Comments on: Hamas’ Deep Game

By: Jonathan Zasloff

Jonathan Zasloff — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 20:06:55 +0000

David–
It actually resembles the French government more than anything else (one more reason for conservatives to hate the PA!): there is an elected President, but there is also a Prime Minister who is head of the government. No–it isn’t clear exactly who does what. Remember that the Prime Minister system was put in when the US was attempting to marginalize Arafat. Now, Abbas is President and Hamas is the government, so the US is trying to reinforce presidential power.
I’d recommend taking a look at the PA Basic Law, which I linked to in the post. It isn’t ridiculously long, and sets forth things about as clearly as we’ve got right now.

By: David

David — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 20:00:54 +0000

Can anyone here point me to a good summary of how the PA government is structured? I gather from this post that the system is parliamentary, in the sense that a vote of no confidence can happen at any time, forcing the formation of a new government, but resembles the US in that Abbas remained in power when his party lost the legislative majority.
Thanks.

By: Dilan Esper

Dilan Esper — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 19:58:55 +0000

I don’t see how Hamas’ alleged strategy can work. There is likely a majority of Palestinians who support the Fatah position of negotiating with Israel. Hamas was able to swing enough voters over to their side with promises that they would run the government in a less corrupt fashion than Fatah. It wasn’t their hard-line against Israel that moved those voters, though Hamas’ base surely supports that. And as noted in the post, the Abbas referendum is likely to pass.
Thus, if Hamas gives up its responsibility to run the government, they will take a hit as not delivering on their campaign promises to eradicate Fatah corruption or even to try to do so. And Hamas will be left with its base, which is never going to be enough to win an election without some swing voters on “good government” issues. Seems to me that Hamas’ only hope is to try to deliver on its promises to run a cleaner government.
(I might add that I would suspect that Abbas’ recent moves are probably fairly popular in Israel, and that if he regained full power, the Olmert government would restart negotiations with him.)

By: Barry

Barry — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 12:30:44 +0000

Is this Martin Peretz doing a guest editorial, or what?
“Islamists don’t want responsibility: they want absolute power. ”
Geez, unlike every other political group in the world, which welcomed the headaces along with the glory.

By: Allan Friedman

Allan Friedman — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 23:25:36 +0000

A ruling party whose underlying philosphy depends on government not doing a good job. That sounds a little familiar…