Hamas suspended democracy in Gaza, where they rule. I do not understand there to be any controversy about this.
When did they suspend democracy in Gaza? Before or after Fatah attempted a coup against them?
Does it matter?
The people of the Palestinian territories have suffered large-scale ethnic cleansing, a brutal 40 year military occupation that is ongoing in the West bank and has recently been changed to military encirclement in Gaza, with a decades-long ongoing level of armed conflict between various Palestinian groups and Israel. The fact of the matter is that military occupation, armed conflict etc. is generally a poor basis on which to establish a liberal democratic political order. Simply holding elections isn’t really the same thing as democracy and it’s fair to say that the situation in the Palestinian territories has never resembled anything approaching a democracy.
So when Hamas win an election and then are prevented by the other main Palestinian armed group from taking control of the organs of government, are ostracised by the United States, EU etc. and have the US back an attempted coup by the armed group which continues to illegally hold power in the West Bank then I find it hard to see “Hamas suspended democracy after the election” as an accurate description of what actually happened. A much more accurate description of events would be that after Hamas won the election America, the EU etc. suspended what little ongoing transition of the Palestinian territories into something resembling a democratic state that was occurring.
Every gang of thugs in power has a good excuse not to open up to democacy. Having an excuse doesn’t change the facts.
What, I wonder, excuses the fact that Hamas is even now beating up any Palestinians in Gaza that dare, as other arabs throughout the ME are doing, to publicly agitate?
Dated March 19 this year:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/03/19/gaza-stop-suppressing-peaceful-protests
Face it, Hamas are a bunch of thugs who well deserve to be turfed from power.
I don’t happen to think the facts include the Palestinian territories as a democratic state or that Hamas are markedly less democratic than Fatah.
Fatah do exactly the same thing with demonstrations in the West Bank :
Demonstrations in support of the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia were broken up by Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank and Hamas police in Gaza, with some protesters arrested and beaten, an indicator of concern that the protests could turn against the authorities. The “Day of Rage” on Feb. 25, initially called by Fatah, was apparently called off for the same reason.
So surely Fatah should be turfed out of power too, especially since the Palestinian people actually voted them out five years ago?
Certainly. Haven’t I said repeatedly that they were no better?
The Palestinians’ main problem all along has been their leadership, both Fatah and Hamas. With better leadership, they could have dealt with the Israelis years ago, and had their own state by now.
Fatah and Hamas are like the Kang and Kodos of Palestine.
Well yes, you were claiming that rule under Fatah was democratic until Hamas somehow suspended democracy.
While they’re under occupation and facing a regime that aren’t interested in making any serious peace offer (as the recent Palestine papers showed) there’s never going to be a moderate regime in charge. Because they’re not facing a moderate situation or able to negotiate with a moderate Israeli regime.
No I wasn’t.
There is no point in continuing this if you misrepresent what I say.
You said Hamas “suspended democracy” when they won the election, which would indicate that you thought that the pre-election government, Fatah, was a fountain of peeance and freeance before those despicable Hamas guys “seized power” by being democratically elected.
Don’t blame me! I voted for Nicolae Carpathia!
Standard Fact Checking: what we actually saw from the Palestine Papers was that negotiations had almost reached Final Status solutions, some of which were still being negotiated before the PA unilaterally suspended negotiations.
Standard Fact Checking: Hamas, a genocidal rejectionist organization which calls for the ethnic cleansing of Israel, was marginalized by the international community and sanctions were imposed until they accepted three conditions: recognition of Israel, acceptance of and cessation of repudiation of previous peace agreements reached with Israel (see silliness above about regimes not interested in peace offers), and denouncing violence. They did not accept these conditions.
At the end of 2006,in a move of questionable constitutionality, Abbas called for early elections. Hamas, in turn, characterized a call for elections as a coup. (No, really). This led tothe Palestinian civil war of 2007, and ended with Hamas winning the murder-competition and ousting Fatah from Gaza. Since then, Hamas has brutally repressed criticism and dissent from its rule of Gaza.
Malthus’ statement that Hamas has suspended democracy in Gaza is factually accurate.
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I hope you’re not just trying to pick a fight with me here. After all this doesn’t have a lot to do with the long term success of Middle Eastern revolutions.
What we saw from the Palestine papers was that the PA was willing to give Israel far more than anybody thought possible, almost all of jeruslame, giving up the right of return etc. and that israel wasn’t interested as they’re playing for all the marbles.
Hamas have said that they won’t recognise israel until Israel recognise a palestinian nation with explicit borders. They won’t end the violence until Israel ends the occupation, repression etc. I think that’s a fair enough position for them to have.
Abbas and the PA refused to vacate power when they lost the election to Hamas and tried to organise a do-over election which Hamas rightly rejected as an attempt to set an election/result under their terms. When it became clear that Hamas weren’t going to agree to a rigged election five minutes after they’d won an actual democratic one a wing of Fatah backed by the US then attempted a coup against Hamas in Gaza and failed miserably. The Fatah guys eventually had to blow a hole in the wall separating Gaza from Israel and fled into Israel.
Fact Checking: What actually happened is that certain offers were made on Final Status issues, including the status of refugees, and negotiations were ongoing. Shortly thereafter, Abbas unilaterally suspended negotiations.
