Over a year ago, Natan Sharansky co-authored a book, The Case for Democracy. Its thesis: the search for peace and stability must incorporate the fostering of democracy and freedom; where democracy is encouraged to grow, one finds dialogue instead of terror.



Sharansky maintained that it was possible to bring democracy to the Middle East and, specifically, to the Palestinians. "The battle is not between Israel and the Palestinians..." he explained in a Middle East Quarterly interview. "Rather, the current fight pits the world of freedom against the world of terror."



President George Bush was taken with the ideas the book espoused and invited Sharansky for discussion. The notion of promoting democracy among Arab regimes became a lodestar for Bush's Middle East policy. Neo-cons signed on with enthusiasm. Promoting human liberty had become good for the US.



But what a difference a year makes. With the January 25 landslide victory of Hamas in its legislative elections, the Palestinian Authority has been set back by decades with regard to enlightenment, liberties and democracy. In many quarters, there has been bewilderment that this policy had backfired so totally. But it was all fairly predictable. Certain Western predilections have played a part.



On the one hand, there has been a tendency toward self-delusion, a failure to grapple with painful and unpalatable realities. While a certain amount of optimism is good, this is most decidedly not.



When Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the PA, Bush declared that while he would not work with Yasser Arafat, he was pleased to work now with Abbas, who represented the hope of a new era of moderation.



Why should Bush (and much of the Western world) have assumed this? What ? other than facile words in English ? did Abbas offer that promised moderation? Abbas did not represent a new era; he was an Arafat prot?g?, there from the beginning ? helping to found Fatah and promoting terrorism. But in the flush of new hope, who bothered to recall that when the Al-Aksa Intifada started, it was Abbas who had advised a continuation of the armed uprising? Who thought seriously about his Holocaust denial or his refusal to acknowledge the historical presence of Jewish Temples in Jerusalem?



Abbas wore a nice suit and tie. He had a surface polish that Arafat totally lacked. He spoke softly and said the right things. And so, hope was vested in him.



From the beginning, Abbas made it clear that he had no intention of taking on the terrorists. His approach was to co-opt them ? making them part of the Palestinian Authority. Ten years before, the PA had forged a formal agreement with Hamas, in which the PA was called upon to cease all "preventative security" against Hamas; this just carried the process one step further. Putting a security apparatus uniform on a terrorist, however, renders him no less a terrorist.



This was the time for the Western world to have uttered vociferous protest. To have called a halt before it was too late. Instead, word went out that Abbas really wanted to do more, but just did not have the power. And here we see another relevant Western predilection: where the relationship with the leaders of the PA is concerned, there is the impulse to cut them slack rather than holding their feet to the fire. If we bolster Abbas, support him with funds and public statements, went the logic, eventually he'll come through.



Natan Sharansky wasn't fooled. He watched as Abbas signed the death warrants for Palestinians convicted of "collaboration". These "collaborators" were guilty only of assisting Israel to locate or foil terrorists (something the PA was supposed to be doing). Sharansky knew he was witnessing a deprivation of human rights too serious to be ignored; it put the lie to any notion of moderation or emerging democracy in the PA. Urgently requesting that Israel demand a halt to the executions, he wrote to Prime Minister Sharon, "It is impossible to build a peace process based on blood." Israel did not make the demand, nor did the US take a public stand on this matter.



Sharansky's insistence that the PA be called to task with regard to this action reflected his most deeply held beliefs with regard to bringing down tyrannies. He explained this in his MEQ interview: "We saw the Soviet Union as a rotten, weak society, liable to fall apart quickly, if only the West stopped supporting it.... When Ronald Reagan, the leader of the free world, called a spade a spade... the Soviet Union was doomed.... The same thing applies today."



"Calling a spade a spade," is precisely what the Western world has never been able to do with regard to the Palestinian Authority.



The opportunity presented itself with the announcement by Hamas that it would run in the PA legislative elections. But no clear protest was lodged. Facile support for "democratic process" in the PA held sway, and free elections, in which all were entitled to participate, were accepted as emblematic of the emerging democracy. It was judged improper to interfere; in the end, Israel even allowed Arab residents of Jerusalem to vote in the election.



But free elections are not, in and of themselves, a major signpost of a democracy. Such elections are properly the culmination of a long process in which democracy has been established in a society ? a society that genuinely fosters concepts of human dignity and freedoms. After the elections, Sharansky spoke out once more with regard to the situation. "Democracy isn't hocus-pocus; it's a process," he said in a Jerusalem Post interview. "An election between a terrorist organization... and a corrupt dictatorship... is not democracy. The results of the election were clean, but it has nothing to do with democracy."



The clean results of the election, however, have been permitted to confer international legitimacy on Hamas. On January 31, the Washington Post fostered that veneer of legitimacy by running an op-ed piece authored by Hamas representative Mousa Abu Marzook.



No fool, Marzook pushed all the right buttons: "Through historic fair and free elections, the Palestinian people have spoken," he declared. "America's long-standing tradition of supporting the oppressed's rights to self-determination should not waver. The United States, the European Union and the rest of the world should welcome the unfolding of the democratic process."



Indeed.



These are unrepentant terrorists he is speaking of. Not "only" terrorists, but also anti-democratic Islamists whose goal is to rule the world via Islamic religious law. But still, there is no clear sign of a Western leader prepared to call a spade a spade.



The way out of the current impasse could come from Hamas itself. Already, leaders of the Western world, falling back on familiar patterns of conciliation, have turned themselves into pretzels seeking ways to find moderation in Hamas. If only Hamas would recognize Israel and declare itself peaceful in intent, why then, everything would be just fine. There is not a speck of evidence that any such words offered by Hamas leaders would be serious in intent and ultimately backed by actions. What is different now is that Hamas does not want to play the game. These are not Mahmoud Abbas clones, offering the right words to mollify the Western world.



Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar recently declared in a TV interview that Hamas would continue to attack Israel, would refuse to recognize Israel and would replace the Jewish state with a Muslim state: "We will not give up the resistance in the sense of Jihad. Palestine means Palestine in its entirety -- from the Sea to the River.... We cannot give up a single inch."



Khalid Mash'al, Hamas's head man in Damascus, wrote in a PA newspaper, "Our message to the United States and Europe is that the attempts you are exerting to make us abandon our principles and struggle will be wasted.... We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist state that was established on our land."



Yet, in spite of the opportunity being offered to the Western world to finally tell it like it is, it seems the world's leaders remain inclined to pass, once again.