Was Palestinian Vote for Hamas Really a Vote for Clean Government?
Just over a year ago, Palestinians elected to be governed by Hamas. Most pundits and media reports accepted the explanation that the Palestinians were not voting for Hamas’s extreme prescription for resolving the conflict with Israel — wiping out the Jewish state — but rather, were sending a message that the endemic corruption of the Fatah run Palestinian Authority was no longer tolerable. It was claimed that Hamas, while extreme ideologically, was free of the corruption, waste and nepotism that characterized Fatah.
A year in to Hamas’s rule, a different picture has emerged. When asked if the Hamas government had done anything well in the past year, recently appointed finance minister Salam Fayyad, a professional economist who is not a member of Hamas, responded:
The state of public finance has suffered and suffered badly. There has been a reversal of many areas of reform. Transparency—there’s been a major decline there. Extra-budgetary spending re-emerged. Getting a handle on what’s been going on becomes more difficult. It’s the job of the treasurer to know what’s going on. None of this has happened. We need to fix the system in a hurry. (Newsweek, March 5, 2007)
Fayyad’s statement, worded in a polite manner, reveals that many of the same issues of mismanagement that dogged the Fatah-dominated government persist in the new Hamas government.
Meanwhile, a recent opinion poll shows a substantial majority of Palestinians do not recognize Israel’s right to exist, which puts them in agreement with Hamas’s vision about the future of Israel.
All of this raises important questions: Should commentators and pundits who ascribed Hamas’s victory merely to a desire for cleaner government have been more skeptical and open-minded about the motives of Palestinian voters? And in future elections, will they continue to stick by this explanation despite evidence to the contrary?
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