by Mike Whitney, The Unz Review:
Is this statement true or false: Israel is justified in flattening Gaza because the Palestinians elected Hamas in 2006 which proves they support terrorism.
- True
- False
The answer is “2”. The 2006 elections do not prove that the Palestinians support terrorism. Quite the contrary. What the polling data shows is that the majority of people voted on issues completely unrelated to terrorism. Here’s what they voted for:
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- Safety and Security (37%)
- Decreased Corruption (25%)
What a surprise, eh? So, the Palestinians want the same thing that people want everywhere; More security and less corruption.
No one—and I mean no one—voted for Hamas because they thought the group would instigate more bloody confrontations with Israel. The fact that “safety and security” were the Number 1 issue, shows that there’s no appetite for more conflict at all. Palestinians—at least the majority of Palestinians—want peace. That’s what all the surveys tell us. Unfortunately, the media has tried to convince people that the opposite is true, that the people of Gaza voted for Hamas because they still cling to the idea of “pushing the Jews into the sea.” But that’s just not true. See for yourself:
An exit poll conducted by Near East Consulting on 15 February 2006 on voters participating in the 2006 PA elections revealed the following responses to major concerns:
Support for a Peace Agreement with Israel:
79.5% in support
15.5% in oppositionShould Hamas change its policies regarding Israel:
Yes – 75.2%
No – 24.8%Under Hamas corruption will decrease:
Yes – 78.1%
No – 21.9%Under Hamas internal security will improve:
Yes – 67.8%
No – 32.2%Hamas government priorities:
1) Combatting corruption
2) Ending security chaos
3) Solving poverty/unemployment
Now, I know that many people would like to scapegoat the Palestinians for the ghastly massacre that is going on today, but it just doesn’t square with the facts. Palestinians voted for Hamas—not because they thought the group was a perfect match with their own values—but because they appeared to be less corrupt than the disreputable puppets in Fatah. Americans should be sympathetic to these feelings given the similarities between the 2006 Gaza balloting and the 2016 Presidential elections in the US. In the American election, many people voted for Trump—not because they couldn’t see he was a deeply-flawed candidate with no political experience—but because his opponent was the most crooked and vindictive politician in American history. Trump was clearly the ‘lesser of two evils’, just as Hamas was the lesser of two evils.
But there’s more to this story than most people realize. And, that is, that Hamas had ordered the complete cessation of suicide bombings more than a year before the election. Did you know that?
It’s true; no more suicide missions, no more blown-up buses, retail shops and coffee houses. No more bereaved families, wailing mothers and endless funeral processions. It all stopped. And it stopped because Hamas stopped it.
Did the voters in Gaza know that?
Of course, they knew that, and it’s doubtful that Hamas would have won the election is the group had continued with the bombings. Because that’s not what the ‘average guy’ wants.
And, guess what happened after the bombings stopped?
Then Hamas decided to enter the political arena. Again, this was a significant development that was downplayed in the media but sent tremors through the Israeli political establishment.
Why?
Because Israeli leaders put the two developments together and could see what was going on. Hamas was shifting its approach from armed struggle to a political track. That is a tectonic change in policy that represented a grave threat to Israel’s broader Zionist strategy which involves the seizing of more land to form a Greater Israel.
But how was Israel going to seize more land if the Hamas boogieman had transformed himself into a dovish politician who no longer engaged in acts of terrorism? That is the conundrum that Israel faced.
It’s also worth mentioning, that as soon as Hamas won the election, they declared a unilateral ceasefire with Israel. (which put even more pressure on Israel.) In other words, Israel continued the attacks on Gaza, but Hamas refused to respond.
Additionally, Israel imposed a suffocating blockade on Gaza that has persisted until today. And the reason they did this, was because the threat of ‘peace breaking out’ was too serious to ignore. If Hamas was going to pursue a peaceful political track, then Israel would have to increase the provocations, the incitements and the brutality.
But, why?
Once again, it’s because Israel needs a boogieman to justify its operational plan for territorial expansion. It’s that simple. They can’t simply take the land by force without first concocting a pretext that will conceal their real motive. So, even though everyone knows that Israel is expelling the Palestinians in order to control all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, they still need to justify the operation in terms of a (fictitious) national security threat that they need to confront. Hamas, of course, is that fictitious threat that must be eradicated by turning all of Gaza into a smoldering pile of rubble. See how it works? Check out this brief excerpt from an article at Counterpunch in 2007:
