[Marxism] Palestine elections

[Paddy Apling <e.c.apling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yesterday's leading article from the Morning Star (UK):

A barrier to peace
(Friday 27 January 2006)
THE stunning victory won by Hamas in the Palestinian elections
indicates, at the least, that the Palestinian Authority has
demonstrated its ability to run a transparent and fair election.

This is in stark contrast to the US where a candidate backed by big
business and the military industrial complex can steal an election
through corruption, intimidation and media complicity.

And yet the US beneficiary of that electoral coup, George W Bush,
feels that he has the right to criticise the Palestinian people for
their choice.

He has echoed Israeli political leaders' statements that they will
refuse to deal with Hamas unless it recognises Israel's right to
exist as a state.

And international agencies have fallen in behind the White House
line, suggesting that the Hamas poll victory represents a setback for
the peace process.

They should do a quick reality check. There is no peace process in
progress. There are no negotiations taking place.

And the blame for this barrier on the path to a negotiated settlement
does not lie with Hamas or Fatah but with Israel and its backers in
the US and the EU, which support Israel's colonisation of Palestinian land.

Israel was encouraged in its ploy of smearing the late Palestinian
Yasser Arafat as a godfather of terrorism and announcing that there
was no Palestinian partner with whom Tel Aviv could negotiate.

Despite initial warm words directed at Mr Arafat's successor Mahmoud
Abbas, he too has been kept at arm's length.

Israel and its US sponsor have ordered Mr Abbas to disarm and
dissolve what they call terrorist groups and what the Palestinian
people see as legitimate resistance organisations to lift the yoke of
bloody colonial occupation from their shoulders.

Mr Abbas and Fatah did not do this, simply because they could not do
it. It would have resulted in a Palestinian civil war. Their refusal
to ignite such a conflict is used to excuse the US-Israeli further
sidelining of President Abbas.

In short, those who decry the election of Hamas must accept their
responsibility for making the secular Fatah leadership appear
irrelevant and impotent.

The Palestinian view that double standards are operated by the big
powers and by international media is correct.

While Hamas military units have, generally speaking, observed a
ceasefire for over a year, Israeli armed forces have continued their
programme of assassinations, casual killings, house demolitions and
eviction of Palestinians from their land by means of the apartheid
wall. And yet, Hamas is described as the enemy of peace.

Whoever the Palestinians elect, the West Bank is still Palestinian
land and it must be decolonised.

Imperialist demands that Palestinians should accept the bantustan
crumbs from the Israeli table amount to complicity with the zionists'
colonisation project.

Lessons must be learned from the struggle against apartheid South
Africa, with more people-to-people contacts with the Palestinians and
greater efforts made to isolate Israel until its leaders accept the
Palestinian people's right to an independent state, not just in
theory but in reality.

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Paddy
http://apling.freeservers.com



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