Sidney Zion in the New York Daily News has a different interpretation of the Hamas victory at the polls, namely that the Palestinians don't want the kind of moderation Abbas seems to favor - they want confrontation and conflict, the way Arafat did it:
On this crucial point [" the Hamas desire and obligation to destroy the Jewish state"], they simply didn't trust Abbas. He had been with Arafat through thick and thin. He was the financier of the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes. He even wrote a book denying the Holocaust. But he traded Arafat's kaffiyeh for a bespoke suit out of Bond St. If you look like a collaborator and talk like a collaborator - well, you lose the election.
This conflicts with the commonly-held notion that most Palestinians favor negotiations and peace.
I honestly don't get it. It seems to me that if Palestinians wanted to negotiate their way to an independent (Arab) Palestinian state, they could have done that a long time ago. Not easily, but certainly doable. Also, by adopting some non-violent methods, they could have shamed Israelis into showing (and using) less force.
I don't know if anyone has done any serious work on understanding Palestinian perceptions and attitudes. My best guess is that they certainly want peace, but there are limits to what they're going to give up for it. Central to this is the notion that there must be a solid payoff for all the suffering and waiting they've had to endure while Arafat was running a (murderous) liberation army. From there point of view, it would seem that the longer they have to wait, the better the outcome must be.
L'havdil, this has all the logic of an alcoholic stepping up his drinking to increase the relief of finally not drinking; but nobody has told the Palestinians this. All the Western sympathizers keep talking about the Palestinians' rights, their leaders certainly project a narrative of suffering-and-redemption, and they have come far in creating a story of popular heroism that surely must be rewarded in the end.
Except, of course, the Israelis aren't accomodating. But Hamas has promised to take what Israel won't give.
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