Note: I have been posting articles from my friend Richard Chesnoff on Bloggledygook. His latest is on the Palestinian elections. It is reproduced here in total. Chesnoff is a former correspondent for Newsweek. He currently writes for the New York Daily News and US News & World Report. He lives in New York and France.

THE HAMAS GAME
by Richard Z. Chesnoff, NY Daily News, 1/25/05

Final results of yesterday????????s Palestinian legislative elections are still trickling in. But one thing is sure: Yasser Arafat????????s chickens have come home to roost. After decades of dictatorial and corrupt control by the late Fatah leader and his cohorts, vast numbers of voters in both the West Bank and Gaza have angrily turned their back on Arafat????????s heirs and given their support to rival Hamas, the radical Islamic party.

The prime result: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas may feel obliged to let Hamas join a coalition government.

Trouble is Hamas remains the same terrorist party it????????s always been, a heavily armed, blood-drenched gang that boasts of suicide bombings and doesn????????t even pretend to want peace with Israel. Its goals are crystal clear: the total annihilation of the Jewish state in favor of an Islamic state throughout the entire Holy Land. Its presence in a Palestinian government is hardly incentive for Israel to follow up on its recent withdrawal from Gaza and move ahead on the U.S.-sponsored road map to Mideast peace.

The danger is that there are already some in Israel ???????? and a growing flock outside ???????? who talk about the need for Israel to launch a dialogue with Hamas leaders ???????? as though talking to this band of religious fanatics who hate Jews and Christians would be any more successful than trading land for peace was with the Arafat gang. Yet there are those who argue that if Hamas gains political responsibility, it will find itself forced to weed out its militants, eventually turn from terror and moderate its policies.

You mean like the mad mullahs in Iran moderated their policies after they took power?

Of course, Hamas plays the word game ???????? just as Arafat always did. One top Hamas leader recently raised the magnanimous possibility of holding ???????negotiations??????? with Israel through a third party. ???????Negotiation is not a taboo,??????? said Mahmoud Zahar, just two days before the elections. Three days earlier he made the real Hamas position starkly clear. ???????We do not recognize the Israeli enemy, nor his right to be our neighbor, nor to stay Äon the landÅ, nor his ownership of any inch of land,??????? Zahar told Palestinian TV. ???????Palestine is a land of Islamic trust, which cannot be given up.???????

Which means that any kind of deal with Hamas would have about as much meaning as a truce with Osama Bin Laden.

The U.S., the European Union, Russia and the United Nations have all declared that ???????a future Palestinian Authority cabinet should include no member who has not committed to the principles of Israel????????s right to exist in peace and security and an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism.??????? And two weeks ago, Secretary of State Rice said that ???????armed groups have no place in the democratic process.???????

Let????????s hope they hold firm. Granting any legitimacy to Hamas unless it seriously disarms and changes policy would be total disaster. At the very least it would undermine Palestinian moderates who preach that violence will distance Palestinian statehood, not bring it closer. It could also produce a defeat for Israeli moderates in Israel????????s upcoming March elections. Then back to square one-minus.

Originally published January 25, 2006.

Me: This, to me, is extremely discouraging, but not surprising. In essential ways, we are just substituting one terror group for another. While the Mad Mullah’s crazy nephew makes regular and serious threats to Israel, we now have seen that a large faction of Palestinians wish to be governed by terror forces. The conventional wisdom, or at least the conventional party line is that the Palestinians just want their own country, their own slice of earth. Now we have prime evidence that not only do they want their own land, but they also want the land and lives of others, namely, Israeli’s. The election of Hamas is akin to the US voting in the KKK.

Ehud Olmert has announced that more territory will have to be given over to the Palestinians. Once, or even before that is accomplished, look for the barrier to be completed and for the Israeli government to announce that the Palestinians are now the concern of their Muslim brothers in neighboring governments.