Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (R) talks to senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar (C) and Ismail Haniyeh during their meeting in Gaza City on February 4, 2006. (Wesam Saleh, Maan News)

This article was originally published by the Houston Chronicle on Feb. 5, 2006 and is republished with the author's permission.

When Palestinians in the occupied territories gave Hamas a resounding victory at the polls, they sent the world a message. The status quo of Israeli colonization and denial of Palestinian rights is unsustainable.

The world, and the cause of peace, would be well-served if Israel and the United States heard that message and acted on it by working with Palestinians' democratically elected representatives to end 39 years of Israeli military occupation and grant Palestinians their freedom. Israel's swift refusal to negotiate with Hamas, however, signifies that Israel will instead use Hamas' win as a smokescreen to shield it from upholding its commitments under U.S.-brokered peace agreements and international law. Our government's rash threat to cut aid to the Palestinians suggests that we may follow Israel's lead.

Israel's refusal to deal with the Palestinians' chosen representatives and attempts to isolate the Palestinian national movement are not new. Israel has worked for decades to drum into our consciousness the notion that "there is no partner for peace."

This places the blame for its military occupation on the shoulders of the very people it occupies. The strategy was evident in the 1980s when Israel refused to negotiate with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. During the last five years of so-called peace negotiations, the onus has been on the Palestinians to "reform." A hallmark of President Bush's policy toward the Palestinians has been the demand for the development of transparent, democratic institutions. Democracy is a worthy goal, and one that Palestinians have long struggled for themselves. Yet, the idea that democracy is somehow a litmus test for Palestinian independence obfuscates the real issue at hand — the continued military occupation, denial of equal rights and dispossession of a people.

With Americans successfully focused on what Palestinians need to do to prove they deserve to be free, Israel remains free to continue its land grab in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip unimpeded, with U.S. financial and diplomatic backing. Even at the height of the peace process, Israel retained control of more than 80 percent of the West Bank. The less than 20 percent returned to Palestinian control was carved into ghettoes, increasingly surrounded by Israel's 25-foot-high concrete wall. In 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled the wall was illegal. Yet, the world looks on in silence as its construction continues.

As the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority clung to a bankrupt peace process, the argument that they had no "partner for peace" had become more difficult for Israel to make. Israel could not replace Fatah on its own, but it facilitated its replacement at the ballot box by repeatedly undermining Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah. Every settlement expansion, every schoolchild who could not walk to school without being terrorized by Israeli soldiers, every acre of Palestinian land confiscated for the wall, confirmed that Fatah could not provide the security and freedom the Palestinians yearn for.

Palestinians did not so much cast their ballots for Hamas. They cast their ballots against Fatah. They cast their ballots against spending decades with all aspects of daily life ruled by Israel's brutal military occupation and 13 years pursuing a "peace process" that has yielded nothing for the Palestinian people but more checkpoints, less land and more Jewish settlers who enjoy superior rights to Palestinian Muslims and Christians.

Fatah's defeat cannot be placed solely on Israel's shoulders. Its leadership was also punished for corruption and mismanagement. In contrast, Hamas earned people's trust by providing social services, hospitals and schools, and running municipal governments free of corruption. Ironically, Hamas may provide Palestinians with the good governance and true political reform that Fatah denied them.

Hamas may also provide Israelis with a partner in a process that could lead to real peace. Hamas officials have stated clearly a desire for peace and a willingness to negotiate with Israel, as long as negotiations are not a subterfuge for the continued colonization of the West Bank.

We, as Americans, have a choice. Our government can fall into Israel's trap of isolating the Palestinian leadership, ensuring endless conflict. We can cut aid, further impoverishing Palestinians and perhaps driving them to seek aid elsewhere. Or, we can honor the democratic process and work with both sides to promote basic American values of freedom and equal rights for everyone, including the Palestinians.

Zaknoen served as an official U.S. observer to the first Palestinian elections and is currently employed at the Institute for Middle East Understanding.