USA: Foreign Policy : Hamas win or sizable minority in upcoming Palestine vote will scuttle US support for PA

Forward magazine, a literate liberal Jewish magazine of analysis and opinion, seems to have scooped the news in the American newsmedia regarding possible responses to the elections for Parliament which will take place next week under the Palestinian Authority. The US says in that case Palestine will lose its American ally, as it cannot support Hamas the terrorist organization whose political wing is fiercely fiting the war of words against the Fatah Party. Forward:

U.S. officials have told P.A. representatives and other foreign diplomats that the White House is considering several possible responses to a Hamas victory. If Islamic militants win, U.S. officials have said, the Bush administration will reconsider America's relationship with the P.A. In any case, it will continue to refuse to deal with elected officials affiliated with Hamas. In addition, Bush administration officials have said that they probably will decrease American financial assistance to the P.A.

One Palestinian poll suggests that Hamas will take 40% of the vote.

No matter how the Palestinian vote turns out, one of the administration's immediate goals is to secure as much stability as possible in the Palestinian territories in the weeks leading up to Israel's general elections on March 28, Washington insiders said. The administration is concerned that internecine fighting among disgruntled Palestinian factions and militias after the elections might increase the chaos within Palestinian society and lead to increased terrorism against Israel.

Such violence, in addition to its destructive impact on Palestinian society, could drive Israeli voters to support Likud candidate Benjamin Netanyahu over Washington's preferred choice, the more moderate Ehud Olmert, acting prime minister and leader of the centrist Kadima party.

The USA faces very difficult choices in regard to the more likely scemarios ahead in the next week and the next three months. Netanyahu, a former Prime Minister of Israel, is far too much a fanatic for my taste. So I can't help but find myself cheering for the Kadima Party (Kadima = The Future) and its leader since the incapactitation of Ariel Sharon, Olmert - who is no simplistic dove but very much a realist who guided Sharon at crucial points in the latter's development away from his earlier bloodihandedness and fanaticism. We're all hoping for a new dynamic in both Palestine and Israel, but the rise of Hamas in electoral politics feels very dicey at best. - Politicarp



For a Netanyahuvian hardline assessment of Sharon as a compromiser, see Jewish World Review's article, "Sharon's place in history," by Frank J. Gaffney Jr., of the Center for Security Policy, Washington, DC. Pat Robertson baptized this kind of thinking as Christian doctrine in his putting a "prophetic" curse on Sharon, while he lay in his coma - but that's not Gaffney's fault, of course. But, heck, the politics of Israel and Palestine are so complex, violent, old, and intractable that perhaps we shouldn't begrudge Gaffney his assessment. - P