EDITORIAL: “Palestinian Democracy: What to do when terrorist win elections,” Wall Street Journal, 24 January 2006, p. A20.

OP-ED: “Regime Change in Palestine?” by Khaled Abu Toameh, Wall Street Journal, 24 January 2006, p. A20.

This has always been the warning of the regional experts: if we promote democracy in the Middle East, we’ll just end up with religious extremists in power.

This assumption forgets two realities: 1) those striving for power act differently than those who’ve achieved it (sometimes they act worse, sometimes they act better); and 2) most founders of countries start out as rebels and terrorists (as the members of the British Parliament reminded me when I spoke there a couple of years back, they still consider George Washington to be a master terrorist).

The question on Hamas isn’t whether they used terror. They did—like crazy. So did Fatah.

The question is, Is Hamas a fundamentalist group whose main aim in gaining power is to disconnect Palestine from the corrupt, outside world? Or, more to the point, to rub out Israel—it’s version of the corrupt, outside world?

If it learns to love power, and Palestine’s ability to exist on its own, the trade-off on Israel may not be so inconceivable.

I know, I know. Hard to imagine. But I haven’t seen a revolutionary party yet that didn’t lose something with power—their goals, their common sense, whatever.

If and when Hamas wins, it won’t just be that the population is desperate. It will be because it outperforms Fatah as a provider of social services a desperate population needs desperately. And because it’s campaign focused, according to Abu Toameh, on corruption, nepotism and anarchy.

And that, my friends, is democracy in hard times and hard places.