{"id":818,"date":"2006-01-27T12:57:46","date_gmt":"2006-01-27T17:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/hello-hamas-goodbye-fatah-here-i-am-in-camp-grenadea\/"},"modified":"2006-01-27T12:57:46","modified_gmt":"2006-01-27T17:57:46","slug":"hello-hamas-goodbye-fatah-here-i-am-in-camp-grenadea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/hello-hamas-goodbye-fatah-here-i-am-in-camp-grenadea","title":{"rendered":"Hello Hamas, Goodbye Fatah, Here I am in Camp Grenade(a)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the Palestinian populace had parliamentary elections, and the Hamas party won a ton of seats. The NYPost cover today screams, “HAMASTAN,” and predicts a Taliban-like state of religious oppression will take over the Palestinian territories.<\/p>\n

I don’t think that’s going to happen, mainly because I don’t think the vote was an overwhelming endorsement<\/em> of Hamas so much as it was an overwhelming condemnation<\/em> of Fatah. In addition, I think Hamas will have its hands full trying to actually administer the government. If branches of it actively try to launch attacks on Israel, reprisals can be much fiercer, now that its leaders have to be politically accountable.<\/p>\n

There’s a good post at the Volokh Conspiracy<\/a> that mirrors some of my sentiments about the vote. It reminds me of the post I wrote a while ago<\/a> about Hezbollah condemning the first video’d-beheading in Iraq; Hezbollah’s still a terrorist organization, but it’s also tied into the social structure of Lebanon in a way that demands it do respectable things. The party got a good number of votes in the Lebanese elections, but that also means that it can be voted out<\/em> (provided the government doesn’t suspend elections and revert to strong-arm tactics).<\/p>\n

Now, one of my simplistic takes on Arafat was that he benefited from not<\/em> having peace, because it’s a lot easier to be a warrior-hero than it is to administer a state. It’s like hot-button topics in politics (think abortion): if the issues were reconciled, then fundraisers wouldn’t be able to scare up contributions.<\/p>\n

Similarly, now that Hamas has to take responsibility for running things, they’re going to have to deal with issues of unemployment and infrastructure without making a first resort of suicide bombing (admittedly, that would<\/em> cut down unemployment numbers. . .)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the Palestinian populace had parliamentary elections, and the Hamas party won a ton of seats. The NYPost cover today screams, “HAMASTAN,” and predicts a Taliban-like state of religious oppression will take over the Palestinian territories. I don’t think that’s going to happen, mainly because I don’t think the vote was an overwhelming endorsement of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Hello Hamas, Goodbye Fatah, Here I am in Camp Grenade(a)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-explicit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-dc","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":196,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/palestinian-vigilantes","url_meta":{"origin":818,"position":0},"title":"Palestinian Vigilantes?","author":"Gil","date":"April 28, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"According to this article, a pair of masked, armed Palestinians tried to stop a pair of suicide bombers, one of whom elected to blow himself up, also killing the people who were trying to stop him.Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't consider gunmen in masks to represent moderation, but I do\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":992,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/gaza-into-the-eyeball","url_meta":{"origin":818,"position":1},"title":"Gaza into the Abyss","author":"Gil","date":"June 17, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"In the Washington Post yesterday, Charles Krauthammer had a column on the poor Palestinian family that got blown up on a beach in Gaza. After explaining that the explosion could not have been due to an Israeli shell fired in response to nearby rocket launches into Israeli neighborhoods, he writes,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (implicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (implicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-implicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":824,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/more-on-hamas","url_meta":{"origin":818,"position":2},"title":"More on Hamas","author":"Gil","date":"January 31, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Richard Posner's take jibes with mine (but is much more informed). Christopher Hitchens' take does not jibe with mine (but is much more informed). Meanwhile, the best thing about this Washington Post opinion piece by Mousa Abu Marzook is the author's byline: The writer is deputy political bureau chief of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2007,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/peace-process-solved","url_meta":{"origin":818,"position":3},"title":"Peace process: solved!","author":"Gil","date":"April 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In a Washington Post op-ed piece this morning, Mahmoud al-Zahar, the founder of Hamas, explains what the Israelis need to do for peace: A \"peace process\" with Palestinians cannot take even its first tiny step until Israel first withdraws to the borders of 1967; dismantles all settlements; removes all soldiers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1562,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/just-one-of-the-chebabs","url_meta":{"origin":818,"position":4},"title":"Just one of the Chebabs","author":"Gil","date":"June 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Back in 1995, the movie Boys filmed several scenes on the campus of St. John's College, where I was attending grad school. I was sitting out in the quad between classes one evening with my friends. The crew was getting ready to shoot an outdoor scene with Winona Ryder. My\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1068,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/cest-levy","url_meta":{"origin":818,"position":5},"title":"C’est Levy","author":"Gil","date":"August 8, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Bernhard-Henri Levy wrote an excellent essay from and about Israel in the NYTimes last Sunday: Zivit Seri is a tiny woman, a mother, who speaks with clumsy, defenseless gestures as she guides me through the destroyed buildings of Bat Galim \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d literally \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cdaughter of the waves,\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d the Haifa neighborhood that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}