End Of The Road Map

Robert Dreyfuss

January 27, 2006

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone.He can be reached through his website: www.robertdreyfuss.com.

Hamas’ shocking, but not surprising, victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections on Jan. 25 is a disaster—for the peace process, and for the Palestinians.

It is indeed a shock. But it is not a surprise, because the strength of political Islam in the region is growing nearly everywhere—from Iraq, whose government is controlled by three Shiite fundamentalist parties, to Egypt, where the fanatical Muslim Brotherhood made huge gains in elections in 2005—and because Hamas was able to capitalize on anger, bitterness and frustration among Palestinians disenchanted with the Palestine Liberation Organization, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (PA).