> Fatah knows they would lose an election in the West Bank to Hamas, this is something neither Israel or Fatah wants, hence no elections.
Nice story, but Fatah actually negotiated and agreed to details for all-Palestine elections with Hamas; Israel declined to allow them to occur.
> They tried all-Palestine elections in 2006[0], that backfired spectacularly. Hamas was elected in what were generally considered free and fair elections, pretty hard to get a good election outcome if a majority or at least a plurality of the population wants to elect terrorists.
The US and Israel call all resistance to Israeli occupation terrorism; the PLO (not the Fatah faction but the whole umbrella organization), which is organizationally coextensive with the Palestinian Authority, is a Congressionally-designated foreign terrorist organization which has had Presidential waivers allowing certain interactions since 1993.
> Nice story, but Fatah actually negotiated and agreed to details for all-Palestine elections with Hamas; Israel declined to allow them to occur.
Was this like a case of them agreeing to something they knew Israel would never allow(letting Hamas officials run in Palestinian elections)?
> The US and Israel call all resistance to Israeli occupation terrorism;
I don't think this is true, it's generally the violent resistance that is called terrorism, probably because there's quite a lot of that going on.
> the PLO (not the Fatah faction but the whole umbrella organization), which is organizationally coextensive with the Palestinian Authority, is a Congressionally-designated foreign terrorist organization which has had Presidential waivers allowing certain interactions since 1993.
Presumably that would be due to the PLO having engaged in and supported terrorism[0]. The Martyrs Fund is not exactly small:
> These payments, total more than $300 million annually, representing approximately 7 percent of the PA's annual budget.
Nice story, but Fatah actually negotiated and agreed to details for all-Palestine elections with Hamas; Israel declined to allow them to occur.
> They tried all-Palestine elections in 2006[0], that backfired spectacularly. Hamas was elected in what were generally considered free and fair elections, pretty hard to get a good election outcome if a majority or at least a plurality of the population wants to elect terrorists.
The US and Israel call all resistance to Israeli occupation terrorism; the PLO (not the Fatah faction but the whole umbrella organization), which is organizationally coextensive with the Palestinian Authority, is a Congressionally-designated foreign terrorist organization which has had Presidential waivers allowing certain interactions since 1993.