Abu Mazen Wins

To nobody's surprise, Abu Mazen, AKA Mahmoud Abbas, won the Palestinian presidential elections yesterday. With about 60% of the vote, he garnered three times as many votes as the next candidate. The most encouraging sign, perhaps, is that the next candidate was human rights advocate and anti-corruption campaigner Mustafa Barghouti (not to be confused with Marwan Barghouti, a very distant relative and Fatah leader now in prison). Barghouti alone received more votes than the remainder of the field combined, meaning that hard-right (Islamist) and hard-left (Marxist) candidates did not succeed at the polls.

Whether Abu Mazen is going to bring anything new to the table remains to be seen. Sharon, who has said he will work with Abu Mazen, is demanding that terrorism be stopped before he will begin negotiations. This is not the strategy of a peacemaker, because it basically gives Hamas or Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade the ability to scuttle any deals. Hamas has said it will work with Abu Mazen (a testament to Israel's ruthless decapitation strategy), but real peace is just as far away as it has been since the end of Camp David II.