The Foreign-political Oxymoron of World Politics

Undoubtedly, January 2006 was the political month of the Middle East. Iranian nuclear ambitions, Palestinian general elections, the state of health of Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon, and Iraq's instability were the factors that made world politics focus primarily on that region. Apparently, its attention will stay focused there for quite a while as in January processes started that are supposed to result in a change. Once again the Middle-East politics lost balance and fell in yet another whirlpool, evoking associations with chronic want of stability. I remember how Shimon Peres, an unquestionable authority both on the Israeli and the world political scene, put it with utmost simplicity in an interview three years ago. I asked him why the Middle East is the place where it is most difficult to answer the question about war and peace, and he said: “Over the past 6000 years thirty empires took turns in the Middle East: Romans, Greeks, Babylonians, Americans, Russians… Almost everybody had vested interests in the Middle East… Strangely as it may seem, people fight to change their past and history rather than attempt struggling to change their future. One can't change the history of one's country unless one is a Stalinist. So, a politician like me strives to tell people: Look, we could live thinking about the future, rather than about the past alone.” It is worth recalling the explanation of Peres precisely in this moment, when the present of the Middle East looks vague, and the future of the peace process – so uncertain.

The political issues in line with the health of Ariel Sharon as well as the Palestinian polls, won by the radical group Hamas concern the health of the Middle-East peace process as a whole. For the time being these issues have no solutions. They project themselves on the “everlasting” Israeli-Palestinian relations, which have been alternating for decades now between a state of coma or artificial respiration and spells of hope for independent and peaceful life for “local actors”. The issues are also insolent enough to be tied up with the problems, created by the unachievable for the time being stabilization of Iraq and directly correspond with the Iranian nuclear challenge, which could well bring the established rules of nuclear policy to brain death. Next come the insecure processes ongoing in Syria and Lebanon or, for example, in Egypt – all of them being countries also fallen sway to unavoidable influence. All those brought together are a good example of the well tightened Middle-East knot, which has happened to become the medical case of world politics for quite a while now.

After the Palestinian elections one year to the day, the post-Yasser-Arafat era started. At the time it was reasonable to conclude that maybe it was time for a new start in Palestinian political history, which was fathomed by the brief spells between the intifadehs and ceasefires with Israel. Elections of early 2006 created new proportions in Palestinian politics, fraught with potentials for a setback in the difficult Middle-East peace processes. The emergence of the radical Hamas Islamist Movement as a ruling factor in Palestinian politics sets new challenges, the ramifications of which in terms of the region's stability are hardly predictable. The Israeli-Palestinian relations have proved for quite a while now to be the foreign-policy oxymoron of international politics, making the world mix up the notions of peace and ceasefire. After the radical Islamist group Hamas won the polls, those relations are seriously threatened to become mutually incompatible notions. In fact, since January last, dangerous transitions have started both in the Palestinian camp and the conflict with Israel.

Analyzing the situation in the wake of the Palestinian polls, it proves insufficient just to conclude that the elections, undoubtedly pivotal to the Palestinians were held democratically, as well as to ponder over the way they made an independent choice of their own. In fact, it has been for the first time in a long while that they search for political solutions to their domestic relations through parliamentary elections. It has to be welcomed as there is no better way to do so than holding democratic elections. Yet the answers to at least two questions are no less important. Would Palestinian politics radicalize with the emergence of Hamas on the political and diplomatic arena, and would that choice of the Palestinians affect the nervous system of the Middle-East peace process as a whole? Moreover that in the topical situation of everything ongoing in and related to Palestine, there are new facts and processes, pouring content into one another and being interrelated. We are talking here, for example, about the problems in Iraq, the unachievable stabilization of which directly depends on the stabilization of the region as a whole. We are talking also about the issues of Iran's nuclear ambitions, creating a very shaky framework for the security in the region and generally, for the system of international relations.

Naturally, the election results affect most directly the domestic Palestinian relations. The catastrophic election loss of Fatah, the only party the Palestinians had been associating with their striving for liberation and with the administration for four decades now, would for sure trigger changes within the party, as well as in the relations with Hamas. The relations with Israel will suffer most of all. Moreover that the Sate of Israel found itself in an awkward situation in the wake of Ariel Sharon's health problems and prior to the key Israeli general elections slated to be held in March this year. The development of the Palestinian issue will also depend on the distribution of the cards in the post-Sharon era. It was not an accident that the Hamas spokesman said “Sharon's withdrawal from politics would change the world political map.”