Hamas finding fertile ground
Armed group gains with voters
QALQILYA, West Bank -- Palestinians here on the front lines are catching their collective breath after 4 1/2 years of bloody conflict with their Israeli neighbors, and looking for leadership out of the mess they are in.
The Israeli checkpoint that blocked travel to other parts of the West Bank has been removed, but the city's economy is in ruins. Two-thirds of Qalqilya's 45,000 residents live in poverty, dozens of joint ventures with the Israelis have collapsed, and nearly half of the city's agricultural land is on the ''other" side of the maze of walls and fences that Israel built to contain this former center of suicide bombers and snipers.
The distress of the populace is fertile ground for the armed Islamist group Hamas, which swept the municipal elections here last month and is gaining ground steadily in national legislative elections that were scheduled for July. The parliamentary elections were postponed indefinitely yesterday by President Mahmoud Abbas, who said more time was needed to resolve voting laws. Many Palestinians saw the move as a desperate effort by the political establishment to stave off the rise of Hamas.
Palestinians here and across the West Bank say they simply do not feel they are getting help with their problems from the long-dominant Fatah movement, which was founded by the late Yasser Arafat. And they are far from certain that the war with Israel is over. So they are exercising the democracy urged on them by the Western world to explore a radical alternative -- putting Hamas in charge.
The group, which is dedicated to destruction of the Jewish state and creation of Islamic Palestine in its place, is showing internal unity and discipline -- both qualities much admired by the Palestinian man in the street -- while Fatah is in disarray, divided and disrespected by a broad cross-section of voters. A seismic shift in the politics of the region, from secular to fundamentalist, could be developing, with negative implications for already troubled US attempts to cultivate pro-Western democracy.
''I voted for the best -- the Islamic Bloc," said Ahmad Khadoura, 47, using the name under which Hamas and allied politicians ran in the municipal elections. He said the Islamists presented a good program -- not for fighting with Israel, but for improving local services -- ''and they convinced us."
''We experienced the others," he said of the Fatah politicians who were voted out of office amid complaints that they were incompetent, distant from the public, and in some cases, corrupt. Such sentiments are common the length and breadth of the occupied territories these days, from street vendors such as Khadoura, a baker of pita bread, to the most highly educated and sophisticated professionals.
''Hamas will win the legislative council elections -- I expect them to get 70 or 80 percent," Khadoura said. ''I don't think they will return to armed struggle. But if there is a need, why not? If it is necessary."
His prediction of an overwhelming Hamas victory is probably an overestimate. Independent analyses of Palestinian public opinion, supported by recent polling, suggest that neither Hamas nor Fatah will receive a clear majority. After two rounds of municipal balloting, the Islamist group is slightly ahead of Fatah, each with about 35 percent of the positions filled so far. The remaining 30 percent were won by a variety of factional and clan-affiliated candidates.
But the baker's feelings and motivation almost perfectly reflect public perceptions and motivations being recorded in the polls, and that, according to Khalil Shikaki, the foremost Palestinian pollster and political analyst, ''is pure bad news for Fatah."
Unmet expectationsExit polling at the time of Palestinian presidential elections in January indicated that voters chose Abbas because they believed he was the candidate most capable of restoring peace and improving the economy, Shikaki said, and ''clearly he has failed in the last four or five months to deliver the expectations of the voters who elected him."
Meanwhile, since the first round of municipal elections in March, voter identification with Hamas candidates has increased dramatically, indicating Hamas will be able to translate local support to the national level in the legislative elections. ''Fatah is really in trouble," Shikaki includes.
A recent poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center put the Palestinian developments into stark secular-vs.- religious terms.
Last month, the center asked likely voters in the legislative council elections what they would do if the choice boiled down to the two options. About 48 percent said they would go with ''fundamentalist trends," while 38 percent said they would favor secularism.
''I am against terrorism," said Khadoura, the baker, adding that in January he voted for Abbas, Fatah's victorious candidate, ''because Abbas wants peace. His program is peace. But until now, he did nothing. . . . In the end, I am not Hamas, but I am a Muslim."
