Monday
Jan302006
Keep the aid flowing
Monday, January 30, 2006 at 3:00AM
By Ellen Ratner
With Hamas' decisive win in Palestine last week, the racket of celebratory gunfire and cheers coming from Gaza was matched by only by the wailing and weeping coming from Western capitals. Summarizing this reaction was Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who pronounced the victory a ''very, very, very bad result."
Some tried to bury their disappointment behind the self-justifying blather that their own "let's-shoot-our-way-to-a-democratic-Middle-East" policy has wrought. "The people are demanding honest government," declared President Bush, struggling to make lemons into lemonade. "And so the elections should open the eyes of the old guard there in the Palestinian territories ... There's something healthy about a system that does that."
Sure, Mr. President. That's why the next thing you did was to announce that the United States won't be sending dime one to those who brought about "honest government." Bush and Secretary Rice are now persuading the European Union to do likewise – and based on initial reactions, it won't be a hard sell. Here's a contrary opinion: That would be a Big Mistake in a region where for decades all parties have been inflicting Big Mistakes on their own peoples, the region and the world.
First, you should know a bit of history. In the often la-la land of Israeli-Palestinian politics, where it seems that the less you pay attention, the more you know, peace – real peace, in the form of diplomatic recognition, treaties and no wars – is rarely made by peaceful people. Indeed, it's usually the men everyone thinks of as "hardliners" who show up on the White House lawn or the signing conference in Norway, or Cairo or Jerusalem.
Remember former Israeli Prime Minister Menacham Begin, who came to his office via Jabotinsky, Irgun, and Likud? He made peace (1979) with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, the former aid to the ultra-hardliner Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sadat participated in many and actually led one war against Israel (1973) and as a younger man, was reported to have kept a picture of Hitler in his office.
Of course, Chairman Yasser Arafat, the man reputed to have invented modern terrorism, took a break from hijacking airplanes to show up in Oslo and sign peace agreements with former Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin, remembered today as a peace-loving, kindly old man, but who in his military prime was chief of staff to the IDF during the Six Day War (1967) that devastated the Arab countries surrounding Israel. And lest we forget, as most of never recognized to begin with, there was the big, bad "Likudnick" Arial Sharon, whose unilateral withdrawal from Gaza probably did more for Palestinian statehood than anything done lately by any single Palestinian.
My point is that if history is any guide, at some point – and knowing Mideast politics as I do, to guess precisely when would be an act of foolishness – top Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal may soon be traipsing over the Green Line to meet with his Israeli counterparts. Contrary to rumor, it is the Middle East and not Washington, D.C., where politicians are famous for flip-flopping.
Besides a history which teaches us to assume nothing, there are other good reasons to keep the money spigots flowing to the Palestinian Authority. Perhaps the most important of these is a four-letter word spelled I-R-A-N. Currently, the West, mostly the European Union and United States, annually pour some $1 billion into the territories. If that money is cut-off, Hamas will go elsewhere for the dough, and elsewhere is likely to be Tehran.
Thus, Hamas's partnership of convenience with the Iranians is likely to become one of intimacy. This would have the effect of moving Iran into a "front-line" state in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute – and thus transforming the Holocaust Denying and genocidal ravings of religious fanatic (did I mention president of Iran?) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into real policy. And that is a very, very bad idea.
Cutting off Hamas is something that the West can do at any time. Destroying Hamas – and re-imposing control over Gaza and the West Bank – is something that the Israelis can do at any time. And one of the dirty little secrets about this election is that everyone, including Hamas, expected that Arafat's Fatah party would win, or at least win enough to require a governing coalition. What nobody expected was that Fatah would lose big enough to leave Hamas in virtual control of the Palestinian government. In short, if insider reports are correct, the biggest shock of Hamas' win came to Hamas itself.
That means that the ultimate outsider has now been stuck with a ward heeler's job – picking up the garbage, delivering services, running the schools, etc. Whining and threats don't run governments; and Hamas knows that if it doesn't perform, the Palestinian people will vote them out for somebody else. So now is not the time to stop funding the Palestinian Authority. Indeed, as the suicide-bombing, toxic-rhetoric spouting Hamas is going to be the first to discover, it's time to, as the old song said, "Give peace a chance."
