Two earthquakes in Palestinian-Israeli relations have taken place one after the other. First was the end of the political career of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who was set to lead his newly created center-right Kadima Party to a sweeping victory in the March 2006 elections. Kadima’s creation marked the collapse of the extreme right coalition of hard-line nationalists and the settler movement that Sharon had earlier led which had dominated Israel politics and obstructed a settlement with the Palestinians for decades. By successfully dismantling the Gaza settlements, Sharon had broken the settlers' power and freed himself to pursue the peace settlement he wanted. However, he seemingly aimed to impose an inequitable one in which Israel would evacuate only the more isolated settlements while annexing to Israel Arab East Jerusalem and the big settlement blocs contiguous to Israel, all to be cut off from Palestine by the "separation wall." Sharon's successor, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, declared this to be the government's policy. Nor would there be any "right of return" for Palestinian refugees. This would leave a Palestinian "state" made up of disjointed bantustans utterly dependent on Israel for economic survival and without effective sovereignty.
Meanwhile, Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian president, successor to Arafat as head of the PLO, had gambled on Palestinian elections and lost. He had hoped to use the elections to rid himself of the corrupt older generation in his own ruling Fatah party while co-opting the Islamist opposition movement, Hamas, as a junior partner in the Palestinian Authority, thereby committing it to eschew violence and enabling him to pursue his strategy of negotiating peace with Israel. Instead, in the second "earthquake," Hamas won a resounding victory commanding 80 seats in the 132 seat Legislative Council with 60.6 % of the high voter turn out (75% of the eligible voters) and almost double the 43 seats of Fateh. What explains this?
Hamas had patiently built up its grassroots support, winning elections in student councils and municipalities, and constructing a dense network of schools and charities that alone made it possible for ordinary people to survive worsening economic conditions. Always, Hamas' political fortunes retreated when the peace process advanced and advanced when the peace process was failing. The PLO (and Fatah) had started to lose legitimacy when it assumed the responsibility under the Oslo accords to police its own people on Israel's behalf. The failure of Israel to abide by the Oslo accords and its relentless drive to implant more settlements on Palestinian land, spured, in response, suicide bombings and the al-Aqsa intifadah which in turn had led to the Israeli destruction of the Palestinian authority. Sharon was convinced the intifadah could be broken by massive repression--assassinating Palestinian militants, demolishing Palestinian homes, detention without trial, and stifling the Palestinian economy by innumerable closures and checkpoints. Unemployment in the Palestinian areas grew to around 25 per cent while over 40 per cent of Palestinians were forced below the poverty line. At the same time, the leaders of his Fatah party, seeing the situation as hopeless, seemed more concerned with corrupt self enrichment. Abbas stood for negotiations as the only way forward but could achieve little; on the other hand, Israel's withdrawal from Gaza was seen as validating the violent resistance waged by Hamas. Despite being the largest employer in the Occupied Territories and the party with international backing, Fateh was finally punished for its failures. The failure of the PA was far from wholly Fatah’s fault and, indeed, was in great part inevitable since Israel had seemed determined to weaken the Palestinian partner--the PA--it needed if it wanted a peace settlement. In essence, the election registered the Palestinians' rejection of Israel's attempt to deprive them of self-determination and to illegally expand into their land. The vicious circle of Israel expansion and Palestinain terrorism could only have been broken by effective international intervention but the Bush government enthrall to the Zionist lobby and dominated by pro-Israeli “neo-cons,” utterly failed to do so. Effectively, Israel and the US had empowered their nemesis, Hamas.
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