Long talk with an old friend (part I)

Over this past weekend I had the opportunity to catch up with someone I've known nearly 30 years. For whatever reason, the last couple years whenever we ran into each other one or both of us were hurrying off to somewhere, so this was an opportunity not to be missed.

She is married to an Israeli citizen, lives in Israel, and has spent a number of years working for a Palestinian-affiliated group hoping to promote the peace process, so I was very interested in her take on the current state of affairs. Not surprisingly, she wasn't optimistic.

We discussed the elections which brought Hamas to power, and she had a different take on matters. I am presenting her comments as quotes, but they should be taken as reasonably accurate recollections of what she said, rather than a verbatim word-for-word recounting.

"(Tip O'Neill) said 'all politics are local', and that's what the election was. People, especially in their first election, don't consider foreign relations in casting their votes, they worry about who will do best filling the potholes in the roads outside their homes."

"They knew Fatah was corrupt, they knew what Fatah was, they knew Fatah left the potholes. They'd had years of Fatah. They hoped Hamas might do more to make things better locally. They didn't think of the election, their first election ever, as a referendum, on their foreign policy views."

"Now, if there were a vote again, and Hamas won again, then I think the international community would have a legitimate concern ... but if an election were held again, Hamas would never win. Which is why Hamas won't allow more elections."

I have to confess, I hadn't considered the notion the Palestinians wouldn't realize the international significance of their choice when casting their votes ... and I still think, on some level, most of them were aware of it. The stated goals of Hamas are not exactly secret. Still, faced with two bad choices between:

* A corrupt group with some international legitimacy, or
* A (possibly) less corrupt group which has made serious efforts to help local citizens, but which had little (if any) international legitimacy,

it's not so unreasonable they might have opted for the devil they didn't know and hoped for the best.