Hamas Win Unsettles Peace Process

Yahoo! News reports Hamas won a huge majority in parliamentary elections as Palestinian voters rejected the longtime rule of the Fatah Party, throwing the future of Mideast peacemaking into question, officials from both major parties said Thursday.

The Palestenian's have replaced a corrupt government that wants to destroy Israel slowly with one that offers services, but which wants to destroy Israel right away. It will be interesting to see what sort of a government they form. Ideally it would be a government that offers services but is willing to negotiate with the Israelis. But I am not holding my breath.

Palestinian leaders huddled to determine what role the Islamic militant group will play in governing the territories. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will ask Hamas to form the next government, with his defeated Fatah Party weighing whether to form a partnership or serve in the opposition. A Hamas government, without Fatah as a moderating force, would greatly complicate Abbas' efforts to restart peace talks.

Peace talks require someone to talk to, and if Hamas is on one side of the table, I don't expect Israel to be on the other side.

The Islamic militants, who carried out dozens of suicide bombings and seek Israel's destruction, have said they oppose peace talks and will not disarm. Israel and the United States refuse to deal with Hamas.

There goes the Road Map

CQ blogged It's not like the Palestinians gave themselves much in the way of choice for their first Parliamentary elections in ten years, but in a surprise, the hardline Hamas terrorists took a bigger slice of the vote from the more moderate terrorists of Fatah in today's vote. Exit polling shows that Hamas will likely trail Fatah by a handful of seats in the new assembly, forcing the new government into the uncomfortable position of adding Hamas to its cabinet when most peacebrokers consider them part of the problem:.... Perhaps this election will finally convince the United States, if not Europe and Russia, of the folly of continued efforts on "road maps" and the like. Gaza showed that Fatah cannot govern a state, and the West Bank just elected bloodthirsty terrorists almost to a Parliamentary majority. These people want war. They will not settle for half the land when they believe a war will bring them all of it. In the end, it may be better for the world to let the two sides fight their war in order to make them both sick enough of the consequences to start selecting leaders that want peace and plan for it. If all the Palestinians understand is death and martyrdom, then let them have their fill of both.

GOP Vixen blogged Oh joy. Brings new meaning to the phrase terrorist state: It's not just that the state sponsors terrorism, but the parliament has terrorists!

Stop the ACLU blogged Kofi Annan congratulated the Palestinian people for electing a terrorist organization to represent the will of its people? I wonder if the Palestinian State he speaks of resembles the map at the U.N. that pre-dates the formation of Israel as a state. This is definitely a giant step backwards in the peace process in the Middle East, not that there was any real progress in that area anyway…but still.

Sister Toldjah blogged The only people this election is good news for are the pro-terrorism-against-Israel Palestinians who voted Hamas into the government in the first place, and folks like Jimmy Carter - who seems to be mystified as to why Hamas would even be labelled a terrorist organization.