With Hamas' decisive win in Palestine last week, the racket of celebratory gunfire and cheers coming from Gaza was matched by only by the wailing and weeping coming from Western capitals. Summarizing this reaction was Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who pronounced the victory a ''very, very, very bad result."
Some tried to bury their disappointment behind the self-justifying blather that their own "let's-shoot-our-way-to-a-democratic-Middle-East" policy has wrought. "The people are demanding honest government," declared President Bush, struggling to make lemons into lemonade. "And so the elections should open the eyes of the old guard there in the Palestinian territories ... There's something healthy about a system that does that."
Sure, Mr. President. That's why the next thing you did was to announce that the United States won't be sending dime one to those who brought about "honest government." Bush and Secretary Rice are now persuading the European Union to do likewise – and based on initial reactions, it won't be a hard sell. Here's a contrary opinion: That would be a Big Mistake in a region where for decades all parties have been inflicting Big Mistakes on their own peoples, the region and the world.
First, you should know a bit of history. In the often la-la land of Israeli-Palestinian politics, where it seems that the less you pay attention, the more you know, peace – real peace, in the form of diplomatic recognition, treaties and no wars – is rarely made by peaceful people. Indeed, it's usually the men everyone thinks of as "hardliners" who show up on the White House lawn or the signing conference in Norway, or Cairo or Jerusalem.
Remember former Israeli Prime Minister Menacham Begin, who came to his office via Jabotinsky, Irgun, and Likud? He made peace (1979) with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, the former aid to the ultra-hardliner Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sadat participated in many and actually led one war against Israel (1973) and as a younger man, was reported to have kept a picture of Hitler in his office.
Of course, Chairman Yasser Arafat, the man reputed to have invented modern terrorism, took a break from hijacking airplanes to show up in Oslo and sign peace agreements with former Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin, remembered today as a peace-loving, kindly old man, but who in his military prime was chief of staff to the IDF during the Six Day War (1967) that devastated the Arab countries surrounding Israel. And lest we forget, as most of never recognized to begin with, there was the big, bad "Likudnick" Arial Sharon, whose unilateral withdrawal from Gaza probably did more for Palestinian statehood than anything done lately by any single Palestinian.
My point is that if history is any guide, at some point – and knowing Mideast politics as I do, to guess precisely when would be an act of foolishness – top Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal may soon be traipsing over the Green Line to meet with his Israeli counterparts. Contrary to rumor, it is the Middle East and not Washington, D.C., where politicians are famous for flip-flopping.
Besides a history which teaches us to assume nothing, there are other good reasons to keep the money spigots flowing to the Palestinian Authority. Perhaps the most important of these is a four-letter word spelled I-R-A-N. Currently, the West, mostly the European Union and United States, annually pour some $1 billion into the territories. If that money is cut-off, Hamas will go elsewhere for the dough, and elsewhere is likely to be Tehran.
Thus, Hamas's partnership of convenience with the Iranians is likely to become one of intimacy. This would have the effect of moving Iran into a "front-line" state in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute – and thus transforming the Holocaust Denying and genocidal ravings of religious fanatic (did I mention president of Iran?) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into real policy. And that is a very, very bad idea.
Cutting off Hamas is something that the West can do at any time. Destroying Hamas – and re-imposing control over Gaza and the West Bank – is something that the Israelis can do at any time. And one of the dirty little secrets about this election is that everyone, including Hamas, expected that Arafat's Fatah party would win, or at least win enough to require a governing coalition. What nobody expected was that Fatah would lose big enough to leave Hamas in virtual control of the Palestinian government. In short, if insider reports are correct, the biggest shock of Hamas' win came to Hamas itself.
That means that the ultimate outsider has now been stuck with a ward heeler's job – picking up the garbage, delivering services, running the schools, etc. Whining and threats don't run governments; and Hamas knows that if it doesn't perform, the Palestinian people will vote them out for somebody else. So now is not the time to stop funding the Palestinian Authority. Indeed, as the suicide-bombing, toxic-rhetoric spouting Hamas is going to be the first to discover, it's time to, as the old song said, "Give peace a chance."
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