20906, 10:33 am
The response by a number of Western governments to the election of Hamas in the Palestinian elections blows sky-high any belief that they have a genuine commitment to democratic elections. The will of the electorate is only accepted if the voters elect those that are acceptable to the interests of these governments.
This truth has been apparent for a long time but the outpourings following the Palestinian elections are a dramatic and very obvious confirmation. All the talk of Hamas being a “terrorist” organisation does not wash away the fact that in a “free and fair” election they were voted in to form a government.
Successive Israeli Governments have regularly killed Palestinian leaders by “targeted assassinations”, used their armed forces to invade Palestinian land and terrorise the people. They have invaded Lebanon, Syria and Egypt and used their airforce to bomb a nuclear facility in Iraq some years ago. These actions are also “terrorist” but the same Western governments have no hesitation in backing Israel all the way.
Genuine democracy means the participation of the people, not just in electing a government, but in the decisions that have to be made on economic, social and foreign policy questions. This is facilitated and established in law. Such a system does not exist in Australia or in any other Western country where the political parties choose those who are to be put up for election and there are few means (apart from protest actions) for the public to have further input into decisions. There is also the question of the role of the media and the huge corporate donations to political parties to ensure the election of persons who become stooges of the corporations and protect their interests.
The vastly superior Cuban electoral system has not stopped the United States maintaining a decades-long boycott of everything Cuban, including the travel of its own citizens to Cuba. Cuba’s democratic system has not stopped the United States from making many attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Is this not also terrorism?
The same can be said for Venezuela where the election of Hugo Chávez as President of that country has been confirmed on a number of occasions in democratic elections. This has not stopped the US from attempting to destabilise that country by economic sabotage and the organising and financing of undemocratic opposition forces.
The attitude of the West is not determined by whether or not there is a democratic electoral system but whether the governments of countries implement economic, social and foreign policies that are acceptable to the governments of the West, the US and Britain in particular.
For many decades the US helped to impose and supported fascist dictatorships in a number of South American countries – Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay and others. They support to this day the autocratic and totally unelected governments of Saudi Arabia and several other Middle East states. They also supported Saddam Hussein and supplied him with weapons when Iraq was waging a war against Iran.
Western governments and the Israeli Government now declare that they will not negotiate with Hamas unless it renounces “terrorism” and disarms. They also threaten to cut off financial assistance to Palestinians. The fact is that no negotiations had taken place with the Palestinian Authority for at least the last two years and the Israeli Government had declared that there was no Palestinian body to negotiate with. Yasser Arafat was confined to house arrest by the Israeli army.
The fact is that the policies of the Israeli Government led directly to the election of Hamas. The power to break the current impasse in the long abandoned peace negotiations and to move towards the required two-state solution lies with the government of Israel and its backers.
From The Guardian
