Thursday, January 26, 2006

Palestinian Elections

OK, so just one quick thing before getting some work done...

Hamas Victory


My first reaction was: Holy crap! 76 seats! I had no idea Hamas would do so well. Regardless of what you think of Hamas (and for the record, I think killing civilians is always wrong, no matter how just your cause), this result speaks volumes to the level of anger among Palestinians about the Israeli occupation.

My second reaction: the NYT slide show has all the same images of elderly women with ink on their fingers and women lining up to vote that they had for the Iraqi elections, but something tells me that these pictures aren't going to make it into the Bush administration slide show about "changing the Arab world" and "moving towards democracy." Funny thing, democracy.

Anyway, a longer post about Israel and Palestine is forthcoming, but not before Saturday. Ack.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

From the analysis I've seen it's not so much a sign of support of the platform of Hamas (particularly the terrorist wing of Hamas), but rather a rejection of the ruling Fatah party.

They've demonstrated a complete inability to control corruption, and Hamas is just a convenient alternative.

The optimist in me hopes that the political wing of Hamas will be forced to publically reject violence, and, due to the greater scrutiny of all of Hamas, it will transition away from terrorism.

I'm currently suppressing my internal pessimist though...

Doug

Anonymous said...

I don't really have a comment, but while I was reading Doug's comment, I noticed that the word verification word was 'kipzudge' and I don't know why, but I think that's pretty awesome.

Jackie

Anonymous said...

Did you notice Sean's post about the lack of available made up words?

p.s. this post was brought to you by

islzyp

Sounds like a fast moving island...

Anonymous said...

Yes. Yes, I did. Although, I think that 'kipzudge' has a certain aesthetic appeal all by itself.

Jackie