Fact Checking: Hamas’ covenant endorses genocide and they have explicitly said they repudiate all peace agreements with Israel and still refer to Israel as"the Zionist entity" and claim that it is illegitimate as a state. Haniyeh was recently quite clear on the issue, stating "We will never, we will never, we will never recognize Israel.”
One wonders if, perhaps, he was trying to emphasize a point.
I have a hard time believing that people honestly have a different recollection of these events than this synopsis.
I think if we had left them to work it out on their own and allowed Hamas to lead it would be a very different Gaza and West Bank than the one we have today.
It’s this recollection and belief that makes me wish more than anything that we keep our collective noses out of whatever elections occur in these countries. Our best policy is to keep our hands off and watch. Any manipulation of the political system for what we perceive to be our benefit will lead to a collapse of these states into tyranny.
Why? That’s not what actually happened.
Rather than refusing to yield, Fatah’s prime minister pretty much immediately offered to resign. Violence was sporadic and came from both Hamas and Fatah. Talks about forming a unity government repeatedly broke down, often becauseFatah wanted to negotiate with Israel and wanted a peaceful resolution and Hamas repudiated all past peace agreements with Israeal and endorsed violencel. Abbas called for fresh elections, a move which had debatable legitimacy under Palestinian law. Hamas’ response was to call it a coup. After Hamas murdered many of Fatah’s personnel in Gaza, Abbas dissolved the unity government and declared a state of emergency.
The situation was anything but as cut and dry as Dick is presenting it:
[
The circumstances of Fatah members leaving also were not what Dick claims.
Some, for instance, were allowed to walk through Israeli checkpoints. Some fled to Egypt. 97 senior members of Fatah fled on a fishing boat into the Mediterranean.
And so on.
Well, we can be reasonably sure that the Gaza War would have been the Gaza and the West Bank war, at least.
A nitpick - the PA has a presidential system, much like the U.S., with separate elections for their President and Parliament. Hamas won the legislative elections - the mid-terms, so to speak - but did not win control over the executive branch of their government (as there were no presidential elections at the time). Fatah did not refuse to vacate power because they did not lose power.
Things broke down after that, with no parliament convening, and with Hamas taking executive control of Gaza. As both the subsequent presidential and parliamentary election dates have long since come and gone, it’s hard to say that either side has any democratic right be in office.
What actually happened was that the Palestinians made vast concessions on almost everything, concessions that would have caused outrage amongst the Palestinian people had they been made public, and Israel then bombed Gaza* so that Abbas couldn’t be seen to be negotiating with the Israelis while the Israelis were slaughtering Palestinian civilians and so withdrew from negotiations in protest at the slaughter. Israel have escalated and de escalated the violence over the years to suit their purposes and this was one occasion that it suited their purpose.
Although normally the pretexts to avoid/disrupt any negotiations are simple political ones. Over the past few years Israel have said that they won’t negotiate until the Palestinians remove their “terrorist infrastructure” while being aware that this is never a precondition in any successful peace settlements until the deal is done eg. Ireland. Then for a while when Fatah were factionalised due to Israeli arrests of key people Israel couldn’t negotiate with them because they were in a “state of anarchy”. Then Israel refused to negotiate with the palestinian prez because he somehow wasn’t representative and would only negotiate with the PA parliament. Then Hamas won a majority in the PA parliament and israel couldn’t negotiate with a government that contained Hamas.
Here’s what Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, peace be upon him, has to say about recognising the usurpers :
When Israel says that it will recognise Palestinian rights and will withdraw from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and grant the right of return, stop settlements and recognise the rights of the Palestinians to self-determination - only then will Hamas be ready to take a serious step.
Q: Let’s get this clear - you are saying there’s no problem with a two-state solution if Israel retreats, goes back to the boundaries that existed just before the 1967 borders?
**A:*If Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders and recognised the rights of the Palestinian people - including the right of those in the diaspora to return to their land and to East Jerusalem and to dismantle the settlements - Hamas can then state its position and possibly give a long-term truce with Israel, as Sheikh Yassin said.
This is a position that Hamas could take but only after Israel recognises the right of the Palestinians, to show and confirm its willingness to withdraw to the 1967 borders.
Going back to Ireland again and the concessions both sides made to start negotiations and the concessions made during them, things would never have progressed even to the negotiations stage had the Unionist side/British government been anywhere near as intransigent as the Israelis are. The bottom line is that Israel don’t want to negotiate, they want to continue colonising the entire West bank uninterrupted.
Your own cite shows that Hamas were willing to negotiate a power-sharing government and had actually come to an agreement with Abbas but the whole thing was scotched by the US and a Fatah faction leader called Mohammed Dahlan organising a coup against Hamas. The whole coup story is here, including quotes and evidence by neocon Likudnik nutjobs like David Wurmser and John Bolton :
*they had other reasons for bombing Gaza as well as the fact that it would end negotiations. And again, an Israel making a serious peace effort wouldn’t have bombed Gaza to start with.
Thanks for the links. I agree that there are some details that are in error. I also think those links speak to leaving the results of mid-east elections to their people. I am left wondering how much the sequence of events would have been altered if we had been more respectful of the Palestinians’ wishes for their representation.
Although it has many differences with the U.S. system, I see that now. I am still a little confused about the meaning of the March 29, 2006 event in the timeline posted by FinnAgain:
I can’t tell if it was a symbolic act or the government was up and running at that point.