Hamas Considers Its Options

Posted on January 30, 2006

So now that the terrorist group Hamas has 75 seats in the Palestinian government and is likely to score a couple of cabinet positions, what's going to happen to all that aid money the U.S. and Europe send to Palestine? If Hamas doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist and denounce terrorism (and suicide bombings in particular) that flow of aid money is going to dry up, says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will press U.S. allies today in London to deprive the incoming Hamas-led Palestinian government of financial support unless it abandons terrorism and accepts the existence of Israel.
The U.S., reacting to the setback to its Middle East policy posed by the surprise victory of Hamas in parliamentary elections Jan. 25, is seeking to build a consensus on withholding aid. European Union foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels today, said Hamas deserves time to embrace peace before a decision is made to cut off money.
"The United States is not prepared to fund an organization that advocates the destruction of Israel, that advocates violence," Rice said while traveling to London. Rice, who arrived late yesterday in the U.K., today plans to review the Palestinian elections with representatives of the United Nations, European Union and Russia. That group, known as the Quartet, has been working on negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis intended to lead to a peace agreement.
"We are looking to Hamas to renounce violence," U.K. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said as he arrived for the EU meeting in Brussels. European governments "have an opportunity to pause and to think about" putting conditions on EU financial support. Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot said that "we still have three or four weeks to make up our minds."

Germany has already said it's not going to send aid to the Palestinian Authority unless those conditions are met. But there is another concern: what if Saudi Arabia steps up to the plate and picks up the differnce in aid -- say $1 billion a year or so? After all, they did hold telethons to raise money for families of suicide bombers.

Rice admitted that the Hamas win caught our government totally by surprise, that clearly we were out of touch with what the Palestinian people are thinking. Clearly, the corruption of Yassir Arafat years was a big campaigning point for Hamas who ran on a "clean up the corruption/destroy Israel" platform that played well to the masses. So once again we have a secular Arab government (Fatah - Palestine, the Baathists - Iraq) kicked out of power while a fundamentalist Islamic religious group takes over (Hamas - Palestine and the Shiites in Iraq).

And this is progress how exactly?