RAMALLAH, 27 December 2004 — Hamas militants defeated the mainstream Palestinian movement Fatah in nine of 26 local elections, results showed yesterday, in a foretaste of challenges confronting emerging moderate leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas’ standing in polls about national leadership has declined since Yasser Arafat’s death amid growing weariness with violence and a drive by the US-favored Abbas to revive peace talks aimed at Palestinian statehood on Israeli-occupied land.

But Hamas’ solid performance in its first foray into electoral politics, and the first Palestinian grassroots vote since 1976, signaled discontent with corruption and chaos in Fatah that Abbas must overcome to establish his authority.

He received boosts when 560 prominent Palestinians called in front-page newspaper adverts for an end to violence while Israel approved plans to pull back forces to help Palestinians vote in a Jan. 9 presidential election he is widely expected to win.

“The election is of supreme importance in establishing a (Palestinian) leadership with which we hope to move forward on the road map,” Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said, citing an international peace plan stymied by persistent violence.

In another gesture to Abbas, Israel said it would free today 113 of more than 7,000 Palestinians jailed as suspected militants. Abbas has made prisoner releases part of his campaign platform to encourage militants to lay down their arms.

A tally announced by the Palestinian Authority’s Supreme Council for Local Elections showed Hamas scored victories in nine West Bank council races on Dec. 23 against 16 for Fatah. Fatah won by narrow margins in two districts while the rivals tied for control of one municipality.

Voting in scores more municipalities along with elections for the Palestinian legislature is to follow later in 2005.

The successes of Hamas in the first Palestinian ballot since militants launched a revolt in 2000 were likely to send Abbas a message of Islamist clout at the local level.

Analysts attributed the results, and a 90 percent turnout, to dismay with corruption among long-entrenched Fatah incumbents and Hamas’s skill in aiding people cut adrift by a breakdown in Fatah-run public services accelerated by fighting with Israel.

Militant groups have rebuffed Abbas’s suggestions of a cease-fire since Arafat died in November and fighting has raged on in occupied Gaza. Israeli tanks killed two Islamist militants planting explosives near a Gaza border fence yesterday.

But poll ratings for Abbas have surged along with sentiment for restoring calm to help enable negotiations on statehood. Violence has abated in the larger West Bank and US-led Middle East peace diplomacy is reviving after years of paralysis.

Palestinian notables including senior Palestine Liberation Organization officials, cabinet ministers, lawmakers, intellectuals and poets, urged an end to militant attacks and a push for democratic reform to advance the quest for a state.

“We reaffirm our legitimate right to confront occupation, but call for restoring the popular character of our intifada and ceasing actions that reduce the range of (international) support for our cause and harm the credibility of our struggle,” they said in their high-profile newspaper advertisement.

Abbas, a veteran PLO pragmatist, has branded years of suicide bombings a mistake and gained trust of the United States, which boycotted Arafat as an alleged obstacle to peace. Mediators hope to capitalize on Sharon’s plan to evacuate tiny Gaza next year as a springboard to a final peace deal.

A Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip broke ranks with other ultra-nationalists and accepted government terms to be relocated to Israel rather than stay put, an official said yesterday. “All 20 families in Pe’at Sadeh and another five families from other communities will move together to Moshav (Israeli farming community) Mivkaim,” Yonatan Bassi, the official managing Sharon’s “Disengagement Plan”, told reporters.

Meanwhile, an Israeli Jewish woman who once offered herself as a human shield for a wanted Palestinian was formally charged yesterday with “collaborating with the enemy”.

Tali Fahima, 28, was arrested in August on suspicion of involvement in Palestinian attacks and has been held in administrative detention as a security risk, facing interrogation by the Shin Beth security service.

Fahima is a close friend of Zakaria Zubeidi, who as leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in the West Bank town of Jenin, is one of the most wanted of all Palestinian militants.

An Israeli court has charged her with collaborating with the enemy at a time of war, contacts with a foreign agent, possessing an illegal weapon and supporting a “terrorist organization”, judicial sources said.