Like most British politicians, Tony Blair is a proud member of the British House of Commons, the mother of parliamentary democracy. Thus when a legislator like Blair speaks on democracy, as on his current Middle East peace mission, he deserves a respectful hearing. He has called for new elections in Palestine. He says the government Palestinians elected January has failed because a basic plank of its policy is that it is not currently prepared to recognize the state of Israel. Because the Hamas government would not renounce violence against Israel, the “international community” led by Blair’s friend George Bush, has mounted an economic and political blockade against the Palestinian administration. The result has been widespread economic and social disruption that has ratcheted up Hamas-Fatah rivalry so that Palestine seems now on the brink of civil war.
The only way out of this conflict, out of this threatening impasse says Blair, who as a child of the mother of parliamentary democracy should know more about the democratic process than most world politicians, is a fresh general election.
Those who would learn from the wisdom and experience of the British prime minister may well want to ask him one important question. What will happen if in another free and fair election, the Palestinian people once again choose Hamas to be their government? Presumably, his and Bush’s international community will accept the electoral verdict if it falls in favor of Fatah. We in the Middle East, who are so unversed in the matter of democracy, may not be able to appreciate the subtle difference that would allow Washington and London to however reject the choice of the Palestinians if it is once again Hamas.
Just supposing that Hamas won a second time. Would that, by some complex formula of democracy that we clearly do not understand, mean that the world’s capitals would finally accept the outcome? If so, why was their choice not good enough the first time? Or will Palestinians be forced to go to the polls for a third vote, to see if they can make a different decision?
In his busy schedule as an important international statesman, Blair has not yet had time to explain how a free election, designed to produce a government that reflects the views of the largest group of a country’s citizens, can somehow nevertheless be invalid. If, for instance, the international community had felt that Blair’s May 2005 election victory with just 35 percent of the vote was invalid, because of his unwavering support for US aggression in Iraq, would world statesmen have been right to have backed a call by the British opposition Conservatives and Liberal Democrats (with 54 percent of the vote between them) to run the election again?
Or, then again, should Blair, as a democratic champion, have demanded a completely fresh US 2000 presidential election after the Miami-Dade County voting machine scandal let George W. Bush into the White House? If he had, at the very least, it would have saved at least 600,000 Iraqi lives. But he did not. Why?
