The best way of choosing a leadership that is representative of the population’s interests is through democratic elections. Now, as you point out, there can be no truly democratic elections under military occupation. But what’s the alternative? To have no elections at all? That would be very harmful for Palestinian welfare – as I say, they desperately need a representative leadership, particularly since they are suffering a brutal occupation.

In other words, the Palestinians cannot afford to wait until the occupation is over before holding elections. Therefore, the most they can do is ensure the elections are as democratic as possible, which they did last January. Therefore, although it is true that the elected government is technically illegitimate, in reality we and the Palestinians must accept their mandate because there is no other reasonable option. The Palestinians need a leadership.

You are making a silly distinction. Let’s say that the entire elction was absolutely fair and above board all up to the last second where the result was announced officially and at that point the result would be announced whatever way Israel wanted. Would such an election be considered more fair to you? After all there’d be no vote tampering or intimidation. No donations coming from the US and no military intimidation by Israel. It would be rigged still but at least none of that other bad stuff would have happened.

I’m not denying that Hamas is popular but to say they won an “election” is to give legitimacy to an illegitimate process which will certainly come back to bite you when the next time there’s an “election” the bad guys win and come to you and say — “see? this time our side was democratically elected!”

Hamas does have a popular mandate. The Palestinian people need some sort of leadership if they want to achieve anything, and the most democratic way to get that leadership is to vote on it (even though such a vote wouldn’t be totally legitimate, for the reason stated). The elections weren’t “rigged” in the sense that there was intimidation by Fatah against potential Hamas supporters or in the sense of any election fraud. It was more generally illegitimate because, as I say, it was conducted under an occupation. However, we should still accept the legitimacy of the mandate of the election winners, since the Palestinians do need a leadership even though they are under occupation and elections are the most democratic way to choose that leadership.

But I disagree with the idea that they were fairly elected. It is clear to me that the democratic process in the occupied territory is fatally flawed. I certainly wouldn’t have given the slightest credence to a claim that the US/Israeli-backed side had fairly won the election had it gone differently. Would you? It was a completely fraudulent election.

Now it is true that despite the best efforts of US and Israel to right the election Hamas “won” it. That obviously indicates a lot of popular support for Hamas. We knew that anyway. But just because the bad guys failed to pull of the election doesn’t make it a fair election. In fact Hamas’ victory shows that they have much more support than merely what would be required to win a normal unrigged election. Therefore you might ask what is the harm in recognising their victory as an official election result? Simply that it sets a bad precedent for recognising rigged election results.

Narvir: Thanks, although there was no need for the tasteless last sentence. And for the record, officially, that “5-1″ doesn’t count because my leg hurt that day and I was tired and the ref was crap.

“But Hamas is not a national government.

It’s a pseudo-government of a people under occupation. There’s no basis for saying that what Hamas says must be considered legitimate by any hypothetical real government which gets created for Palestinians in more or less the same geographical location at some future date.”

This may be true, but for now Hamas is the legitimate elected representative of the Palestinian people. For now, what they say (or rather, what the new “unity” government says) goes with regards to the Palestinian people. Governments get their legitimacy from the mandate granted to them by the voters, regardless of whether they are a “nation” or not. No?

(Obviously, as you say, this doesn’t go for agreements made with Israel at the point of a gun, but for other decisions – internal Palestinian decisions – it surely does).

It is a moral axiom that when you force someone to do something or say something or agree to something by eg. threatening to kill them or others, their actions or promises are not voluntary, not considered actions by that person but actions by the original violent actor. Clearly a promise extracted under threat of genocide is no promise at all of any standing.

It’s true that the big exception to this moral axiom has long been the expected behaviour of succesive national governments whereby agreements brought about under ceasefire provisions (threats of extreme violence) are considered valid. This has been functional only because the alternative to treating such agreements as valid was to effectively eliminate the possibility of ceasefires under duress at all which would lead to even worse circumstances.

But Hamas is not a national government.

It’s a pseudo-government of a people under occupation. There’s no basis for saying that what Hamas says must be considered legitimate by any hypothetical real government which gets created for Palestinians in more or less the same geographical location at some future date. In fact to the extent that Hamas is forced to back down the Palestinian people will simply see them as illegitimate representatives. Hamas itself should not feel under any obligation to honour any agreement made under duress and that means any agreement made with Israel whatsoever at the moment of course.