Fatah: Hamas Wins Palestinian Elections

Officials in the ruling Fatah Party said Thursday that Hamas captured a majority of seats in Palestinian legislative elections, shortly after the militant group claimed victory.

The Fatah officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they expected Hamas to win about 70 seats, which would give the Islamists a majority in the 132-seat parliament. They spoke on condition of anonymity because counting in some districts was continuing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060126/ap_on_re_mi_ea/palestinians_election_25&printer=1


EDIT: Updated Link

The rise of Hamas: A blessing in disguise?


Uri Dromi International Herald Tribune

FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2006



JERUSALEM Presumably the Palestinian elections are good news to those who believe that the only way to bring peace to the Middle East is by democratizing it. The United States, waving the flag of the "Broader Middle East," has been arduously trying to promote democracy in the region.  
In its haste to see Arabs going to the ballots, however, the Bush administration has been turning a blind eye to the most obvious flaw in these elections, namely the participation of Hamas, an organization that has vowed to destroy Israel by terror.  
So now the elections are over, and Hamas has emerged with a stunning victory. What will America do next? Insist that Hamas stays out of future Palestinian governments unless it revokes its charter and disarms? Hamas spokesmen have already dismissed that possibility. In that case, will the United States sever relations with the Palestinian Authority, as the U.S. Senate has warned? That would be perceived by the Palestinians - and, indeed, by many others in the Middle East - as another example of how America is coercing the Arabs to succumb to its will. First America allows Hamas to run for elections, and when it wins, America says "Oops, sorry, I didn't mean you." Sounds pretty much like the business with Iraq: First you act, then you think. 
Israel, in the meantime, has carefully prepared itself for any contingency. The acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who will probably lead Israel after the next elections, said in his first public speech on Tuesday that Israel prefers a negotiated settlement, but it has more cards up its sleeve - referring, probably, to more unilateral actions.  
Olmert stated, however, that the only viable avenue for negotiations was the stalled road map, and insisted that the prerequisites for jump-starting the peace process according to the road map - disarming all terror groups, Hamas included, and enforcing one law in the Palestinian Authority - be fully implemented. With Hamas vindicated by the elections as the authentic representative of at least half of the Palestinians, that might turn out to be impossible.  
A mess, then? Maybe, but the participation of Hamas in the elections might prove to be a blessing in disguise. It will force the Palestinians to make a serious choice once and for all: Either they conform with democratic norms, by which societies engage peacefully in the political game, both internally and externally, or they prefer the old, Lebanese type of politics, composed of parties that run for Parliament but also deal with terror and keep armed militias on the side, just in case.  
In the first case, the Palestinians will gain the sympathy and the assistance of all, mainly of Israel. But if they choose the second option, the world may wash its hands of them and declare them a failed state. 
Come to think of it, I am glad that Hamas won the elections. Things might now become much clearer. There will be no whitewashing, no Arafat-style double-talk, or endless Abbas impotence. It's better to deal with a pure enemy: Fight him ruthlessly while he is your enemy, and sit down and talk to him when he is genuinely willing to cut a deal. History has seen such things happen. 
(Uri Dromi is the director of international outreach at the Israel Democracy Institute, Jerusalem.) 

>I have no sympathy with the Israeli position. If they had not reneged on Madrid Oslo Taba talks, i.e negotiated in good faith with Arafat and Fatah, they wouldn't have undermined them and ended up with Hamas.

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

>I have no sympathy with the Israeli position. If they had not reneged on Madrid Oslo Taba talks, i.e negotiated in good faith with Arafat and Fatah, they wouldn't have undermined them and ended up with Hamas.

I don't think Israel is in a bad position where they would need sympathy.

However, I don't think it is fair to say Israel didn't negotiate in good faith.

And I don't see how they could renege on anything, since an agreement was never reached for them to renege on.

>The Oslo II (Taba) agreement,

I think this is likely a positive, though maybe not for the reason spelled out in the articles above.
...

While choosing their charities, Hamas has also been able to bitterly criticise the ruling parties' inability to take care of the really important issues--jobs, infrastructure.... Now, Hamas will be held responsible for all of it. They have grossly miscalculated. They thought they just recieved power. They'll soon look on the day they won the election, as they day their power began to erode.

Additionally, now we aren't dealing with a terrorist organization. We're dealing with a state. If they had any sense, they wouldn't have revealed themselves as an entity that can be punished like a state. They should have kept hiding under their terrorist camouflage.

They're screwed.

JERUSALEM, Jan. 27 — The overwhelming victory of Hamas in Wednesday's Palestinian legislative elections has made only more pressing the financial crisis of the Palestinian Authority, which has a deficit of $69 million for January, with little prospect for finding the money from Western countries shaken by the rise of an armed terrorist group to power, Palestinian officials and Western diplomats said today.

Of the many questions that the Hamas victory presents, the need for money to pay basic bills and salaries to Palestinians is the most pressing. It will be an urgent question when the members of the quartet — the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations — meet Monday in London to discuss the Palestinian vote.

In Davos, Switzerland, the quartet's envoy to the Middle East, James D. Wolfensohn, said today: "The crunch time is next week. The Palestinians are basically bankrupt." Mr. Wolfensohn said there was not enough money to pay the salaries of 135,000 Palestinian civil servants, including some 58,000 members of the security forces. "If you do not have the money to pay 135,000 Palestinians," he said, "you're going to have chaos."

Because Hamas has not yet formed a government, Mr. Abbas has asked for American help to try to convince the Persian Gulf countries to provide more aid now, and to ensure that Israel delivers the $40 million to $50 million owed to the Palestinian Authority from tax and customs receipts, which Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians.

Israel has made it clear that it will not deal with a Palestinian Authority run by Hamas, with acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government issuing a statement on Thursday saying that Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government including any members "of an armed terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel."
...
It has also called into serious doubt the likelihood that the United States and the European Union will continue to aid a Hamas-led or -dominated Palestinian Authority. Certainly, direct payments would be banned by American law, and many European countries have said they will not continue to aid the Palestinian Authority until Hamas agrees to recognize Israel and disavow violence — which Hamas has said it will never do.

GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas and Fatah gunmen exchanged fire in the Gaza Strip on Friday, the first such gun battle since the Islamic militant group crushed the long-dominant Palestinian faction in a parliamentary election, witnesses said.

Three people were wounded in the clash near the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, because the witnesses said Hamas gunmen were angered with a sermon given by a Fatah-appointed preacher at Friday prayers.

After the results of Wednesday's vote were announced, Hamas called for immediate talks among factions to discuss formation of a new government. But leaders of Abbas's long-dominant Fatah party said they wanted no part in such a coalition.

Hamas's triumph in winning 76 seats in the 132-member Palestinian parliament against 43 for Fatah was widely seen as a political earthquake in the Middle East, triggered in part by voter disenchantment with corruption.