It seems very clear at this stage that Hamas doesn’t want anything to do with any elections because it does not feel capable of performing well in them (and also, of course, because they are ideologically disinterested in democratic processes and other “un-Islamic” procedures).

I wonder why Hamas would be wary of elections – it’s not like everything went rosy when they accidentally won the last one. I also wonder whether it is possible for things to be any worse than they are now had we not worked with both the PLO and Hamas after the last elections instead of immediately putting on sanctions. Actually, I don’t really wonder because it was pretty obvious back then that we were implementing yet another crappy policiy.