By Kathleen Kern

Democracy in its various forms works like this: A country holds elections. People vote for candidates to represent them. Once the winning candidates take power, they appoint ministers and advisers, while those chosen by the losing candidates move on.

The most recent Palestinian attempt at democracy worked like this: Palestinians, in a 2006 election that international monitors declared free and fair, chose Hamas to represent them. The United States, Israel and other Western nations told Palestinians they had made the wrong choice.

Israel withheld tax revenues that Palestinians had paid, and Western nations withheld desperately needed aid.

The United States and Israel then told the Fatah political party that lost the election to “share” power with Hamas. Hamas agreed to do so, even though it had won the election, because it wanted to avoid economic sanctions. Thus, more than a year after the elections, Palestinian police stations and other government buildings were still in the hands of Fatah rather than the elected government.

In July, Christian Peacemaker Teams activist Rich Meyer wrote about the violence between Hamas and Fatah militias in Gaza:

“What happened [in June] was the election results of last year finally taking effect after a considerable U.S.-imposed delay. Tragically, 25 people were killed in this stage of the transfer of power. . . . Fatah needs to do what any political party does after a drubbing at the polls — accept the judgment of the voters, regroup and reform, clean up their act and prepare for the next elections.”

Instead, Fatah has moved to the West Bank and become a quisling government, accepting tokens — a few political prisoners released, a few more Palestinians permitted to work minimum wage jobs in Israel — from the Israeli government, which has made no commitment to stop the confiscation of Palestinian land or end its military occupation of Palestine.

As for Hamas, Palestinian-American activist Ali Abunimah writes:

“Hamas has the choice to articulate an agenda that can live up to the aspirations of Palestinian society in all its diversity, or it can leap into the traps that are being set for it. . . . It must begin to articulate a vision for the future that takes into account the reality of 11 million Israeli Jews and Palestinians living in a small country. We know what Hamas is against, but no one is clear what it is for.”

When asked what I see as the solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I always say that I am in favor of whatever option results in the fewest dead, traumatized and exploited people. I do not see a Hamas government bringing that outcome. However, Hamas has declared a 40-year cease-fire if Israel withdraws to the 1967 border — as international law obligates it to do.

In the unlikely event that Israel chose to follow this law, I suspect after 40 years, Palestinians and Israelis would do just about anything not to return to the current state of savagery, just as the Protestant and Catholics of Northern Ireland decided they were finished with killing each other after several violent decades.

British journalist Johann Hari adds another compelling reason why Hamas should be allowed to govern: “Every time the Israeli government rejects a Palestinian leader because he is too hard-line, they do not get a cuddly Gandhian moderate in his place. They get somebody more hard-line still.”

For an eyewitness view of recent events by a resident of Gaza, see http://gazagardens.blogspot.com.