Hamas did win the elections in 06 - I followed them and they won on a platform of promising better social programs thantheir opponents.

That was um - 8 years ago. In the immediate aftermath their actions drew sanctions from the US, EU, UN and Russia, on the entire Palestinian Authority, and they wound up splitting from the unified government and taking over Gaza. That led to the sanctions being lifted against the PA and imposed on Gaza alone. Then they had a civil war with Fatah over control of Gaza (which to be fair was just as much if not more Fatah's initiative) and wound up killing and expelling the rival Fatah government members from Gaza entirely. After this, a blockade was imposed on Gaza by both Israel and Egypt, as Hamas secured its iron grip on Gaza and routinely affirmed its ideological goal to "liberate" Palestine from the Zionists - a completely impractical diplomatic position that harmed the Gaza population enormously for the next decade.

Not that Hamas was too concerned about that. They were getting funding from Islamic states and went to work securing the Gaza strip and consolidating its power. To its credit, Gaza is tribal (the clans are called Hamullas) and it plunged into anarchy in the aftermath of Israeli withdrawal and resettlement of all Israelis from the Gaza strip. You can appreciate the situation preceding these elections by reading some news articles from the time:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/17/international/middleeast/1...

It is in this environment that Hamas, an organization committed to an ideology that it placed above the lives of Israelis and indeed Gazans - came to prominence. Since that election there have been no fair and free elections. I don't think the mark of a democracy is that they have one election and the majority party drive out the rest of the government and maintain an iron grip for the next couple decades. They are closer to the Kim regime in North Korea. Hamas's governancd has been terrible for the Gazans by perpetuating their blockade, and Hamas itself has become almost completely internationally isolated. In this latest war, an unprecedented number of nations including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE have joined the chorus calling for their disarmament.

So I would take issue with the idea that Hamas is somehow a legitimate and good government for the people of Gaza. Before this war, most of them wanted to get rid of Hamas! Having said that, operations like this cause people to support Hamas who they now would elect over Fatah leaders if elections were held today. This itself is sad because as has been shown over and over Hamas perpetuates the suffering of Palestinians. Not just because of international sanctions and nearbcomplete isolation, and not just because of expanding Sunni Sharia which hurts less Islamically religious Palestinians including Christians, etc. but at the root because they put their ideology ahead of human lives. Any ideology in power - whether nazism, communism, or in this case a fanatical belief that "All Palestine is a waqf to Islam until the end of the world" which is in their charter - leads to mass death. After all technically speaking Hitler may have been democratically elected. So we should guard against this.

Having said that, I think Revisionist Zionism is the ideology that empowers the radicals on the Palestinian side, whether religious or not. Not all Zionism but Revisionist zionism, which traces its roots to Jabotinsky but ultimately found expression in such groups as Lehi and Irgun. Menachem Begin was despised by the main leaders of Israel such as Ben Gurion and the entire Labor party. It is interesting to note that at that time Israel was within the "1967 lines" and got even more threats from various Arab countries, that said they shouldn't have a state at all. Besides launching actul military attacks against Israel, many Arab countries also expelled Jews (a sort of Jewish Nakba, the main difference being that Jews had a state that welcomed them, a state which the Arab League nations wanted to destroy without regard to how many people lived in it).

Not many people talk about this but the expelled Jews were able to find a home in Israel and swell its population. In fact most Jews in Israel came to Israel as refugees - whether from the Holocaust in Europe or the expulsion from Arab countries BEFORE 1967. Some went to Israel, others went to the US, China and Western countries. They were able to get asylum and their children have become citizens!

Meanwhile millions of Palestinian refugees do not get the same treatment, even and especially from the Arab League countries that are supposedly championing their "cause" to begin with!

Their actual treatment by these countries is appalling. Did you know that over half of the people considered "Palestinian" live OUTSIDE Israel, te West Bank and Gaza? For GENERATIONS they have lived as refugees with NO citizenship. Think about that - you live in a segregated "refugee camp" and barred (in countries such as Lebanon) from owning property or holding many jobs (doctor, lawyer etc.) Your children born in the land - no matter how many generations - do not get citizenship and spend their lives in the same situation.

This is ACTUAL apartheid and it has been artificially perpetuated by many Arab League countries, while claiming it is for their own good. It's not a joke, the Jordanian govt has consistently said this as a talking point as recently as in the last decade. They refuse to give asylum specifically to Palestinians - even the ones fleeing the civil war in Syria. They simply drive them back over the border (whatever the UN conventions about that may be.

There is an element of realpolitik here that most Western "free Gaza" protestors miss. Arab countries HAVE tried to take in Palestinians but experienced their own problems with the PLO. This idea that Palestinians should have their own state has played out in more theaters than Israel. The Jordanian government had a civil war with the PLO after it annexed the West Bank and it does not want to go back to that dark time again. Kuwait expelled Palestinians because the PLO sided with Saddam in the Gulf war. Lebanon's Hezbollah formed out of a Shiite minority funded by Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran as much against the influx of Sunni Palestinians (the PLO was based IN Lebanon at the time) as the Israeli army's activities in Lebanon. And just as recently as last year, Assad committed genuine war crimes against his Palestinian population living in refugee camps, such as cutting off food and starving tens of thousand of Palestinians in a camp that used to be the largest one in Syria with hundreds of thousands.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/three-years-of-civil-war-in-syr...

So instead of the neatly packaged narrative of "Israel vs Palestinians" look at it as people, governments and ideas. How many millions of people and their generations of children living in Arab countries have to suffer because of the excuse that the policy supports building a Palestinian state in Palestine? Imagine if Jews were told by European nations that they had to live in 21st century ghettos for as many generations as it took until Israel was established. Not even the USSR - a militantly atheistic country - treated them this badly. Palestinian nationalism wasnt even a dominant movement until the PLO, and like all movements to forma state and get power, the PLO had its share of corruption. But millions of Palestinians have to pay the price, not at Israel's hands but other countries as well. Actualy, arguably speaking the Palestinians who live in Israel proper have the same quality of life as in Western countries such as Canada where they have real opportunities (the singer Nasri for example, whose song is currently topping the charts, is of Palestinian descent). And if they get their own state, there are legitimate reasons to worry it won't be very tolerant of Jews, Christians and will most likely be a Sunni Sharia state.

So I guess there is a point to my whole essay that I wound up writing here. Look at people, look at governments and international coalitions and talk about ways those those governments can work together to benefit the people at large, economy, real infrastructure, and protections for minorities. There are no easy solutions but if international programs are put in place, with a realistic roadmap and accountability, and governments each do their part, we can solve these problems brick by brick. Expecting Israel to do it all alone is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Look at the new geopolitical alliances in the Arab and Persian world because of ideological jihadist threats like ISIS, look at te unprecedented will to disarm Hamas, and start there. Let's start helping people.

http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=172

http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=174