Bad to Worse
Could the news from the Middle East possibly get any worse? Don't answer that! First, possibly the only two men (Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat) who might've hammered out a peace despite their shortcomings (in Arafat's case SERIOUS shortcomings, like being a crook, liar and terrorist) are gone; then, a total lunatic who was apparently one of the thugs that seized the US Embassy in 1979 becomes President of Iran; and now a terrorist organization has won contol of the Palestinian Authority legislature.
I have to disagree with the Salon article a little; yes, it was the Bush Administration's bright idea to force the Palestinians to give power to a prime minister, and yes that has come back to bite them in the ass, but it was necessary at the time to give Israel someone they could negotiate with instead of Arafat. Whatever else you can say about Arafat, he would NEVER, by hook or by crook, have allowed Hamas to win. A sad joke in the Middle East is that the Islamists believe in the principle of "one man, one vote, one time..."
This isn't a very profound observation, but I expect with a power vacuum in Israel AND the Palestinian Authority, things are likely to go downhill from here. I hope I'm wrong.
Labels: Israel
posted by The Local Crank | 1:03 AM
2 Comments:
I agree things don't look rosy for the peace process, but in a way I'm glad this happened. We all knew it was inevitable that one of these new Muslim "democracies" would vote terrorists into power sooner or later, and I would rather the world have to deal with it NOW rather than later. It's possible Hamas may follow in the footsteps of the IRA and lay down their arms in favor of diplomacy.
There may be a bright side to Hamas' victory. Sooner or later the world was going to have to deal with Muslim "democracies" electing extremists to office, and I'd rather it be sooner. Hamas will learn how much harder it is to govern, and there's always the chance that like the IRA they will learn the benefit of diplomacy over violence.
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