Word: egypts
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Virtually no one foresaw Hamas' surge. Pre-election polls generally gave Hamas, which was founded in 1987 as an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, about a third of the vote. But when election day dawned, voters leaped at the chance to rid themselves of the incompetent and corrupt Fatah. "It's not that we love Hamas, but we didn't want Fatah anymore," says Samer Bafrawi, 26, a West Bank restaurateur. "It's a bad organization"--bad enough that he voted for the Islamists even though he says he is "not really religious at all." It was Hamas' commitment...
...From Afghanistan to Egypt, not one country that has had an election in the past year has emerged more stable as a result of the experience. In Iraq, three elections-the last one little more than a "census," in the words of Iraqi journalist Nibras Kazimi-have increased the probability of partition or civil war and installed a corrupt, Iran-leaning government of religious conservatives, which will undoubtedly remain in power when the new "permanent" government is formed. In Afghanistan, elections have brought narco-warlords to positions of significant power. Even the Potemkin elections in Saudi Arabia and Egypt resulted...
...Hamas already "negotiates" with Israel in a practical sense, although not directly: The current cease-fire is a product of a complicated four-way negotiation between Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Hamas. It has an incentive to maintain the cease-fire now, because it needs to implement its domestic program. In the end, a Hamas government will rise and fall not by how it transforms relations with Israel, but how it implements its promises to clean up Palestinian government...
Already Likudniks are saying disengagement in Gaza has caused the chaos and will weaken Israel's security. "We hear reports of an al-Qaeda presence in Gaza now and about high-powered explosives being smuggled in through Egypt," a leading Likud security expert told me. "The question is, How would Sharon have reacted to the deteriorating situation? Would he have moved on and disengaged from the West Bank? I think there is a discussion to be had about what Sharon's real legacy should...
Sharon, now a general, speaks with former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion during a tour of army posts along the border with Egypt...