Mid-East Experts Answer Questions

By itself, no - the Palestinian election may have been a useful way for Palestinians to choose their own leadership but the fact of the election does not itself relieve the Palestinians of their international responsibilities or commitments. If an American president won an election on a platform denying Canada's right to exist and calling on Americans to kill all Canadians as swiftly and mercilessly as possible, the fact of the vote may call into question the sanity of the voters but it wouldn't lend any credibility to the ideas of the winner. (In point of fact, under the Oslo Accords, Hamas should not have been allowed to run in Palestinian election, given that the accords required that all political parties support the concept of peace and the essence of the agreements as a condition of their political participation.)

George Bush gave a speech here in Washington, D.C., several years ago in which he said that the U.S. has engaged the Arab world for 60 years -- and suffered 60 years of failure. He attributed this failure to the lack of democracy in the region. I agree.

He called for elections in the Arab world. The first such election was in the Palestinian Authority, in January of 2006. And what was the reaction of the administration? They strangled democracy in its crib -- imposing an embargo on Gaza and undermining the Palestinian government. Democracy is the only thing that can ever give any government or party legitimacy. And undermining democracy is the one thing that can undermine a foreign policy. And that is what has happened -- in an attempt to marginalize Hamas, we have marginalized ourselves.