Well, not exactly. As summed up on Israel National News, this week the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat reported that

The report notes that “Existing laws mete out the death penalty to individuals convicted of murder, spying, homosexuality, or selling land to Jews” and that the new legislation will also include “lashes for a large number of ‘crimes,’ including drinking alcoholic beverages and gambling.”

And furthermore, “Hamas has a large majority in the PA parliament, with 74 of the 134 parliamentarians belonging to the Islamist party,” and the new legislation



It is also not clear at this point whether the Palestinian Legislative Council, which for the time being has ceased to function, could be reconstituted for such a vote.

What is clear, though, is that horrific Islamic abuses are already occurring in Gaza. Last week the UK’s Telegraph told this harrowing tale:

April, to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, was indeed a cruel month:

It was, of course, the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank who overwhelmingly chose Hamas in parliamentary elections in 2006. Presumably, they knew something about this movement’s nature. They may not have thought, though, they were getting something that looks increasingly like an Arab version of the Taliban.
Which is not to say Fatah, the relatively secular movement running the West Bank, is a bed of roses. At the end of March the UK’s Daily Mail published a hair-raising report on its use of torture. Last week when an Israeli father of five was stabbed to death, Fatah’s Facebook page erupted in praise and celebration.

By and large, the same people who have made the Palestinians and their alleged rights a cause célèbre for decades cannot be gotten interested in these realities. There are certain to be more Israeli Apartheid Weeks next spring, but there will be no Gaza Torture or Gaza Sharia weeks. Back when waves of Palestinian suicide bombers were strewing body parts all over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, it was Israel’s checkpoints and separation fence that became the focus of—supposed—moral concern.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry has launched yet another major diplomatic initiative aimed at restarting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that are supposed to lead to “peace.” The ongoing refusal to internalize the problematic nature of the “Palestinian people”—who exhibit the same afflictions so evident in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and elsewhere in the region—is stunning to behold.