Is this democracy?

Only a month after Israeli PM Ariel Sharon’s sudden stroke shook Israeli politics, the Palestinians have experienced a shock of their own. Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement), the militant opposition to the ruling Fatah party, appears on the verge of scoring a huge victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections. While the party’s victory is almost certainly bad news for the peace process, it may be the best thing ever to happen to Palestinian politics. It may even transform the politics of the whole region.


If this were any other developing country we would be hailing the victory of an opposition party over a corrupt and ineffectual ruling party. It’s funny though, I don’t hear anyone waxing eloquent about the Green-and-White Revolution yet. That’s because this is Palestine, and a different set of rules apply to out-of-favor Arabs (i.e. not Saudi, Jordanian, or Lebanese) than to everyone else.

First the bad news. Hamas maintains what you might charitably call an untenable position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The organization remains officially committed to Israel’s destruction, although in the past its leadership has indicated a willingness to accept a two-state solution to the conflict as a stepping-stone towards the reclamation of all of Israel by the Palestinians. The forthcoming Israeli leadership is unlikely to bargain with Hamas unless it renounces violence and accepts the so-called Road Map. This is a bit ironic, since Sharon did more than anyone else to destroy the Road Map, but that’s politics for you.

But let’s be honest here – there is not currently much of a peace process to speak of. The Blue Jays and the Brewers did much more talking and dealing this winter than the Israelis and the Palestinians. Israel carried out its evacuation of the Gaza Strip by fiat and refused to negotiate with the secular Palestinian leadership at all. Sharon’s obstinate neglect of Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah ruling group sealed the demise of the old guard in Palestinian politics. A cynic might suggest that this was what Sharon wanted all along – the end of the moderates, the rise of the extremists, and a tailor-made excuse for Israel to keep the West Bank indefinitely.

Nevertheless, the ascension of Hamas could in theory trigger some positive events, in Palestine and in the region. First, the peaceful transfer of power from a ruling group to the opposition is one of the hallmarks of a democracy. And if Fatah actually releases its grip on power – unlike the Algerian junta, which canceled elections won by the Islamist opposition in 1992 and plunged the country into a ten-year civil war – then the Palestinian polity will qualify as at least somewhat democratic. If nothing else, this would mean that the Israelis and Americans could no longer use the lack of Palestinian democracy as an excuse for their refusal to negotiate.

More importantly, the behavior of Hamas in office could have important implications for the region. No one expects them to govern like the Canadian Liberals (another corrupt party that got thrown out of office this week). But if Hamas displays some pragmatism, bargains with the opposition, forms coalitions, and moderates its position on Israel, it would suggest that participation in parliamentary politics by Islamist groups is not the horrifying specter that some people suggest.

If Islamists can govern Palestine, they can govern elsewhere as well. And this means that the corrupt kleptocracies “governing” places like Tunisia, Algeria, and Jordan would no longer be able to use Islamic oppositions as a scare tactic. The U.S. could place more pressure on these governments to open up their systems and share power with the Islamist oppositions, since in all cases Islamists constitute the only viable alternative to the ruling groups.

Of course you can see this all going horribly wrong too. For instance, the official Hamas leadership might shift its position, creating splinter groups within the organization which carry out attacks in Israel. The Israelis then blame Hamas and either cut off all contact or actually assassinate the elected Palestinian leadership. It doesn’t take a particularly vivid imagination to come up with a whole host of such pessimistic scenarios. It doesn’t help that Hamas, assuming it is permitted to take power, will be governing a series of disjointed and disfigured territories, with all the same limitations imposed on Fatah and maybe even more.

But for now, everyone should keep their wits about them and give the political process within Palestine a chance to unfold.