“Hamas Routs Ruling Faction, Casting Pall on Peace Process,” read the lead headline of the New York Times on January 27, the day after the elections. “U.S. Policy Seen as Big Loser in Palestinian Vote,” said the Washington Post the next day.

Statements by Israeli and U.S. officials, however, indicate that the outcome of the Palestinian elections will have no impact on the course of either Tel Aviv or Washington regarding Israel and the broader region. Two days before the elections acting Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said Tel Aviv’s policy of maintaining settlements in the Palestinian territories and building a wall separating Israel from the West Bank would continue regardless of who runs the Palestinian Authority (PA). After Hamas was declared the winner, Olmert and Israeli military leaders made clear they would maintain the use of murderous force against Palestinians, including assassinating leaders of Hamas, as they have done in the past.

Meanwhile, U.S. president George Bush, Democratic and Republican politicians, and officials of the European Union (EU) said they will squeeze the PA to press Hamas to end armed attacks and recognize Israel.

Hamas won a decisive victory over Fatah, which has long been the dominant faction in the Palestinian Legislative Council and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Hamas won 76 of the 132 seats in parliament giving it the capacity to form a new cabinet. Palestinian officials said PA president Mahmoud Abbas, a leader of Fatah, would ask Hamas to do so. In a recent press conference Bush urged Abbas to remain in office under a Hamas-led cabinet.

In an appearance on the CBS TV program “Face the Nation,” the U.S. president said Hamas would have to disband its militias and renounce its platform calling for the destruction of Israel if the Palestinian Authority were to continue to receive financial aid from Washington. If Hamas refused, Bush said, “Aid packages won’t go forward. That’s their decision to make…. But we won’t be providing help to a government that wants to destroy our ally and friend.”  
 
PA dependent on aid
The Palestinian Authority depends heavily on funds from imperialist powers in Europe and North America, which provide $870 million of the $900 million it receives annually.

EU officials said they will not immediately cut off funding. “We will have three or four weeks to make up our minds,” said Dutch foreign minister Bernard Bot. “Once people are in power, maybe they change their position.”

Addressing a weekly cabinet meeting January 28, Olmert said if a Hamas government is installed Israel would stop the transfer to the Palestinian Authority of tens of millions of dollars in taxes and other funds it collects.

During an annual Israeli policy conference January 24, Olmert said Tel Aviv might initiate further unilateral withdrawals from Palestinian territories to “ensure a Jewish majority in the country.” This would be another step in Tel Aviv’s course of trying to maintain Israel as a junior imperialist power by acting on the reality that the Zionist dream of “Greater Israel” has collapsed, because of the “failure of Western Jews to immigrate in large numbers,” as Olmert reportedly said last year. Israeli premier Ariel Sharon, now incapacitated due to a stroke, was the architect of that course.

Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz said if Hamas resumed attacks on Israel it would face an “unprecedented Israeli attack,” reported the January 29 Jerusalem Post. Mofaz said leaders of Hamas are still subject to arrest, adding that its officials would not be guaranteed freedom of movement between the West Bank and Gaza. He noted that even under the former Palestinian administration certain Fatah officials were denied freedom of movement.

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is a bourgeois party that has often taken responsibility for “suicide bombings.” Its leaders have tried to sound a conciliatory note following the election. In an article in the January 31 Washington Post, Mousa Abu Marzook, deputy political bureau chief of Hamas, urged Washington and its allies in Europe to continue “their commitment to aid” the Palestinian Authority. He also praised the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and “the democracy you have built.”

Fatah lost popular support as an increasing number of Palestinians saw its administration of the Palestinian Authority as ineffectual on all fronts—from foreign policy to its handling of economic and social affairs, which has been marked by corruption. Many Fatah members are turning against the group’s leadership. Thousands of Fatah supporters marched in the West Bank and Gaza after the elections calling for Abbas and his cabinet to resign. They blamed Fatah’s defeat on Abbas’s policy of accommodation with Israel.

Abbas has promoted concessions to Washington and Tel Aviv with little in return. Official unemployment among Palestinians exceeds 28 percent. Between September 2000 and January 2005, Israeli forces had killed 3,570 Palestinians and injured another 28,500, the Palestinian Red Crescent reports. Their effort to quell the Palestinian “intifada” (uprising) was carried out with increasing impunity.

Israel’s “security wall” and its more than 700 checkpoints make emergency medical services all but impossible. Palestinians who call an ambulance in heart attack cases may have to meet it at a checkpoint. Israeli soldiers decide whether they will allow the ambulance to pass, or not.  
 
 
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