I raise North Korea as a counterexample. You can apparently be an independent country, totally fail to deliver on the boring stuff, have your people starving for multiple periods, and still blame it all on "them" for at least 70 years.
I also question whether Hamas would recognize some other party winning the West Bank, or accept another party's authority over Gaza, so it might have to be a three state solution, not two state.
And I'm not optimistic that, faced with trying to govern Gaza, Hamas would turn the "wipe Israel off the map" parts of their charter into "eh, that's just talk from the old days".
Worse: Could Israel trust that Hamas would do that? After October 7?
So I think that you are being more optimistic than data warrants.
North Korea is not the result of a country electing the leadership of an independence movement after an armed struggle.
It would also be very bad if. say, an outside power occupied and imposed a totalitarian regime on all or part of Palestine, and continued supporting it for decades.
North Korea is a good counterexample, but it is hardly a relevant comparison (nor is it realistic) to Hamas. The Workers’ Party of Korea was funded after liberation from the Japanese Empire. Though it included many members of the resistance fighters (notably Kim Il Sung) the movement it self was not a direct continuation of the pre-independence resistant movements.
World War 2 is also a weird time in history to gain independence as external forces (particularly the Soviet Union and Western Allies) played a large part of the resistance. If you compare instead with Vietnam, which also was liberated from the Japanese Empire, but was promptly re-colonized by the French, where the same liberation movement that fought the Empire, also fought and won the French, and became the legitimate government of first North Vietnam and finally all of Vietnam. The Communist Party turned out to be a much more functioning government than the South Vietnam Government which had a series of Monarchs, military dictators, western imposed dictators, etc.
Finally I’d like to turn to FLN which is probably the most relevant comparison. FLN consolidated Algeria as a one party state for the first decades after independence, and it took a whole other rebellion for democratic reforms. But the terrorist activities of FLN (which were much more numerous and destructive than Hamas’) almost completely stopped (I don’t remember any post-independence terrorist activities of FLN actually).
I actually think that Hamas’ rule would be far more democratic than FLN’s. Hamas has a wide support among the people in Palestine, and they would easily win a fair and free election. If they would engage in undemocratic activities, it would cost them more then they could gain (granting international recognition [which honestly is unlikely]). All of this would be void though if Israel would continue interfering with an independent Palestine.
> in each Arab household tonight they are discussing how well killing Jews
You can't post dehumanizing generalizations about entire populations on HN, regardless of who you're slurring. Since we've already asked you to stop posting this sort of hellish flamewar comment to Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418627) and you've been doing it repeatedly since then, I've banned the account.
Since this is the point at which we usually get accused of taking a side in the underlying conflict, I suppose I'll point out that (1) these rules apply regardless of which side you're on, and how right you are or feel you are; (2) we've banned accounts for similarly abusive posts coming from the opposite side of the conflict; and (3) there are many other accounts on HN arguing for the same side of the conflict as you, and that's of course fine (as long as they stay within the site guidelines).
I was talking about a pattern of resistance movement becoming legitimate and functioning governments after independence. And how usually their previous atrocities stop as soon as their peoples are free from their former oppressors.
I don’t know why you are talking about this here as a reply. It sounds like you are trying to flamebait me.
> I actually think that Hamas’ rule would be far more democratic than FLN’s. Hamas has a wide support among the people in Palestine, and they would easily win a fair and free election. If they would engage in undemocratic activities, it would cost them more then they could gain (granting international recognition [which honestly is unlikely]). All of this would be void though if Israel would continue interfering with an independent Palestine.
I was responding to this. Its factually untrue as Hamas did win a free and fair election in Gaza (an independent state) and immediately killed all it's political enemies often in gruesome and shocking ways, which is pretty undemocratic. Since their 2005 win, they haven't held an election. They continue to kill and torture political dissidents, or anyone who does something they don't like, without any sort of trial or criminal proceeding. They apparently had a very widespread, mature secret police network that spied on their citizens. Israel only started their blockade 2 years after Hamas won their election when Hamas began attacking Israeli civilians and using Gaza as a base for terror.
There are countless examples of neighboring states that have a huge power imbalance that maintain their democracy (or some semblance thereof) even in the face of alleged aggression from the more powerful entity, which is why I said it's shocking to hear you blame Israel which isn't nearly as aggressive as China is to Taiwan, or Russia to it's neighbors, or the UK was to Ireland, etc. Look at Cuba and the US. Aggressively targeting civilians with suicide bombs, unguided rockets, mortars, etc isn't inevitable when you have a grievance with your neighbor, you can take the advice of pacifists everywhere that "The best revenge is living well". Look no further than Taiwain, Pakistan, various SA countries and the US, etc.
Basically, it's dishonest to claim that Hamas would magically become a better political entity if they were given control of the pre-war-1967 borders. They've shown and said time and again, their only aspiration is the murder of all Jews (everywhere) and control of all of the entire region from the river to the sea. That isn't controversial or flamebait, it's literally what they've said many times. I don't recall the Vietcong calling for the murder of all south Vietnamese citizenry. Nor did the FLN call for a global campaign of murder of all French people. Neither NV, nor the FLN stated that they didn't see their own citizens as worthy of protection. Hamas has called for both a global campaign of terror against Jews everywhere and has stated that the safety of the Gazan citizenry is the responsibility of the UN and not Hamas.
I think it's disingenuous to call someone flamebait for directly responding to your concluding paragraph, but then I looked at the username and realized who I was dealing with.
To respond to everything else you've said in the previous comment: Vietnam is a pretty terrible place to live if you disagree with their government, not sure why you're using it as an example. FLN too was pretty terrible to anyone who disagreed politically with the ruling party. Obviously the ruling government isn't gonna call it's own actions terrorism, but it absolutely extrajudicially attacked and killed people who it found disagreeable. Under your current definition, Hamas is in fact just as functional a government over Gaza as the FLN and Vietnam were/are over their people. To put it another way there's a giant chasm between real functioning government and despotic regime that gives the veneer of legitimacy. The Vietcong were functionally the same before an after their rise to power, so too, the FLN, they just used different labels.
That's not something to aspire to.
This will be my last communique on this thread with you, as usual you've spread a lot of misinformation with impunity, and I don't like to engage with people who don't start from a place of honesty. I wouldn't have responded to the first one either if I had seen who I was talking with.
I also question whether Hamas would recognize some other party winning the West Bank, or accept another party's authority over Gaza, so it might have to be a three state solution, not two state.
And I'm not optimistic that, faced with trying to govern Gaza, Hamas would turn the "wipe Israel off the map" parts of their charter into "eh, that's just talk from the old days".
Worse: Could Israel trust that Hamas would do that? After October 7?
So I think that you are being more optimistic than data warrants.