Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl doesn’t understand Israel’s concerns about Hamas being allowed to run in upcoming Palestinian elections:
The United States also has to be prepared to set aside coercion as the primary instrument for combating groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas — provided they observe their own cease-fires. Last week Bush administration officials suggested that they were considering such a shift in the case of Hezbollah, bending to European persuasion. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas already has adopted a political strategy for Hamas, which, encouragingly, announced on Saturday that it will participate in legislative elections later this year.
Both of these steps are deeply troubling to Israel, which remains unwilling to treat the Islamic groups as anything other than a mortal adversary and military target. In the short term, at least, the emergence of Arab democratic politics could look threatening to the Middle East’s only established democracy. That is a paradox for which neither Israel nor the Bush administration appears to be prepared.
The only paradox is — Nazi brownshirts notwithstanding — how many political parties have military wings that terrorize innocent civilians?
