RE: Must be said

Well, I'm not really excited that Hamas won the Palestinian elections. A few things I want to note:

1: The elections were free, and fair. There was a choice, and there appear to have been no instances of fraud/intimidation at the polls.

2: The Palestinians chose a party that is dedicated to the destruction (by terrorist means) of Israel.

3: They did this after several years of rather accomodating actions by Sharon in a time of cease fire. Most of these actions were taken unilateraly, with no concessions from the Palestinians. Therefore they can neither claim that Hamas/violence forced the hand of the Israelies, nor that they had to give up too much to get what they wanted. Including the right to a government and elections not controlled by Israel, control of boarder points with a country other than Israel, and territory with no Jews. It's true that during the same period of time Israel retaliated for attacks (outside of the cease-fire), but it was nothing like what (in my understanding, and I could be wrong) has happened in the past. They also had to deal with Isreal building a major wall, which wasn't in exactly the place that the Palestinians wanted it to be. However, I think that the life of a Palestinian is arguable better than it has been even in recent years.

So what conclusions can we draw from this? Nothing, yet. We need to watch and see what happens. In some ways it's good that Hamas won with an outright majority. Now they can't complain that their tactics didn't work because of meddling ministers from other members of a governing coalition. They will be completely responsible for what happens. However, I'm worried about the Jewish reaction to this. Especially since Sharon is all but deas (and at least done with politics) and his middle of the road party, Kadima, is struggling to find leadership. I think their tentative support will dry up. Then, the now-even-more reactionary hard-line party, Likud will get elected at the earliest opportunity, and we'll see all the progress that had been made dry up.

But Chad, I'm slightly confused as to why you want our president to negotiate with Terrorists. Israel did not attack the Palestinians first, and if they are wrongly in the region, well, the Jew's didn't really have anything to do with that. It was the guilty conscience of Europe after which created Israel. I can only think that we'll be hearing things like what the president of Iran says about Israel (some choice examples include "Israel should be wiped off the map. There was no holocaust), and not constructive reasonings about why they are terrorists in the first place. Any reasonings they might choose to cite would most likely be examples of Israeli repression...repressions that were brought about by the Palestinian Terrorism. Neither side of this conflict holds the moral card. But it certainly doesn't help the state of Palestine to be electing to power an organization that promotes violence, if all they want is to be simple farmers.

I know I'm not going to convince you about this, but we're going to have to agree to disagree.

I will say this, I'm not as conversant about the founding of Israel as I should be. If you have more information than I do, I would love to hear it. I would especially like to hear the reasonings for the first acts of terrorism from the side of the Palestinians.

And, Chad, I'm still reading that first post you put up today. I'll be writing back soon.