Chances are, that if the present political situation has you confused, that's only because you understand it.
If it appears to you, for example, that Israel is Hamas' campaign manager in next week's elections for the Palestinian parliament, few would argue - especially in Hamas.
And Israel's campaign strategy, thus far, has worked like magic.
Everything Israel does, it seems, only bolsters the credibility of the Islamic Resistance Movement, whose acronym is Hamas, as well as that of the group's new political party list, which goes by the name Change and Reform.
If Israel actually wanted Hamas to win, it couldn't have helped it more.
Months ago, Israel declared with unequivocal conviction - if lawyerly, loophole-ridden language - that if Hamas candidates were on the ballot, the election would not take place.
This granted Hamas renewed and authroritative recognition for its status as a continued bonafide arch-enemy of Israel. It served as an updated certificate of Kashrut to Hamas, at a time when the movement was back-peddling at full speed from its former uncompromising stance vis a vis the political process and shunning ties with any Palestinian institution that smacked of having contact with the Zionist Entity.
Weeks ago, Israeli officials made it clear that Hamas candidates, even if they were on the ballot, would not be allowed to campaign.
It became clear at once, however, that there was no need for Hamas candidates to campaign. All they had to do was to wait for IDF troops and Israel Police to come arrest them - and in front of news cameras.
You couldn't have prayed for a better campaign. Instant visibility, immediate name recognition, freedom from suspicions of collaboration, high-profile resistance to occupation. Total credibility.
Everything Israel did, from assassinating Hamas suspects at a time when Hamas was, technically at least, observing an Egypt-brokered period of relative calm, to issuing dire warnings of what might happen if Hamas were to achieve 30, 40, or even 51 percent of the vote, served to fuel the Hamas juggernaut.
Even the widely photographed masked youths throwing rocks at IDF soldiers in the Hebron market - who, while they may resemble Hamas activists, turn out to be Jewish - may give a bit of a boost to Hamas.
As carried on Arab satellite news stations, the images play on Palestinian hatred of settlers, Palestinian fears of domination and defilement of holy sites they share with Jews, and the Palestinian sense that even if soldiers and police beat, choke, wrestle and threaten Jewish demonstrators, they do not gun them down.
The near-daily reminders of Israel's social gaps and its inability to address the needs of the jobless and the poor only reinforce the parallel issues within the West Bank and Gaza, underscoring the fact that the social welfare, medical-care and educational network of Hamas in the territories, is the only one that works.
The near-daily revelations of corruption in Israeli public life and its electoral process add to the daily reminders of the world-class corruption of Fatah - the major selling point of the Hamas campaign.
Israel has also gone out of its way, whether intentionally or inadvertently, to make the Palestinian Authority look bad. In ruling out voting in Jerusalem, then reversing its position and effectively allowing it, it has made the PA appear to be even less than a puppet of the government in west Jerusalem.
"The irony here, which may or may not be understood by the political echelon in Israel, is that its attitude and behavior on the issue of elections in Jerusalem has been benefiting the Palestinian opposition and mainly Hamas," according to political analyst and Palestinian Authority Planning Minister Ghassan Khatib.
"Firstly, discriminating against Hamas and opposition candidates or preventing campaigning in Jerusalem because Hamas is taking part in elections simply serves to single out Hamas and thus increase its public support," Khatib writes
in Wednesday's paper. "Secondly, the fact the PA hasn't been able to guarantee the right of its citizens to participate in elections in Jerusalem has been portrayed as a sign of weakness of the PA. "
Meanwhile, the Change and Reform party's new 30-page Change and Reform platform statement is a carefully worded document which, as opposed to the fiery, uncompromising, death-to-Israel direction of the Hamas charter, "does not essentially contradict Fatah's platform, and on several points is even in keeping with it," says Haaretz territories correspondent Arnon Regular. "In any event, there are only hints of the charter's principles left in Hamas' current election platform."
This combines with suggestions by relative moderates within Hamas that the organization might agree to negotiate with Israel in the future.
And this is not to remind the observer that it was the diligent efforts of a generation of Israeli military and political officials that fostered the rise of Hamas in the first place. In the 1970s and 80s, the Civil Administration and the Shin Bet aided the Hamas precursor the Muslim Brotherhood as a hoped-for apolitical counterweight to the radical Popular Front, Democratic Front, and the militias and terror operatives of Arafat's Fatah.
And if all that were not enough, there were the vaguely conciliatory words of President Moshe Katsav, in remarks broadcast Wednesday, in which he suggests that in the future, Israel could negotiate with Hamas, if it explicitly renonced the armed struggle and its pledges to eradicate Israel.
This week, Sheikh Mohammed Abu Tir, the number two candidate Hamas national list for the Palestinian parliament, startled Israelis by suggesting in an interview with Haaretz that in possible future negotiations with Israel, "We'll negotiate better than the others, who negotiated for 10 years and achieved nothing."
Hamas is playing by new rules, Abu Tir indicated, saying that the movement's having joined the elections - as well as the decision to excise from the election platform sections in the Hamas constitution calling for Israel's destruction - consitute a strategic shift and not a tactical maneuver.
Abu Tir, it should be noted, did not begin the campaign with a high media profile in the terrories. Until this week, that is, when Israeli police briefly arrested him for campaigning in Jerusalem. Now his name, and his trademark flaming orange beard, are seared into the Palestinian voter's consciousness.
Thanks to us.
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Previous blogs:
Israel the 51st state
How the suicide bomber saved Zionism
Thanking God for the stroke
A Prayer for the Prime Minister
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