Election of Hamas Presents New Opportunity

Nov. 22, 2006 — -- Against all odds, the Jan. 25, 2006 electoral victory of Hamas opened the door to the possibility of a new dynamic in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Several years of deterioration in the relationship between the parties and the failure of the Fatah leadership had enabled the rise of the Islamist movement, whose levels of popular support had been steadily on the upswing.

In an internationally monitored multiparty contest, to which it fielded teachers, professors, pharmacists and businessmen, including a number of women, Hamas won 58 percent of the parliament (74 out of 100 and 32 seats), amounting to 45 percent of the popular vote.

Here, now, was a strong, democratically elected, well-organized political actor commanding internal discipline and displaying enough cohesiveness to deliver on its decisions.

Ten months later, this potential has not been tapped.

To the contrary, Israel, the United States, and the European Union have adopted a counterproductive course of action.

In opting to curtail Hamas' freedom of action, and in effect creating the conditions for its failure in office, they pursued shortsighted policies that are ensuring perpetuation of the conflict's deadlock, more misery for the Palestinians, and continued insecurity for the Israelis.

Such cecity is also contradicting the principles of democracy, which these countries are invoking to pressure the legitimate Hamas government.

With a view to force Hamas to their threefold demand -- recognizing Israel, forswearing violence, and endorsing pre-existing Israeli-Palestinian agreements -- the United States, the European Union and Israel have decreed and implemented a crippling political, economic and financial embargo that has resulted in a new humanitarian crisis, an embryonic civil war, riots due to unpaid salaries (to 160,000 Palestinian Authority employees and 80,000 teachers and health workers), the closure of about 100 businesses that moved to neighboring Egypt and Jordan, and a dramatic rise in criminality, racketeering, and kidnapping.

Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou is the associate director of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard University. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the institution with which he is affiliated. This essay is part of a debate series being sponsored by IQ2 US, in New York on Nov. 29, 2006. For more information, visitwww.iq2us.org