Match made in Heaven

As Schmittian logic dictates, the American and Israeli right wing thrive on enemies, hence their role in getting Hamas elected in Palestine. Obviously, the plan to bring Hamas to rule was not out of any concern for the human beings that inhabited Palestine or Israel, as the result of Hamas' win over Fatah was surely more violence and bloodshed. Bush and the State department knew that Hamas would violently resist Israel, and even expressed glee at the prospect:

Alvaro de Soto, then UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, wrote in his confidential "End of Mission Report" that the U.S. "clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas." He recalled that the "U.S. envoy" to a Feb. 2, 2007, meeting of the Quartet in Washington had twice declared "how much I like this violence," because "it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas."

That U.S. envoy was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

So much for Democracy in the Middle East. Hamas' inevitable rocket attacks provided an ever-diminishing cover for Israel's massacre of Gazans, which was the ultimate goal of the Bush administration's policy toward Israel and Palesitne. Or,

As the commander of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Khalid Jaberi, told Vanity Fair's David Rose, "We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves [the Bush administration's] overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise."

But the Bush administration had not only accomplished its goal of eliminating a Hamas-dominated government; it had also set up a new argument that could later be used to justify an all-out Israeli offensive in Gaza: that Hamas had mounted an "illegal coup" in Gaza. That was the term that Rice used on Jan. 2 in justifying the Israeli operations against Gaza.