Izzedine al Qassam

In Lebanon too, "never a dull moment"..

Hamas activists before 24/1

It's true that this blogger of yours once spend part of his professional curiosity around English-speaking pro-Islamist Palestinian personalities in Gaza; it's also true that this blogger has attended the inaugural session of the Palestinian National Council in the parliamentary premises of Gaza City - but it only means my personal mental data bank does contain images taken in loco by my then non-Alzheymerish brain that react with the word "Hamas" in a peculiar way.

I've been reading comments and analysis from every possible medium and viewpoint about the meaning of Hamas victory and I'm sure the Honourable Reader might be fed up at this juncture with the spin-doctorship of the media and political academia. So I'll stick to my gut reactions, the immediate mental associations triggered by hearing the news that Hamas was about to landslide the parliamentary elections in Palestine.

First flash: (curiously enough) Algeria. What was about to happen if the Algiers regime had not prevented the second round of those key elections to take place (which would have carried the victory of FIS) is now for real: a "green" regime (of Islamists, not environmentalists).

Second flash: "Someone order Democracy? There you have it, Sir. " Too late for realpolitik reasoning now, the votes have already been cast and counted. Surprising results in free and fair elections are the real hallmark of a democratic choice. We'll have to live with it. And worth to remember that there have been no true surprising results before in Arab world's carefully managed elections.

Third flash: Sean Feinn/IRA; Batasuna/ETA; Hamas/Izzedin al~Qassam all over again. How can one deal with a political entity closely linked with a armed/terrorist wing?

Fourth flash: the black-dressed "Haredim" ( Ultra-orthodox Jews) in Jerusalem. They will feel right now more at ease than most in the Land of Israel.. Long-long term projects, and not political short-termism, are the conceptual framework of both "blacks" and "greens"..

Arik Sharon's political death.. Fatah's political collapse... Bibi's incoming political resurrection... - the curse of the "never a dull moment" very much at work in poor old Holy Land...