Chaos in Palestine

I must point out to all watchers that while the direct actors in the latest "civil war" in Palestine are Hamas and Fatah, the blame for sparking this event lies squarely with Israel and the United States. The US, who claims that they want "Democracy" in Palestine and elsewhere (something we're just not going to discuss at this time), decided that it was not acceptable that the Palestinian people would, in a free and fair election, vote in Hamas. Perhaps it is the Bush administration's confusion about the actual voted for winner actually taking office, that makes such an event in Palestine so distasteful. The US along with Israel decided (you know, that whole "decider" thing) that the Palestinians cannot vote for Hamas and therefor lead a campaign of economic and political terrorism against the Palestinian people by asking world governments to not recognize the new government and by withholding funds from the Palestinian government.

It would have been better if Hamas had taken it's rightful place in the Palestinian government and been forced to deal with being an insider actually responsible for providing services to the Palestinians. The whole "must accept Israel's right to exist" thing is way over blown. There's so much to be done in Palestine that such a platform is all but useless anyway.

The results were obvious to anyone with 2 functioning brain cells. Clearly by rejecting the results of the free election, the US and Israel played it's hand (like we didn't know it already). That hand was that it wasn't about elections it was about US and Israeli interests. So by Hamas deciding to take over is a clear rejection of US interference in Palestinian affairs. It is a clear, we did it your way, now we do it ours. On the other hand I'm concerned about this fighting. For a people that have been fighting for what seems to be generation now, there is the danger of fighting becoming a way of life.

We shall see.

Technorati Tags: critique, governance, Palestine