| Editorial: Victory and Challenge 27 January 2006 |
| Hamas has won a great victory and faces a momentous challenge: Can it deliver peace and good government to the Palestinians? What is not in question is that Fatah deserved to lose. Palestinians voted against it because they had had enough of the cronyism, corruption and incompetence over which it presided. In that sense, this was an anti-vote; Palestinians voted against Fatah rather than for Hamas. They certainly did not vote for its policies. Opinion polls in the run-up to the election showed that the majority of Palestinians support a peace deal with Israel; Hamas most certainly does not.
That raises the question whether Hamas in government will back away from militancy once faced with the responsibility of office. At the moment, it insists there will be no change. That is not surprising. No one would expect it to do so overnight. But if it does not, the consequences could be frightening. The Israelis and the US have made it clear that they regard Hamas as a terror organization. However, Israels threat that it will not negotiate with it may not mean exactly that in the long run. The Israelis used to complain about the PLO commitment to the destruction of Israel but started talking when PLO militancy ended. If Hamas continues with the bomb and the bullet, the Israelis will respond even more destructively than in the past. They will rain down death to both punish the Palestinians for voting in Hamas and to try and create a
backlash, knowing that the electorate does not share Hamas political vision. They will strike again and again if there are attacks, claiming that the Palestinian government is now openly at war with them, using it to justify targeting every possible government building and institution. Meanwhile, in government, Hamas officials are going to make far easier targets for Israeli missiles and planes than in the past. They may have to go into hiding, putting day-to-day government at risk. The other serious problem is that it is not just the Israelis and the Americans who are against Hamas; the Palestinian Authoritys main financial backer, the EU, has also said that it will cooperate with a Hamas government only if it pursues peace. That raises the possibility that a Hamas government that stays wedded to militancy would be a bankrupt government. There is, however, another view that Hamas victory changes nothing:
Mahmoud Abbas remains president and the new government will have to work with him; the Israelis will continue with their unilateral policy of disengagement and if the Americans and Israelis refuse to talk to the Palestinians, it is no different from what is happening now. That is true. Also true is the fact that these elections are a milestone in Palestinian political evolution. Fatah has been dismissed without a shot being fired; the Israelis can no longer claim that they are the only true democracy in the region. Even so, it would be foolish to ignore the dangers ahead for the Palestinians. A Hamas government starts life with much going against it. If its policies remain unchanged then collapse, chaos and violence cannot be ruled out. The question therefore is: Will Hamas change? |
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{Invite (mankind, O Muhammad ) to the Way of your Lord (i.e. Islam) with wisdom (i.e. with the Divine Inspiration and the Qur'an) and fair preaching, and argue with them in a way that is better. Truly, your Lord knows best who has gone astray from His Path, and He is the Best Aware of those who are guided.}
(Holy Quran-16:125)
{And who is better in speech than he who [says: "My Lord is Allah (believes in His Oneness)," and then stands straight (acts upon His Order), and] invites (men) to Allah's (Islamic Monotheism), and does righteous deeds, and says: "I am one of the Muslims."} (Holy Quran-41:33)
The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "By Allah, if Allah guides one person by you, it is better for you than the best types of camels." [al-Bukhaaree, Muslim]
The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) also said, "Whoever calls to guidance will have a reward similar to the reward of the one who follows him, without the reward of either of them being lessened at all."
[Muslim, Ahmad, Aboo Daawood, an-Nasaa'ee, at-Tirmidhee, Ibn Maajah]
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