FEBRUARY/MARCH 2006

Those who sow the wind cannot throw up their hands in dismay when they reap the whirlwind. Hamas's overwhelming victory in the Palestinian elections, although variously described in the media as "unexpected" and "a shock", can only have come as a surprise to those who persist in viewing the Middle East from the disembodied perspective of Realpolitik, whereby the rights of real existing human beings are sacrificed to the short-term and short-sighted geo-political interests of governments.

Israel, which aided and abetted the foundation of Hamas in 1987 in order to split the Palestinian resistance, today sees the culmination of its misguided machinations. Its subsequent policy of murdering Hamas leaders - sometimes recklessly slaughtering civilians in the process - only served to enhance the prestige of the Islamists. Its ruthless interference in the workings of the Palestinian elections, and the failure of the Palestinian Authority to protect the rights of Palestinian voters both in the Occupied Territories and in occupied East Jerusalem, can only have helped push even secular Palestinians into the arms of Hamas.

The European Union, which still sometimes masquerades as providing "balance" to the pro-Israeli policies of the US, bears heavy responsibility for having ignored the requirements of the July 2004 decision of the International Court of Justice to ensure the dismantling of Israel's security barrier/apartheid wall. Tony Blair's insistence that Hamas must now choose "between a path of democracy or a path of violence" rings hollow from a leader who backed the illegal US war on Iraq on trumped-up evidence and against the wishes of the British people.

The USA, which by its catastrophic neo-imperial intervention in Iraq has already brought about a potential Shia Islamic confederation of Iran and southern Iraq, can contemplate without pride the consequences of its renunciation - under Bill Clinton, be it noted - of international law as the sole appropriate instrument for bringing a just solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict, in favour of unconditional support for the Israeli state. News that the US was diverting funds intended for aid into the electoral coffers of Fatah was probably the last nail in that organisation's coffin.

The failure of the international community as a whole to ensure the right of exiled Palestinians to vote in an election that deeply concerns them must also be taken into account. There is no knowing what impact the vote of the Palestinian diaspora might have had on the final result, but much cause to believe that such a vote would have strengthened the hand of secular and progressive forces.

One year ago the Palestinians were instructed that they must vote for Mahmoud Abbas or face direful consequences, just as in Nicaragua in 1989 the people were told to vote for the US-backed candidate or continue to suffer from US-backed Contra terror. Just as the Nicaraguans were rewarded for their despairing obedience by seeing their slowly resurgent country slip back into poverty and degradation, the Palestinians watched helplessly as Israel continued to build its barrier in defiance of the International Court of Justice, continued to demolish Palestinian homes and uproot olive-groves in pursuance of that barbarous project, continued to expand its illegal colonies in the West Bank while unilaterally vacating Gaza in order to turn that sorry strip of land into a gigantic open-air prison, continued to kill, imprison and torture Palestinian civilians without a word of protest from the West, and without President Abbas being able to lift so much as a finger to help them.

Clearly the Palestinians, the best-educated and most politically astute people in the Arab world, realised that Israel and that amorphous ideological entity known as The West would insist that any Palestinian regime was obliged to fulfil all the obligations of a sovereign government without enjoying any of the advantages of sovereignty. Thus it is possible to see their vote for Hamas as a defiant assertion of sovereignty, as the refusal of a proud and steadfast people to bow its collective head any longer to the demands of self-righteous and hypocritical nations intent on maintaining an international order based on lies and force.

In a rare flash of clarity President George W. Bush has called Hamas's victory "a wake-up call" for the old Palestinian leadership. It is more than that: it is a wake-up call for the international community. This call must not evoke a closing of ranks against the Palestinian people, still less a withdrawal of much-needed humanitarian aid. Instead, the world must for once and for all acknowledge the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to full self-determination, including the right of return. The manner in which these rights are achieved must be determined by negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis as equals on the basis of international law, and on that basis alone.

Clearly such a viewpoint is anathema to the neo-conservatives who dominate the US government, and whose allegiance to "Israel right or wrong" is beyond reason and certainly beyond justice. The European Union therefore, as Israel's principal economic partner, must rouse itself from its self-imposed impotence and take the lead in conditioning further economic co-operation with Israel on its compliance with international law and on its willingness to enter into substantive negotiations without attempting to determine who will or will not be an acceptable partner for such negotiations. Urging the new Palestinian régime to "recognize Israel and adopt exclusively peaceful means" would sound more plausible if the EU simultaneously urged Israel to end its occupation, remove its colonies, dismantle its separation barrier/apartheid wall, end its killing of Palestinian civilians and release Palestinian prisoners of war.

Raymond Deane is a founder of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and a member of its national executive.