Powerline on Palestine

There will be a student council election tomorrow at Al-Najah university in Nablus, on the West Bank. The [accompanying] photo... shows a group of students participating in the student council election on behalf of Hamas. The Associated Press report says: Palestinian supporters of the Islamic Hamas group, holding a big map of what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.... The map reads in Arabic: 'Muslim Palestine.' This is the heritage of Yasser Arafat. When Europe, the United Nations and the Clinton administration legitimized Arafat, they legitimized the fantasy that the Israelis can be exterminated and their country turned over to the Palestinians. This is, and always has been, the goal of Hamas, Fatah, the PLO, and so on. Today a new generation of Palestinian "leaders" are following in the terrorist footsteps of Arafat and his henchmen, preferring the fantasy of genocide to the hard work of dealing with the Palestinians' dysfunctional society, corrupt government, and primitive economy... The [accompanying] photo... shows a campaign rally for Chairman Abbas, which took place earlier today in Nablus. I get the feeling that the Palestinians still don't quite have the hang of this democracy thing. The world pretty clearly has lower expectations of the forthcoming election among the Palestinians than of the just-completed election in Ukraine. It's interesting to consider why this is...

Powerline on Palestine