[Bush] insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, "Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them." What happened? Hamas won.Practically no one expected Hamas to win those elections, and I cannot find any record of Biden or Obama saying any such thing. All polls from before the elections has Fatah winning by double-digits.
But here's what I did find:
There was a letter with 73 Senate co-signers urging Bush to press Palestinian leadership to bar terrorist groups from participating in Palestinian legislative elections in December, 2005. Joe Biden did not sign it (although Obama did.)
And Joe Biden helped monitor the 2006 elections, and was quoted as saying:
I have just returned from observing yesterday’s Palestinian legislative elections. The process was free and fair. But the apparent results – a victory by the terrorist organization Hamas – are very sobering.If he was so certain that Hamas was going to win, why would he have been so eager to legitimize the elections by monitoring them (as he did the previous year with the 2005 elections that Fatah won?)