it means.

And, as far as the majority of the people supporting Hamas and, by extention, the destruction if Israel, I'm not sure that's quite right either. I think there are two factors to consider.

1. My understanding is that many people viewed Hamas as the only viable opposition to the current ruling party, which was viewed as corrupt and ineffective. In that sense, some of them may not have been voting *for* Hamas as they were voting *against* something else.

2. Because these are seats, kind of like our House of Representatives or the electorial college, it's perfectly possible that the voters opposed to Hamas were simply too concentrated in the same places. Rememebr, with that type of system, it's possible to gain a majority of seats without a majority of the popular vote. Similar to our presidental election in 2000.

Most of that is meaningless conjecture on my part, as I'm much too lazy and tired to do the acutal research. But I think it's possible to spin this a different way, if you want to.