Hamas victory is horrible..

Submitted by M Saleem Akhtar (United States), Feb 5, 2006 at 09:45

The main problem that I see with Hamas victory is it looks as if the arab street is now equating israeli-palestinian conflict as a 'jewish-islamic conflict'. One can only hope that its a true assumption that Hamas won because of its local work and corruption of Fatah.

For a layperson, Fatah represents a geo-political struggle while Hamas is an extremist religious organization. For palestinan arabs to vote for a fundamentalist wahabist islamic movement like hamas, instead of a secular political movement as fatah, is a dangerous mindset.

Its very bad sign for the secular and peaceful forces in the sunni muslim countries as well. The media is partly to blame for this as well as highlighting acts of a few hundred fundamentalist morons serves only to alienate the moderate muslims.

On the contrary it is also interesting to observe the opinion of some people who think that Hamas in power will soften them up as they now have a 'responsibility' and just plain old 'rhetoric' will not work. It might be that in the end, Hamas being in power will eventually turn out well for Israel and the middle-east.

As I have mentioned in my previous posts.. there needs to be a broad based dialogue between people following the Jewish and Islamic faiths. If the many un-educated muslims do realize that Israel is the ancient land of the Jews, written in the Islamic texts as well, there will be no reason for the palestinians to fight for any 'land'. Main problem is lack of a dialogue between Arabs and Israelis and understanding of each other's positions. That is the sole reason why Hamas and Ahmedinijaad are making ground and secular forces are losing..

This broad-based dialogue, if happens, will literally 'kill' organizations like Hamas or other right wing organizations in extremist muslim countries like Iran. A non-arab, Musharraf, tried to start that process last year and one can only hope it continues. Like many I do believe that Islam and Judaism have so many similarities, they will best co-exist with long-term peace and stability, mutual respect for each other and understanding.

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