Hashem al Masri, who has been acting mayor of Qalqilya since the Hamas slate took over City Hall two weeks ago, said such sentiments are part of an Islamic political awakening throughout the Arab world.
''There are two projects in Palestine -- the national project led by Fatah, and the Islamic project led by Hamas," Masri said in an interview in his office here. ''We see that the national project has failed. There is lots of corruption. So the people go with the Islamic movement.
''In practical things, there is no contradiction. We are here to provide public services," he said, ''but of course there is a big difference between the Islamic project and the secular project. The secular project separates between religion and daily life. The Islamic project does not. . . . The Islamic project is based on the Koran and Sunna, and is comprehensive in all aspects of politics, society, and the economy."
Uncompromising stance Cooperation between the Israeli administrators of the occupied territories and newly elected Hamas officials does not mean the Islamic movement is in any way compromising its attitude toward what Hamas generally refers to as ''the Zionist entity," Masri said.
''There is a certain reality now. The fact that we cannot ignore it does not mean that we accept it," Masri said. ''There will be no peace and no security until the Palestinian people . . . get all their rights and live in their complete homeland," the entire state of Israel. ''It will take a long time, but the Palestinian people will win."
There are moderate voices among Hamas politicians, including Hassan Yousef, the organization's leader in the West Bank, and Wajih Nazzal, the new mayor of Qalqilya, who has spent the past 2 1/2 years in an Israeli prison without any charges being brought against him.
''Hamas is now recognizing Israel as a fact on the ground," Nazzal said in a telephone interview from the prison. ''Hamas says it will accept Israel if Palestinians can have their sovereignty over [the occupied territories], over the air, the sea, and the [fresh] water. It will be a permanent peace, not a temporary treaty."
Nazzal, who has a degree in Islamic education and who ran a Hamas center for the disabled before his arrest, cited Koranic verses in support of dialogue with Christians and Jews in counterpoint to the assertion commonly made by militant Islamists -- including many in Hamas -- that Muslim control of the entire region must be restored.
Palestinian and Israeli analysts alike doubt that Hamas is ready to lay down its weapons in favor of political legitimacy.
''It is an absurdity to argue that Hamas will be moderated by participation in electoral politics," said Barry Rubin, a specialist in Arab politics who directs the international affairs research unit at Israel's Interdisciplinary Center, in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv . ''Hamas' whole special feature is radicalism, terrorism, and refusal to compromise or accept Israel. . . . Without this, they would be just another party."
He said the surging electoral success of Hamas ''is a disaster for the Palestinians, for hopes for peace, and for Israel."
Opportunity fading Shikaki, the leading Palestinian analyst, is only slightly less gloomy.
''The real asset [of Hamas] is violence," Shikaki said. ''There was a public demand for violence. This declined sharply, and Fatah could have capitalized." But it failed to do so, he said, and now ''the window of opportunity that opened last year with Arafat's death is . . . almost closed. I see the elements of a major storm by the end of the year."
Both Rubin and Shikaki said Hamas's success is undercutting any chance that Abbas could disarm terrorist organizations or forge compromises with Israel on difficult issues such as the resettlement of Palestinian refugees, the borders of a Palestinian state, and the status of Jerusalem.
Many ordinary Palestinians and Israelis say they believe that the Israeli government is deliberately weakening Abbas by not helping him improve Palestinians' living conditions. The reason, they feel, is that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel knows there will be no serious negotiations toward creation of a Palestinian state with an armed extremist group like Hamas.
Ephraim Sneh, a member of the Israeli parliament who was the commanding general of the occupation of the West Bank in the late 1980s, says the Sharon government is not intentionally trying to strengthen Hamas or reignite the conflict, but these could be the results of current policies.
Sharon's Likud, the dominant party in the government, ''is not genuinely eager to have an Israeli-Palestinian agreement," said Sneh, whose Labor Party also is part of the governing coalition. ''Basically, they still think in terms of the zero-sum game -- that everything that is good for the Palestinians is bad for Israel and everything that is bad for the Palestinians is good for Israel. The real zero-sum game is between Hamas and Fatah. The existential conflict is between Fatah and Hamas. . . . It will determine whether Palestine will be an Islamist state or a secular state." 