[lbo-talk] RE: Dov Weisglass on the Palestinians: "We have to make them much thinner, but not enough to die'"

[Michael Givel]

While economic boycotts and cutting off of aid impact primarily civilians 
and are a severe human rights abuse, the notion that Hamas will not have 
significant influence in the next Palestinian government seems very slim. 
The message is clear for all to see, a large plurality of the Palestinian 
people voted for a party that is anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti woman, and 
theocratic. The question for the left is do we and what is the morality and 
efficacy of supporting a liberation struggle where one of the main players 
also has strong fundamentalist and clerical fascist tendencies?


> http://alternativenews.dyndns.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=385&Itemid=70&lang=ISO-8859-1
>
> Letter from the Editors
>
> On 25 January 2006, the Palestinian people voted in the first
> Palestinian Legislative Council elections in ten years. While many
> projected outcomes of a Hamas plurality, in the final tally, taking
> seventy-six seats out of a total of 132, Hamas won a surprising majority
> position in the legislature.
>
> Numerous Israeli and international politicians and media pundits have
> been arguing that this victory for Hamas in the elections was a
> deliberate Palestinian "vote against peace." Yet, they exhibit no
> aspiration to understand the complicated social and political context of
> contemporary Palestine, the results of Israel's longstanding
> unilateralist approach, the continuing expansion of the Israeli
> Occupation, or the very bases on which the Palestinians themselves made
> their voting decisions. Instead, a very simplistic equation-that a vote
> for Hamas is a vote for terror and against peace-is projected. These
> assertions do not stand up to the evidence, however.
>
> First, it's important to highlight that, due to a two-tiered electoral
> system featuring multi-member districts and a national proportional
> list, the elections results do not reflect a strict proportion of votes
> cast for a particular party or candidates aligned with that party. The
> multi-member district system penalizes ticket-splitting and rewards
> parties with greater cohesion.(1) Thus, Hamas was able to win without
> receiving the majority of the Palestinian vote, a little more than 44.4
> percent, in comparison to 41.4 percent going to Fatah. Moreover, the
> remaining 14 percent of the popular vote went largely to secular
> parties, made up of former Fatah members and leftist parties such as the
> Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine. This means that over
> 55 percent of the Palestinian vote did not go to parties or independent
> candidates aligned with Hamas. And significantly, time after
> time-including in the run-up to the elections-opinion polls of the
> Palestinian public have revealed that a majority of Palestinians are
> actually willing and interested in a realistic negotiated settlement.
>