What if Dubya did not push for Palestinian elections in the 2000s?

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
The Bush Administration pushed for Palestinian elections in the 2000s as part of an inconsistent but enthusiastic push for democratic reforms of regimes the US disliked.

The result was a Hamas victory and its knock-ons, a Hamas-Fatah/PA civil war and a split of Gaza and the West Bank between the two factions, a Gaza war later and a blockade. Somewhere in there was the Israeli unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.

What if the US had more realistic expectations of what it would hear if it queried the voice of the Palestinian people, and did not push the election concept.

What goes differently in the history of Gaza, intra-Palestinian relations and do forth?
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
I'd guess there is no Hamas-PA civil war in the short term, and unilaterally evacuated Gaza remains under the PA with PA security present even with a strong Hamas political influence. Gaza is less isolated economically, and there may be no flare up on the scale of the Israel-Hamas Gaza flare-up of the 2010s.
 
The democratization agenda often associated with Bush's 2nd term is often quite overstated. It is true that his inaugural address was quite forceful on the topic, but in many other countries in the region, the US push was less on free and fair elections and more on a loosening on restrictions in civil society organizations and on political rights (like in Egypt, for example).

However, the longer the elections are postponed, the better Hamas will do, as the residual popularity of Arafat before his death waned and Fatah no longer held much emotional resonance. There is a reason why they haven't done elections since 2006. Hamas would win in a landslide most likely if fair and the West Bank would devolve into a chaotic war. The very charter of the group makes pragmatism difficult enough, and when you add the relatively isolated areas like Ariel and Hebron that would present such juicy targets, and its hard to see things not breaking down.
 
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Pangur

Donor
At the time and indeed now I was puzzled about the reaction, there was an election and a result. Yet the result was not accepted acceptable to the US. Why bother push for something if you won't accept the results? It makes the US and others look so two-faced I am not asking any of the parties to love each other as it were I am asking that they accept and work with it
 
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