What's All This Talk About A "Hamas Coup"? Hamas Was Democratically Elected To Control the PA, Remember?
We understand in a technical sense why it's a coup. The Palestinian Constitution, written by and for the less than magnanimous Yasser Arafat, gives large amounts of security control to the office of the Palestinian President. But that's the only sense in which it's a coup. In every other sense - normative, deliberative, electoral - it's the exact opposite. Hamas was elected to run the Palestinian territories - a majority of Palestinians decided that that was the party they wanted in in control. This was part of the excuse that the EU used over the weekend to lift the boycott and start giving money directly to Hamas. Since they were elected, they've been stymied in their efforts to fully take over and declare their intentions by Abbas and by a West that will go to any lengths to remain in denial about the lack of a Palestinian peace partner.
On this one issue we've inclined to side with Hamas - it's Fatah that's engaged in the coup:
It was the will of the Palestinian people for Hamas to control the PA. We don't write this out of a sense of schadenfreude - really. But the Palestinians will, at some point, have to realize that bad decisions - electing a genocidal government, murdering Israeli civilians, etc - have consequences. There are only so many times that a society nurtured on hate can be pulled back from an abyss of their own making. At one point - and this might be that point, although we think that the coming week's murmurs of "dealing directly with Hamas" militate against such a conclusion - the Palestinians will run so fast into a disaster that not even UN resolutions and Saudi oil money will be able to yank them back from the brink.
References:
* Fatah Quits Palestinian Cabinet Until Fighting Stops [Bllomberg]
* EU ends freeze…will fund jihad against Israel [Jihad Watch]
* Hamas tightens grip on Gaza, 33 dead [Reuters]
Previously:
* Palestinian Civil Society Watch - Now They're Bombing Gaza Schools Because Of Little League
* Palestinian Civil Society Watch - They're Murdering Nurses and Shooting People Against Walls
* Palestinian Non-Civil War Watch - Now They're Throwing Each Other Off Roofs
