[Mb-civic] Caught Between Ballots and Bullets - Jackson Diehl - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Caught Between Ballots and Bullets

By Jackson Diehl
Monday, February 13, 2006; A21

Probably the most interesting reaction to Hamas's victory in the 
Palestinian elections was one of the least noticed. It came from Essam 
Erian, a leading spokesman of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, of which 
Hamas is a branch. Erian duly lauded Hamas's "great victory." But then 
he added, according to a report by the Associated Press, that the 
Islamic militant movement should take up the challenge "of maintaining 
good relations with the Arab governments and world powers to secure 
support for the Palestinian cause."

The message from one Muslim fundamentalist to another was unmistakable: 
Don't be evil. Go along with the Egyptian government and the Arab 
League, which are demanding that Hamas renounce violence and accept 
previous Palestinian accords with Israel. Find a way to keep the aid 
dollars of the European Union and United States. No more suicide bombings.

Such rhetoric confounds the common assumption in Washington that Islamic 
extremists -- al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood -- are 
merely different versions of the enemy with which the United States has 
been at war since Sept. 11, 2001. But Erian's words would come as no 
surprise to Ayman Zawahiri, the Egyptian who is Osama bin Laden's 
deputy, or Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al Qaeda commander in Iraq. Both 
recently condemned the Muslim Brotherhood, and by extension Hamas, for 
playing George W. Bush's game of democracy. "How can anyone choose any 
other path but that of jihad?" lamented Zarqawi.

In fact, Bush's strategy of insisting on elections -- in Iraq, in Egypt, 
in Lebanon and in the Palestinian Authority -- has had the effect of 
widening a rift among the region's Islamic fundamentalists. Some, like 
the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan, have embraced democracy, and 
broken with the terrorists. Erian recently published an article in the 
Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram defending Ayman Nour, the secular democrat 
who was jailed in December on trumped-up charges by the government of 
Hosni Mubarak. His Muslim Brotherhood won 88 seats, about 20 percent of 
the total, in Egypt's parliamentary elections last fall. In Jordan the 
Brotherhood, which will soon participate in local elections, helped to 
organize popular demonstrations against Zarqawi and al Qaeda after the 
bombings of three Amman hotels in November.

Hamas and Hezbollah, once firmly in al Qaeda's camp, now straddle the 
gap. Both movements have joined in parliamentary elections, and both 
have ceased acts of terrorism for the past year while refusing to give 
up their militias, weapons or the option of violence. Because of their 
participation in democratic politics, each is under unprecedented 
pressure to choose between Zarqawi and Erian; between pursuing an 
Islamic agenda by violence or by ballots. Because Hamas is the first 
Sunni Islamic movement to win an election outright, its choice is 
particularly important: If it were to fully embrace democratic politics, 
the sponsors of terrorism in the Middle East -- not just al Qaeda but 
Syria and Iran -- would suffer a momentous loss.

It's in that light that the Bush administration watches the complex, 
multi-sided maneuvering that has followed the Palestinian elections. On 
one side stand Israeli hawks and their hard-line supporters in Congress, 
who insist a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority would be "a terrorist 
entity," or "Hamastan," as Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu calls it. 
They urge that the Islamists be prevented from taking office -- or that 
the Palestinian Authority be strangled if they do. On a second side is 
Iran, which demands that Hamas make no concessions and offers fresh 
funding in the event of a Western boycott. On a third side are Egypt and 
other secular Arab regimes, which support neither democracy nor Islamic 
movements; they'd like to make the secular Palestinian president, 
Mahmoud Abbas, into a strongman. On a fourth are the Europeans, who are 
likely to soften their current resistance to a Hamas government, and 
Russia, which already has. Hamas itself is divided between hard-line 
outsiders, who live in Damascus on Iranian funding, and leaders in Gaza 
who won the elections by stumping on a moderate platform of clean 
government and better services.

The pitfalls here are abundant: Rob Hamas of its victory and it will 
return to the terrorism of Iran and al Qaeda, while the Palestinian 
Authority collapses. Let it off the hook and it will try to 
simultaneously govern and wage war on Israel, much as did Yasser Arafat. 
Somewhere in the middle lies the possible outcome suggested by the 
Brotherhood -- a nonviolent Palestinian Islamic cabinet that, while 
unready to endorse Israel, will accept existing Palestinian-Israeli 
agreements and the results of future elections. A peace accord would 
have to wait -- one was in any case most improbable -- but a foundation 
for the peaceful and democratic Palestinian state Bush has called for 
could at last be laid.

The odds are not great. Even if the administration can calibrate the 
right mix of pressure and de facto tolerance, and get Israel to go 
along, Hamas might not respond. It may be, as some argue, that Islamic 
militants are incapable of converting to democracy as have secular 
terrorist movements. But without the elections, there would be no 
opportunity at all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/12/AR2006021201184.html
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