Foreign Policy In Focus: The Hamas Victory
The Hamas Victory: Another Side to the Story
By Stephen Zunes
Lost amidst the predictably negative reaction to the victory by Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary elections is the crucial role that the U.S. government had in bringing the radical Islamist group to power.
Both Congress and the Bush administration are on record insisting that Hamas' virulent anti-Israel stance and the history of terrorist activities by its armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, gives Israel the right to refuse to engage or negotiate with the Palestinians. However, Israel had already suspended peace talks nearly five years ago without apparent objections from U.S. officials. A majority of Israelis, according to public opinion polls, had supported a resumption of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority under its outgoing secular government, but the administration and Congress continued to back the right-wing Israeli government's refusal to talk with its Palestinian counterparts on the implementation of the Road Map, a formula backed by the “Quartet” consisting of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations.
Following the 2004 decision of the Bush administration and a huge bipartisan congressional majority to throw its weight behind Prime Minister Sharon's unilateral disengagement strategy in lieu of a negotiated withdrawal, many Palestinians saw the departure of Israeli colonists from the Gaza Strip as a result of Hamas' armed resistance, thereby giving them even less faith in a U.S.-led peace process.
Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org). He is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism.
See full FPIF article online at:
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3107
With printer-friendly pdf version at:
http://fpif.org/pdf/gac/0602hamas.pdf
By Stephen Zunes
Lost amidst the predictably negative reaction to the victory by Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary elections is the crucial role that the U.S. government had in bringing the radical Islamist group to power.
Both Congress and the Bush administration are on record insisting that Hamas' virulent anti-Israel stance and the history of terrorist activities by its armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, gives Israel the right to refuse to engage or negotiate with the Palestinians. However, Israel had already suspended peace talks nearly five years ago without apparent objections from U.S. officials. A majority of Israelis, according to public opinion polls, had supported a resumption of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority under its outgoing secular government, but the administration and Congress continued to back the right-wing Israeli government's refusal to talk with its Palestinian counterparts on the implementation of the Road Map, a formula backed by the “Quartet” consisting of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations.
Following the 2004 decision of the Bush administration and a huge bipartisan congressional majority to throw its weight behind Prime Minister Sharon's unilateral disengagement strategy in lieu of a negotiated withdrawal, many Palestinians saw the departure of Israeli colonists from the Gaza Strip as a result of Hamas' armed resistance, thereby giving them even less faith in a U.S.-led peace process.
Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org). He is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism.
See full FPIF article online at:
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3107
With printer-friendly pdf version at:
http://fpif.org/pdf/gac/0602hamas.pdf
posted by Jim Downey at 12:25 AM
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