Restraining democracy.(on the right)

NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 14

Our love affair with democracy is here and there unrequited. Sixty years ago the essayist Albert Jay Nock remarked that if you freeze a frame on a member of the American clerisy you will find his mouth open having uttered the syllables "demo." In the second frame, he'll have closed his mouth on the syllables "cracy." In a desperate attempt retroactively to challenge the Palestinian election of January 25, we are now contending that it was not really pure democracy, because voters were confused by the presence of third-party candidates and partnerships, all of which had the effect of augmenting the Hamas vote, etc. etc. etc.

But the hard fact of the matter is that next Saturday, the new government of the Palestinian Authority (PA) will take charge, and the majority of votes in that legislature will be those of Hamas. This is an event of colossal importance in the sinuous path toward livable arrangements in the Near East. Something has to happen. Either Hamas has to be castrated, or it has to be stopped. By military action? God save us, the U.S. and Israel have come up with a military solution in drag.

The idea is to starve the PA into undoing the results of its election by declining frontier payments from Israel (they yield about $55 million a month). Simultaneously, you suspend all U.S. contributions to the PA, leaving it with a mere $100,000 in monthly cash from supporters abroad. In a matter of weeks, the Palestinians would not be able to pay the salaries of 140,000 employees critical to the maintenance of civil order.

Where do we go from there?

Well, it just happens that the French and the Russians (they make up two actors in the quartet of which the U.S. and the U.N. are members) hove in over the weekend. The rule had been, since the January election, that Hamas would need to reform its charter, which calls for the elimination of Israel. Something less than that, say the French and the Russians: If Hamas will just agree to enter into conversation with the West, ...