1-27-06, 9:27 am
THE stunning victory won by Hamas in the Palestinian elections indicates, at the least, that the Palestinian Authority has demonstrated its ability to run a transparent and fair election.
This is in stark contrast to the US where a candidate backed by big business and the military industrial complex can steal an election through corruption, intimidation and media complicity.
And yet the US beneficiary of that electoral coup, George W Bush, feels that he has the right to criticise the Palestinian people for their choice.
He has echoed Israeli political leaders' statements that they will refuse to deal with Hamas unless it recognises Israel's right to exist as a state.
And international agencies have fallen in behind the White House line, suggesting that the Hamas poll victory represents a setback for the peace process.
They should do a quick reality check. There is no peace process in progress. There are no negotiations taking place.
And the blame for this barrier on the path to a negotiated settlement does not lie with Hamas or Fatah but with Israel and its backers in the US and the EU, which support Israel's colonisation of Palestinian land.
Despite initial warm words directed at Mr Arafat's successor Mahmoud Abbas, he too has been kept at arm's length.
Israel and its US sponsor have ordered Mr Abbas to disarm and dissolve what they call terrorist groups and what the Palestinian people see as legitimate resistance organisations to lift the yoke of bloody colonial occupation from their shoulders.
Mr Abbas and Fatah did not do this, simply because they could not do it. It would have resulted in a Palestinian civil war. Their refusal to ignite such a conflict is used to excuse the US-Israeli further sidelining of President Abbas.
In short, those who decry the election of Hamas must accept their responsibility for making the secular Fatah leadership appear irrelevant and impotent.
The Palestinian view that double standards are operated by the big powers and by international media is correct.
While Hamas military units have, generally speaking, observed a ceasefire for over a year, Israeli armed forces have continued their programme of assassinations, casual killings, house demolitions and eviction of Palestinians from their land by means of the apartheid wall. And yet, Hamas is described as the enemy of peace.
Whoever the Palestinians elect, the West Bank is still Palestinian land and it must be decolonised.
Imperialist demands that Palestinians should accept the bantustan crumbs from the Israeli table amount to complicity with the zionists' colonisation project.
Lessons must be learned from the struggle against apartheid South Africa, with more people-to-people contacts with the Palestinians and greater efforts made to isolate Israel until its leaders accept the Palestinian people's right to an independent state, not just in theory but in reality.
From Morning Star
