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Ten Years of Hamas Rule

(Newsweek) Jonathan Schanzer - Ten years ago, Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. The secular Fatah faction, Washington's choice as the pragmatic incumbent ruling party in the Palestinian Authority (PA), lost the elections because of the growing (and correct) public perception that the party was ossified and corrupt, a perception still dogs Fatah to this day. Hamas' military offensive in Gaza that began on June 7, 2007, left Hamas firmly in control. The PA forces, which had been trained and armed by the U.S., failed miserably. Ten years on, the intra-Palestinian conflict, with a decade of failed reconciliation efforts, is a glaring blind spot among Western policymakers. There are two separate Palestinian governments in Gaza and the West Bank, two sets of cadres of political elites, two distinct economies, and increasingly two different cultures. Yet the overriding assumption in the West is that deft diplomacy coupled with Israeli territorial concessions could pave the way for the Palestinian Authority, unpopular and corrupt as it may be, to somehow bring Gaza back under its jurisdiction. It may be time to acknowledge that if the Palestinians can't peacefully resolve their own territorial conflict, they certainly are not likely to resolve the one with Israel. The writer is vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
2016-01-26 00:00:00
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