For years, the Left has been telling us that the innocent, victimised Palestinian people (actually Egyptians and Jordanians) just want peace with those nasty bullies from Israel. Well, the Palestinians themselves finally got the chance to tell the world what they really want. A free and open election in the Palestinian territories has put an Iran-backed terrorist group in power, a group that has sworn to destroy Israel. How "peace-loving" is that?

The Fatah party openly favored negotiation with Israel leading to a two-state solution and an independent Palestine. Hamas, the largest and most influential Muslim fundamentalist movement in the Palestinian territories, entered the political fray with a platform based on the death of all Jews, and the utter destruction of Israel. Unfortunately, the party with peace talks and negotiation in mind was voted out due to corruption scandals and inability to keep order in the cities. That put the party with "a bomb on every bus" for a motto in control, to everyone's surprise.

Hamas is a terror group formed in 1987 to push for the eradication of Israel. An essential part of their ideology is that the Palestinian problem is religious, and therefore can never be solved by political compromise. They believe that the land "from the [Jordan] river to the sea" is consecrated to Islam. It cannot be given up, not even a part of it, especially not Jerusalem. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the group of Arab fanatics that served as an arm of Nazi intelligence during WWII. Hamas now receives a majority of its funding from Iran, funneled through Hezbollah and other groups.

A December 2000 intelligence report, for instance, showed that Iran transferred $1,200,000 to Hamas's Qassam Brigades to support 'the Hamas military arm in Israel and encouraging suicide operations.' According to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies, Iranian support for Hamas and other terrorist organisations is widespread:

Findings related to the interrogation of prisoners captured and documents seized in Operation Defensive Shield show the existence of an institutionalized and systematic network for transferring large sums of money operated by Iran through the organizations under its auspices, which use the banking systems of Syria and the Palestinian territories. Interrogation of the prisoners and the seized documents reveal large-scale transfer of money from Syria and Lebanon to Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and indirectly also to the Fatah/al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (in addition to funds received by Fatah from the Palestinian Authority). These funds were used to encourage murderous terror activities in the Palestinian territories and in Israel; carrying out these activities was a condition for transferring financial support to the terror operatives in the field.

The fact that Hamas runs soup kitchens and health clinics in the Palestinian territories doesn't make up for bombed-out buses and restaurants in Israel. Such community support is useful to terrorist groups needing good will from the populace, not evidence of pure civic-mindedness. Luckily, that's a lesson the terrorists in Iraq never managed to learn, or the (mostly Sunni) insurgents would not be starting to turn against them now.

So the Palestinian people elected Hamas to 74 of the 132 seats in their parliament. Must we treat Hamas as a legitimate political entity if they continue to carry out terrorist attacks? Of course not. President Bush has already warned Hamas that US aid to the Palestinian Authority depends on the cessation of terrorist attacks and the repudiation of their intention to destroy Israel. It was bad enough when the Palestinian government pretended to have no control over Hamas... now the Palestinian government is Hamas. 

Our tax dollars should not go to support Hamas or any other terror group... especially when they already have enough support from Iran. Our resolve to prevent Iran from building a nuclear device must be stronger than ever, now that Iran has a willing delivery system on Israel's doorstep. Israel's security fence may be their best protection from Palestinian terrorists armed with pipe bombs... but it won't stop a nuclear weapon.

Does this election mean, as many Liberals would like to claim, that democracy has failed and freedom in the Middle East is a pipe dream? Hardly. It merely drives home the lesson that open elections are not the sole component of democracy; that along with freedom comes responsibility. Choices do have consequences.

If Hamas renounces terrorism and behaves as a legitimate government, international repercussions will likely be few. The new government already faces the possibility of civil war within the Palestinian territory, as even members of the police force have stormed the parliament building in protest of the Hamas victory. Some Fatah party leaders have already resigned, either through fear of their constituents or refusal to work with Hamas. There isn't much hope for peace with Israel at this point. It seems as though Ariel Sharon's gamble of surrendering Gaza in the hope of buying peace isn't going to pan out, after all. On the other hand, at least we can all dispense with the fiction that the Palestinians want peace with Israel.

Demands for Mahmoud Abbas and the leaders of the Fatah party to resign will probably shift to calls for party reform in the near future, as even the most violent Palestinians prefer fighting Israel to fighting with their own government. With any luck, the Fatah party -- or another, reform-minded party -- can gain enough of a voice to prevent Hamas from declaring all-out war with Israel. That's a road that will lead to no good for anyone.