On 2010-08-17, at 9:14 PM, Eric Beck wrote:
> But the more general point is that you assume that Palestinians
> support Hamas without presenting any real evidence to back it up.
> Robert Naiman forwarded numbers--which you haven't addressed except to
> say that Fatah sucks, which is not really an argument…
> --that showed
> Hamas legislative candidates would get 25% of the vote. In a country
> with two (sorta three) parties, those are abysmal numbers. Not sure
> how you extrapolate popular support out of that. Do you have anything
> other than anecdote and conventional wisdom to show Hamas has popular
> support?
I thought it would be obvious when I thanked Robert Naiman for his numbers that I wasn't contesting them, but using them as a jumping off point to suggest Abbas and Fayyad weren't much of an alternative to Hamas, but that Marwan Barghouti would be. I don't dismiss polls, but don't regard them as decisive either, particularly in polarized, repressive, and volatile settings where polling is less than representative and respondents less than candid and events tend to move rapidly.
In response to your challenge, however, I decided to see how accurately the polls gauged Hamas' popularity prior to its smashing victory in the January 2006 Palestinian legislative election. WWhat I found is that less than two months prior to the election, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research had Fatah leading Hamas by 50-32, and though a subsequent PCPSR poll and one by another agency showed the gap closing, each continued to forecast a comfortable Fatah victory.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_legislative_election,_2006)
I suspect if Fatah and its US and European backers could have anticipated the outcome, they would have found a pretext to put the historic 2006 election on ice. They certainly don't appear to place as much store as you do in current polls which similarly purport to show Fatah as the people's choice. The latest Economist, reporting that the PA has annulled three elections for different offices in the past year alone, explains that "Western policymakers...seem in no mood to promote a new round of elections that could lead to another triumph for Hamas….the American administration and the European Union have both balked. 'The last thing many in Europe want is for Hamas to regain an executive role in the West Bank,' says a European official. 'We prefer division and no elections to reconciliation and elections.' " ("Under threat from all sides", The Economist, August 12, 2010.)
I'm not suggesting that Hamas arouses tremendous widespread enthusiasm. Enthusiasm doesn't coexist easily with exhaustion, which is probably the prevailing mood in the occupied territories after decades of struggle, privation, and frustration. I don't doubt Amira Hass' report that Hamas, as the governing authority, is being blamed for the shortages and repression in Gaza. Nevertheless, such conditions are typical in nations under seige and bombardment, and history has shown that people, despite their grumbling, still tend rally behind the government against the common enemy in such circumstances. It's from that perspective that I take Hass' conclusion that Hamas is "no longer popular" with a grain of salt. Maybe not as popular as it demonstrated in 2006, but popularity is relative, and it wouldn't at all surprise me if the polls are again proved absurdly wrong in finding the corrupt and compliant Fatah leadership more highly regarded than Hamas, whose hands are cleaner and which has more resolutely confronted Israel.
I say this as someone who began this thread under the subject line "the unromantic side of Hamas" with reference to its "reactionary social policies and repression of left organizations and secular liberals" and with high regard for Hass' committed journalism.