The surprise in the Palestinian election is that anyone is surprised. Apparently the returns were a real shocker in Washington and Davos, Switzerland, where hundreds of the world's richest and most powerful were meeting for their annual ego rubs.
Washington had put money into the Palestinian Bantustans before the election to insure the re-election of Yasir Arafat's old party, Fatah. Either President Bush did not put enough money in to buy enough votes or the Palestinians double-crossed him. It is just like a Muhammadan to take a man's money and then vote the wrong way. If more proof were needed that Arabs have a long way to go toward learning how Democracy works, that was it.
After the returns had come in and stunned the world a puzzled Rev. Bush was heard to say, "If there is corruption, I'm not surprised that people say, let's get rid of corruption. If government hadn't been responsive, I'm not the least bit surprised that people said, 'I want government to be responsive.'"
Huh?
Has anyone heard anything coming out of the God forsaken territory they are penned up in suggesting that, Arabs though they may be, they are content with their helpless squalor? The surprise is that any of them voted for Fatah. Maybe it goes to show that if you bribe some Arabs, they stay bribed.
Now Hamas, the terrorist group, is elected and there is a mass freak out because the organization's charter fails to recognize Israel's right to exist. What difference does that make in the real world? So what if Hamas wants to obliterate Israel? How is Hamas going to make Israel go away? Who has the atom bombs here? Who has the air force? Who has the tanks? This is a classic case of sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.
If the reports are accurate, every few months or so Hamas succeeds in getting a suicide bomber into Israel to blow up a bus (with people in it) or an ice cream parlor (with other people in it), thereby killing and maiming many non-combatants. After each such act, the Palestinians do their bloody jihad routine about how glad they are to have murdered little kids, etc. This boasting and drinking of blood in public has done little to help the Hamas image. They need to hire a publicist who can teach them, after each attack, to say the bombing was intended to take out an Israeli government official/war criminal and that they are very sorry about the babies who got killed but that's collateral damage for you.
On the electoral front, Arabs being Arabs, President Bush should know better than to try and steal an election with those people. They are too new to democracy. This is Palestine, not Florida or Ohio. Anyway, the connection in people's minds between democracy and election is purely artificial. The more advanced countries have election-free or, as Karl Rove might put it, "guided democracies." They work better and you always get your money's worth.
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