The prospect that the Palestinian Arab terrorist group Hamas is to win a substantial victory in Wednesday’s election in the Palestinian Authority has policymakers from Jerusalem to Washington quaking in their boots. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the Bush administration is spending $2 million in American taxpayers’ foreign aid money in the West Bank and Gaza before the election in a last-ditch effort to boost the popularity of the Palestinian Authority, which is associated with the Fatah party of Mahmoud Abbas, a longtime aide to Yasser Arafat. The Israeli cabinet reportedly met in a secret session last night to discuss the potential of an election win by Hamas.

Our own view is that a victory by Hamas, evil though the organization is, might not be all bad. At least then it would be clear to everyone what Israel is facing, an enemy committed to its complete destruction. Hamas makes no secret of this; Palestinian Media Watch recently reported on a Hamas campaign commercial that says, “We do not recognize the Israeli enemy, nor his right to be our neighbor…nor his ownership of any inch of land.” The Fatah Party, on the other hand, plays the double game of vowing support for peace with Israel while refusing to disarm – and even tacitly encouraging – terrorist organizations that attack Israeli civilians and support Israel’s destruction.

With Hamas in power, the Palestinian Authority could be seen, even by the American state department, for what it is, a terrorist state with the aim of destroying a free and democratic American ally. It would join the ranks of Iran and Syria as a rogue state that America would seek to isolate and roll back rather than subsidize with taxpayer dollars. With time, the Islamic revolution would fizzle out in the West Bank and Gaza as it did in Iran, as a younger generation comes to realize that the Internet and Western music and fashion and movies and cellphones are more attractive than the dreary corruption offered by the Islamist clerics. Meantime, the policymakers in Washington can ponder how things reached this stage, how supporting the superannuated Fatah crowd led to a Hamas backlash.

We’ve never felt, given the contenders, that there was much of a percentage for America in backing a side in the Palestinian Arab elections, even if the Saudis, Iranians, and Syrians are, as they are, backing Hamas. But a strong showing for Hamas in the election, even if it does not reach a majority, is a sign that the Fatah crowd on which Washington has rested its hopes since the 1993 Oslo agreement has, after more than 12 years of chances, not earned support in the West Bank or Gaza. It’s hard to see how that justifies additional support from the American taxpayer. Better to use this election as a reason for Washington to begin again on a new course of finding and supporting non-Arafat, non-Fatah Palestinian Arabs who genuinely share American values. Anything less is a recipe for a Hamas state.