Fatah appears to have won in the latest local Palestinian elections but Hamas is quickly emerging as a significant political force that has to be taken seriously. With both, the results will give the competing parties a last chance to gauge their electoral strength ahead of crucial parliamentary polls which are scheduled for July.
While Fatah held on to control in most of the areas where the polls were held, neither the movement nor its leader, Mahmoud Abbas will be able to ignore Hamas or perceive it as almost everybody else does — solely a liberation movement. It won nearly a third of the West Bank and Gaza towns up for grabs in the elections. It won in at least 23 municipalities and scored convincing victories in the three largest towns at stake, making it a political force that Palestinian officials will have to make room for and deal with. Hamas of course is already immensely popular on the Palestinian street because of its campaign against Israel as well as because it runs schools and clinics and provides financial help to needy Palestinians. Now it can add political clout to its intangible assets. That, however, could worry Abbas, to say nothing of Israel and the United States.
An increasingly strong Hamas as an opposition party could hinder peace talks. Hamas opposes the existence of the Jewish state and its members have staged dozens of suicide bombings, shellings and shooting attacks on Israel in recent years. However, since Hamas has agreed to a temporary truce, and since it has made a decision to enter electoral politics, the suggestion is that it may place less emphasis on fighting Israel and lay more on negotiations. The Palestinians have held a presidential election and three local elections since December. Hamas boycotted the presidential vote, and the previous two rounds of municipal elections involved a limited number of small communities. This poll has shown how influential Hamas is.
And there might be more to come. The rivals are headed for even more important showdowns at the ballot box this summer. Parliamentary elections are planned for July, and the final round of local elections, which includes the largest Palestinian cities, is expected in either July or August. A good Hamas showing will surely add to pressure on Abbas to bring it into the Palestinian administration and all that such a move would entail.
Under Yasser Arafat, Fatah faced only token political opposition from other factions. But since Arafat’s death in November, the Palestinian political scene has been rapidly reshaped as typified by this most recent poll. The balloting this week was considered the best barometer to date of the relative electoral strengths of Fatah and Hamas. The results suggest that Abbas and Fatah, which has dominated Palestinian politics for decades, will remain on top for now. But they also indicate that Hamas has translated its street popularity into a well-organized political operation with political aspirations of a nature different from what it has espoused thus far but which could be equally significant.
