A Shake-Up in The Arab Dream House

Unlike some in the commentariat, Dr. Potomac is not seriously disturbed by the fact that the radical Hamas faction has captured control of the Palestinian Authority. On university campuses across America, this is what would be called a "teachable moment."

The dominant feature of Arab politics is that it is buried in so many layers of lies and self-deception that it is paralyzed. The typical Arab government is a strong-man atop a restive populace who plays a double game of eliciting aid from the West while keeping its domestic population satisfied anti-Israeli (and anti-Semetic) rhetoric. (As the late Herman Talmadge said of politics, it is an art of taking votes from the poor and money from the rich while promising to protect them from one another. The Arab strongman simply plays this game at a higher and more dangerous level.)

In this sense, the Hamas victory is clarifying because it begins to wash away layers of political illusion. Namely, it has had the effect of installing a leadership that at least reflects the attitudes and misconceptions of the population it governs. To the extent that its rhetoric is anti-Israeli, it will have the virtue of being sincerly so and can therefore be dealt with in a serious fashion. No more will we have to degrade ourselves or the Palestinians by pretending that we believed their leadership while that leadership pretended to make peace with Israel. If the Hamas government continues in its aggressive ways, we pull the aid plug and no one (possibly not even the French) will say we have gone too far. The collapse of what remains of the economy in the West Bank and Gaza strip will teach its own lessons about elected extremism.

The second layer of this cleansing is merely potential. Elections change things, including the party that wins. In the post-election "man on the street" interviews one heard rather little concerning the destruction of Israel as the top priority of the average voter. One did hear a great deal about corruption, lack of basic services and problems with the local economy. Assuming Hamas must face a second clean election (a dicey assumption, Dr. Potomac admits) there will have to be a rather dramatic overhaul of the Hamas platform if the group intends to maintain its majority. One reason that democratic states don't start wars is that their politicians are too busy attending to the concerns of voters. War is bad for political business and is therefore avoided unless absolutely necessary.

This is all speculative, of course, and a whole variety of nightmare scenarios remain all too plausible. On the other hand, the world had just spent forty years on a road to nowhere with Arafat and Company. The Hamas victory at least gives us the chance to begin a frank and open conversation with a part of the world that has for too long been a deception, wrapped in a lie, inside a falsehood. It seems rather hopeful compared to diplomatic nonsense that preceded it.