Ramallah for Real: The rise of Hamas

2006 began quite like 2005

And by 'quite like' I mean 'not even remotely comparable'. There were parallels, mind you. Both January's I served as election observer, presidential and parliamentary respectively. Which entailed a lot of barreling up and down the West Bank, piling in and out of vans. An A-team of suffrage, if you will. "If no one else can help you, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire ballot monitors." 

As Palestinians enthusiastically voted for an authority with scarcely more than municipal powers, the Colonel Deckers at Huwara checkpoint played nice. Apart from minor election-day campaigning the process ran smooth and fair on both occasions. 

Not so the outcome. One lubed into power a dovish successor to the internationally reviled Arafat, the other cemented Hamas as a political force.

The A-team was barely able to save Face.   

"I'm a Fatah member," a taxi driver ferrying us back to Ramallah after a late-night count in Hebron said, "but today I voted for Hamas. Fatah needs a good spanking." He didn't use the word 'spanking'. I'm sure I don't know the Arabic for 'spanking', but his sentiments were clear, and shared by many Palestinians. As was surprise at the extent of electoral disciplining. No one lit celebratory cigars. Here was a plan that didn't come together. Even Hamas itself, which had expected to become a powerful opposition, winced at the outcome. It was as if Hannibal had crossed the Alps and suddenly didn't know what the hell to do with all the elephants. 

It was the beginning of an annus horribilis. And not just for the elephants. A year of miscalculations. The hot summer of Lebanon, and Gaza. Grim Reaper wielding his scythe with a flurry.

My boss left the organization he'd founded eighteen years ago to become ambassador half a galaxy away, nudged on by indissoluble optimism. The international boycott soon left him scraping to keep the lights on. His brainchild meanwhile struggled to find a successor, and is straining to this day for survival.

The nightlife of Ramallah remained. Added perhaps the occasional Hummer greeting wee eyes with a searchlight as we clambered from Matal, a somewhat dodgy establishment set in the basement alcoves of a former hostel. The nightlife ended when the night ended, and machine gun fire rang out as we made faces at the sun on our way to bed. 

"Where's the army?" some hotheads in a Fiat Uno inquire. (Not everyone's a hothead, but everyone drives a Fiat Uno, including myself at one point.)

"Around there-ish," replies the band of inebriated 'ajanib'.

"Tss, foreigners," you hear them think. The Uno wheels off. Only to come shrieking up again twenty seconds, and a few volleys of ire from the mouth of an M16 later.

We shrug, and hope to retain some of the doused indifference. It's hard sometimes. Not as in 'Not knowing how to feed your family', or 'try to keep from being detained, humiliated or beaten up'.

No, of course not that kind of hard. Nor the 'You look like the guy who blew himself up last week'. We, the outside-inside-outsiders lack that frame of reference. At best we look like the grandchildren of some pen-pusher abetting the unspeakable crimes of another epoch. We are children of the now, looking back as much as we look ahead. This has got to stop. That's all there is to it.

We're like B.A., drugged, hauled onto an airplane, and suddenly there's palm trees, weird animals and machine gun fire. Not the pyrotechnics kind. "Shut up, fool."

At work I spend a lot of time scouring newspapers. Palestinian. Israeli. Eurotrash. American patriotic. I'm looking for a common thread, and it's hard to see because it's bleak, and the sunlight's so bright in the morning. It's the hot summer of Lebanon and Gaza, and gravity tugs on our shoulders. Not the scientist type, I'm rarely moved by numbers, and here I sat, crying over statistics. Just this once. . .

I'm tough, and I still haven't a clue what suffering is.