The Bitter Pill

One of the mantras of the Left is that Hamas winning the election will actually spur peace because Hamas will be forced into dealing with Israel as the head of state, and not as the outsider party committed to terrorism and dedicated to Israel's destruction.

There's more than a few holes in that assumption. Fatah never changed its policy towards Israel and they were in charge of the Palestinian Authority since it was created in the wake of the Oslo Accords. Fatah (the largest party of the PLO) never revoked the sections of its charter calling for Israel's destruction.

Fatah's policies towards Israel were dualist in nature - say one thing in English and something totally different in Arabic. Fatah would say all the right things to the cameras for the US and European audience, but would incite and forment violence. Memri has the details on the years of deception. From textbooks used in Palestinian schools that reject Israel's right to exist, to formenting anti-Semitism by perpetuating racist and anti-Jewish stereotypes, Fatah continued its struggle to eliminate Israel.

But Fatah did more than just condone violence - it was an active participant. The al Aqsa Martys Brigade wasn't some separate and distinct terrorist group. It is part of Fatah and the PLO. Fatah created the fiction that it was separate from the AAMB, although many of its security forces were in the AAMB, assisted in planning terrorist attacks, and were implicated in terrorism on numerous occasions. And Fatah did nothing to stop terrorism by other groups, including Hamas.

In fact, Fatah used groups like Hamas to Fatah's own advantage, 'cracking down' on Hamas to give the appearance that they were sincere about living up to security obligations, but would turn around and release the folks they took prisoner in revolving terrorism justice. In the front door, and out the back to commit yet more terroist acts.

But for all of Fatah's direct and indirect attacks against Israel, it couldn't destroy Israel fast enough for the likes of Hamas. Hamas followers saw how corrupt Fatah was - stealing money from the Palestinian people and Hamas' ranks swelled with disaffected Fatah supporters who grew tired of empty promises.

So, with Hamas coming to power under these circumstances, there is absolutely no reason to believe that Hamas will moderate or give up terrorism as a means to an end. Fatah never gave up terrorism despite the fact that it was in charge and Israel never took the final steps of reoccupying territories provided to the Palestinians for civil administrative control under Oslo despite definitive links to terrorism. At one point Israel shuttered Arafat and his staff in their Ramallah compound, but did little more than limit access.

My expectation is that Hamas will follow the Fatah lead and say one thing for US/EU audiences and quite another to their followers - who've been led to believe that they absolutely every reason to continue their fight because they still think that they can win more than 55 years after losing every conflict with Israel. They're just going to wait out the Israelis and hope that the world finally gives in to their craven demands.

Hamas will even establish offshoot terrorist groups that will do their bidding with plausible deniability - a military wing that still answers to Hamas, but the leadership will claim is a part of Hamas no longer. All the while, Hamas will engage in terrorism and undermining Israel's very right to exist.

In the end, nothing will truly change until the Palestinians come to accept that Israel is a fact of life that is immutable. But in order for that to change, Hamas has to give up its basic tenets - the superiority of Islam over Judaism and Christianity and the righteousness in using suicide bombings and terrorism to fulfill its goals. That simply will not happen unless there's a sea-change in religious and political thought, which, in and of itself, would bring about charges of apostasy and fatwas calling for the death of those who seek to alter that religious outlook.